The Beatles are one of my four favorite bands, but I hadn’t kept tabs on my favorites of theirs in a while. Albums, well, that’s easy. Right now, it’s Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, With The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album), Beatles For Sale, Please Please Me, then finally Let It Be.
But songs! Gosh. The fact that there were so many great ones inspired my recent substitute to March Madness, The Beatles’ (When I’m) 64 contest, with song selections and seedings sourced from Acclaimed Music, a bracket hosted on Challonge, and polls hosted daily on my Twitter. It was great fun (please click on the bracket above if you weren’t part of this, I’m sure many results will have you feeling some type of way), but it also got me to re-ponder what exactly my allegiances are.
To be clear about those allegiances: John is (musically) my favorite Beatle, to the extent that I even prefer the sound of his voice to Paul’s. You might see that reflected in my picks.
For your convenience, I’ve linked a Spotify playlist of these 25 songs at the very bottom of this post. Hope you have fun.
Most notable absence to me: “Revolution,” an incredible recording with John showing off some clever rhymes, but too politically headass for me to include at the expense of my #25. I also never feel comfortable either cutting up the Abbey Road medley or including the whole damn thing.
25. “A Hard Day’s Night”
What can I really say? Deceptively complicated, so simple yet so musically deep that the world’s finest Beatles academics couldn’t figure out how to even play its first moment until recently.
24. “All My Loving”
I confess, I was swayed a bit by the outcome of my own tournament. “All My Loving” was the tournament’s 62nd seed out of 64, a true underdog, yet it dispatched of juggernaut “Hey Jude” and far-better-known “Can’t Buy Me Love” to make the Sweet Sixteen. “All My Loving” finds the perfect balance of sweetness that so frequently eluded the band on Please Please Me.
23. “Paperback Writer”
Yeah, it’s just a bit of a joke, a lesser known counterpart to “Day Tripper,” but gosh, the ferocity of that guitar. No one and I mean no one else rocked that hard in 1966, and “Paperback Writer” is one of the band’s best displays that their talents for recording and arrangement could lift a relatively ordinary song entirely skyward.
22. “It Won’t Be Long”
Is it even better than “All My Loving”? YEAH! (YEAH!) YEAH! (YEAH!) YEAH! (YEAH!!!)
21. “I’m Looking Through You”
It remains so stunning how the straightforward songs of Rubber Soul are served up with entirely perfect presentation, but it’s never exemplified better than that little breakdown after each verse in “I’m Looking Through You” right after Paul gets into a lovely shout.
20. “Yesterday”
Yes, this might be where The Beatles started becoming a little too aware that they were the greatest band in the world, which started to have effects both positive and negative on what exactly they imagined such a band should sound like. “We should make slow, mournful ballads” is one of the worse answers they ever came up with, but “Yesterday” is still completely immortal.
19. “Let It Be”
“Hey Jude” is absent from this list. So often in need of an editor, Paul gets a little carried away, though the song gets great once everyone gets carried away with him. Here, though, it’s a paint-by-numbers sequence, grounding Paul’s grand display for his long-dead mother (we’ll get to John’s such display later). It can often seem as if Paul is constantly trying to will big, important songs into existence, but here the obviousness of the work he’s put in shines through the record. Listen to that guitar solo. Man.
18. “Can’t Buy Me Love”
Rather ordinary, but that’s the virtue. Next to other top-of-the-class 1964 Beatles entries like, say, “You Can’t Do That,” it has fewer peculiarities, just a ruthlessly efficient display of the ebullience the band was capable of at Beatlemania’s height.
17. “Got To Get You Into My Life”
The horns are unbelievable. And this is a good demonstration that Paul should have shouted far more often.
16. “Getting Better”
Let’s get it out of the way: John’s bit in the bridge about “[his] woman” is startling, and even more startling is that the song isn’t about a character, it’s confessional. It’s distracting and alarming every single playthrough. I considered leaving “Getting Better” off this list for that reason. But, no, it’s too great, the brightly chirping guitar in the intro standing tall as one of the band’s all-time most wowing moments. If it had less baggage, it’d likely be top ten.
15. “Don’t Let Me Down”
John screaming. Yes, good.
14. “Help!”
“I need you” is and was a well-trodden sentiment in popular music, but The Beatles tearing the romance out of it and outright making a song about depression was, while certainly not a first, adventurous. The dissonance of the fun of so many late-early Beatles songs with the song’s pleading makes it wondrously unique.
13. “I’ve Just Seen A Face”
Pop music is about taking the simplest, most relatable feeling in the world and expanding just a bit. And there’s no better expansion herein than the acoustic guitar, which makes you regret that they hadn’t tried the instrument a bit earlier than 1965.
12. “Eleanor Rigby”
Yes, Paul’s writing here is indulgent, but he doesn’t too brazenly indulge his indulgence, at least not on this song. He gets in, fucks around, and gets out in just over two minutes. He keeps only his most striking images.
11. “A Day In The Life”
Not perfect. Paul’s part is stapled on. I’m never fond of claims that this is the best Beatles song, a conflation of “greatest” with “grandest.” But the melodies (especially John’s wordless bit after Paul goes into a dream) are sublime and carry the enormous weight of the composition. Also: immortal words about roadwork!
10. “Something”
Even as his songwriting released his absolute apex, George would still sometimes have to end his refrains with “you know I believe, and how!” Anyway, listen to that bridge. Are you kidding me? My goodness.
9. “I Want To Hold Your Hand”
A song built around the most innocent of all romantic gestures? By these rascals? Gotta be code for something.
8. “In My Life”
George Martin’s (beautiful!) piano solo always felt a hair out of place to me, but otherwise this is perfection, the best of their slightly-too-sweet songs.
7. “Julia”
Too often The Beatles’ quiet songs (“Yesterday,” “In My Life”) can ring a little hollow because it sounds like they’ve just set out to make something profound. “Julia” is the big exception, a song perfectly comfortable to remain understated and, if need be, forgotten. John only sings it to reach one person, after all.
6. “And Your Bird Can Sing”
Tricky, opaque lyrics. Dual guitars tying themselves in knots. Vocal harmonies. An oddity John himself didn’t much care for, but moreso than most any other Beatles song, its legacy is left up to its (confused) audience. There’s so much to make of this nothing.
5. “No Reply”
A petulant anthem for paranoid boyfriends everywhere, yes, sure, but the force of impact of this delivery! The guitars! John! I SAW THE LIGHT. I NEARLY DIED!!! The band’s most cleanly landed punch.
4. “Ticket To Ride”
Ringo’s greatest moment, “Ticket To Ride”‘s drums frequently bring up mentions of (very very very early) heavy metal. But unlike “Helter Skelter,” there’s more to it than that. “Ticket To Ride” is an empathetic (though frustrated) window into the motives of a young woman, getting across so much in so few words.
3. “Tomorrow Never Knows”
Genuinely bold, inventive, and experimental in the way that many Beatles fans claim to appreciate. But the formlessness of it all is still a bit much even to this day. Lines like “listen to the color of your mind” were lifted from Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience in an earnest attempt to sonically recreate the effects of LSD. Whether or not that particular goal was a success, “Tomorrow Never Knows” has such a genuine sense of wonder, tethered just enough to some semblance of form to guide us as we wander through it again and again.
2. “Strawberry Fields Forever”
Not just any Beatles drug song. The Beatles drug song, a powerful combination of nostalgia for childhood locations with freeform trains of thought, just together enough to feel coherent as the waves pass over you. Living is easy with eyes closed. No one I think is in my tree.
1. “She Loves You”
Some are unwilling to even entertain the idea that this is the greatest Beatles song. One wonders what they make of “Dancing On My Own” on best of the 2010s lists or “I Want You Back” and “Be My Baby” on best of the sixties lists. Nothing in popular music really tops the more simple songs, and “She Loves You” is a quick and dirty display of The Beatles doing the two things they actually did best: writing efficiently and executing immaculately. For the former, for once their narrator isn’t involved in the romance but is on the outside looking in, brilliantly transforming the song into one not just of reassurance but of camaraderie. Meanwhile, there are simply too many musical high points to make time for each. But the way the Beatles of 1963 always put their guitars just a hair too high in the mix, Ringo’s aggression (feeling himself enough for a little intro), and John/Paul/George shouting their throats out, the whole thing builds to a roar at YEAH, YEAH, YEAH. Nothing like it.
If you need a damn “November Rain” to show someone why The Beatles were great, that’s missing the point. It’s rockism for songs that rock less.
I knew there’d be demand, so here’s the full list all in one place. Then after that, I do some navel gazing.
Full List
Honorable Mention. Burial: Tunes 2011-2019 100. SZA: Ctrl 99. Noname: Room 25 98. Snail Mail: Lush 97. Emperor X: Oversleepers International 96. DJ Rashad: Double Cup 95. Frank Ocean: blond 94. Jlin: Black Origami 93. Blood Orange: Freetown Sound 92. Jamie xx: In Colour 91. Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt 90. Control Top: Covert Contracts 89. Girls: Father, Son, Holy Ghost 88. Jens Lekman: I Know What Love Isn’t 87. oso oso: basking in the glow 86. Charly Bliss: Guppy 85. Paramore: Paramore 84. Cardi B: Invasion of Privacy 83. Mount Eerie: A Crow Looked At Me 82. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake 81. Sky Ferreira: Ghost 80. My Bloody Valentine: m b v 79. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma 78. SOPHIE: OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES 77. Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator 76. Wussy: Attica! 75. Kanye West: Yeezus 74. Drake: Take Care 73. Mitski: Puberty 2 72. Fucked Up: David Comes To Life 71. Old 97’s: Most Messed Up 70. The Beths: Future Me Hates Me 69. Jay-Z: 4:44 68. Heems: Eat, Pray, Thug 67. Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest 66. The Mountain Goats: Transcendental Youth 65. The Regrettes: How Do You Love? 64. Purple Mountains: Purple Mountains 63. Arcade Fire: Reflektor 62. Death Grips: The Money Store 61. Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Denial 60. Sleigh Bells: Treats 59. The Weeknd: House of Balloons 58. D’Angelo & The Vanguard: Black Messiah 57. Solange: True 56. No Age: Everything In Between 55. Charly Bliss: Young Enough 54. Lana Del Rey: Born To Die 53. Lorde: Pure Heroine 52. Kendrick Lamar: DAMN. 51. Downtown Boys: Full Communism 50. Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour 49. Mitski: Be The Cowboy 48. Rihanna: ANTI 47. Vampire Weekend: Contra 46. Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park 45. Carly Rae Jepsen: E•MO•TION 44. Taylor Swift: Speak Now 43. Taylor Swift: Red 42. billy woods & Kenny Segal: Hiding Places 41. Lorde: Melodrama 40. Billie Eilish: WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? 39. Sky Ferreira: Night Time, My Time 38. Jamila Woods: HEAVN 37. Miranda Lambert: Platinum 36. Jamila Woods: LEGACY! LEGACY! 35. Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady (Suites IV And V) 34. Maren Morris: Hero 33. The National: High Violet 32. Miguel: Kaleidoscope Dream 31. Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit 30. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2 29. Wussy: Strawberry 28. Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid (Suites II And III) 27. Vince Staples: Summertime ‘06 26. Chance The Rapper: Coloring Book 25. Grimes: Art Angels 24. Jens Lekman: Life Will See You Now 23. Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE 22. Chance The Rapper: Acid Rap 21. Pistol Annies: Hell on Heels 20. Parquet Courts: Wide Awaaaaake! 19. Japandroids: Celebration Rock 18. Azealia Banks: Broke With Expensive Taste 17. Against Me!: Transgender Dysphoria Blues 16. Tegan & Sara: Heartthrob 15. Lana Del Rey: Norman Fucking Rockwell! 14. Beyoncé: BEYONCÉ 13. Titus Andronicus: The Monitor 12. A Tribe Called Quest: We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service 11. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires Of The City 10. Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer 9. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel… 8. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 7. Beyoncé: Lemonade 6. Robyn: Body Talk 5. Alex Lahey: I Love You Like A Brother 4. Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d city 3. tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l 2. Frank Ocean: nostalgia,ULTRA. 1. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly
Top 100 Entries By Release Year
I was actually pretty pleased with this. At least by sheer quantity, I’ve avoided legacy bias pretty well. The first half of the decade has 53 albums to the second half’s 47. That said, the first three years of the decade each have two albums in my top ten. I’d love to run a linear regression plotting placement against release date sometime to see how it looks.
There’s a weird dip in the middle of the decade. Don’t know what to make of it.
I’d love to do a tally based on other demographics (race, sexuality), but those are a bit harder to pin down than this.
Men: 47 Women: 51 Division: 2
Top 100 Entries By Genre
If I wanted to break this down further, this would have become impossible to sort. There were some tough calls. But this is about what I came away with.
Indie & Rock: 43 Pop & R&B: 27 Hip Hop: 18 Country: 7 Electronic: 5
Artists With Multiple Top 100 Entries
If there’s a big flaw to my list, it’s that repeat artists dominate it. If you include Pistol Annies and Miranda Lambert as repeats, then only 63 albums on this list are by artists with lone entries.
Kendrick Lamar: 3 Frank Ocean: 3 Janelle Monáe: 3 Beyoncé: 2 Kanye West: 2 Lana Del Rey: 2 Miranda Lambert: 2* Chance The Rapper: 2 Jens Lekman: 2 Wussy: 2 Jamila Woods: 2 Sky Ferreira: 2 Lorde: 2 Taylor Swift: 2 Kacey Musgraves: 2 Mitski: 2 Charly Bliss: 2
Marking the occasion of her third album by finally coming out as pansexual, Janelle Monáe touches on her sexuality more explicitly than ever by…well, by once again dressing everything up in an elaborate analogy involving misbehaving technology. Which is fine! While I’ve always wondered whether Janelle’s music strictly needs these conceits, I’ve come to accept that she’s a total nerd, so it’s all for the better that she leans into it for an album about being unapologetically herself.
Where her previous two albums pushed seventy minutes, Dirty Computer doesn’t even hit fifty, and it’s refreshing to hear her being choosy about what makes the cut. She’s very focused on sex and anatomy: there are the gushing guitars on vagina anthem “Pynk,” the hysterically fun “Screwed,” and the note-perfect Prince tribute “Make Me Feel.” But she also again shows off her underrated rapping in the fearless “Django Jane,” she opens up about her queerness in “I Like That,” and she attempts to reclaim what it means to be American in the name of the country’s dirty computers.
Dirty Computer is Janelle Monáe’s leanest, most confident offering of her young career. It’s the sound of freedom and self-realization, both the payoff of her career up to this point and the beginning of a new chapter for her.
9. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)
“My ills are reticulate/My woes are granular/The ants weigh more than the elephants.” The Idler Wheel is littered with bizarre spurts of verbosity like this, and Fiona refuses to filter or dumb down the thoughts racing through her head. Sometimes they’re about men, but they’re always about her anxieties. Wrestling with her mind on opener “Every Single Night” (“Every single night’s a fight with my brain”), she settles into and hums, “I just want to feel everything.” Fiona Apple is exceptionally gifted at bringing you into her brainspace.
Released seven years after 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, itself the product of a six year drought between albums, The Idler Wheel also finds Fiona at her most musically imaginative. “Left Alone” is manic, “Jonathan” waddles along, “Periphery” marches, and “Hot Knife” is a sizzling slow-burner of a closer, the most inventive track of her career. She’s also dangerously playful, having searched far and wide for the right soundbite of children screaming to throw on the second verse of standout “Werewolf.” And “Anything We Want” is the most content, assured thing she’s ever written. There’s still nothing quite like Fiona Apple suddenly shouting, “SEEK. ME. OUT. LOOK AT. LOOK AT. LOOK AT. ME. I’m all the fishes in the sea.”
But the gap between The Idler Wheel and now is even greater than the gap between Extraordinary Machine and The Idler Wheel. Luckily, if The Idler Wheel is any indication, Fiona Apple gets better and better, setting a new high mark each time she decides to give us a new collection of music.
8. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
After autotune’s definitive artistic statement, 2008’s 808’s & Heartbreak, was released to mixed reception, Kanye West’s image would undergo further turbulence as he turned into the sort of figure they make South Park episodes about. His interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs remains among the most significant moments in both of their careers, and at the time it seemed like it could end up defining him (although now we know there are more embarrassing things to be defined by). As 2010 went on, it felt like it had been a while since Kanye West had done a rap album.
Honestly, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was the beginning of something deeply irritating. Moreso than before, Kanye West releases bred inescapable discourse as if he had harvested the Taylor Swift incident’s firestorm but for his own ends, and people would pay him this sort of attention for the next six years.
But here it’s deserved. “POWER” is the ultimate testament to his cultural force, complete with an embarrassing amount of time spent being angry at Saturday Night Live. “Monster” has a dreadful HOV verse and an all-time great verse from Nicki Minaj. “Runaway” is a nine minute mess of a masterpiece. “Lost In The World” sets Bon Iver’s “Woods” aflame and launches it into Gil Scott-Heron’s awesome “Comment #1.” A million guests all on one song. Chris Rock discussing pussy reupholstering over Aphex Twin. Too. Many. Urkels. My god. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is deliriously ambitious, so much so that it loses sense of itself at least a dozen times.
Lemonade’s hype cycle began with her perched on top of a police car submerged by floodwater. Shortly after, her Super Bowl backup dancers’ outfits’ semblance to the Black Panthers sparked a police boycott of her concerts. Beyoncé Knowles wasn’t the first to make music critical of the police, or even the first to do so in this particular era of police killings. She was just the most visible. But though it’s a constant undercurrent and its visual accompaniment brings it up frequently, Lemonade never explicitly confronts police violence. Instead, it tries to find some answers to these problems through a tale of personal strength.
After video emerged in 2014 of Knowles’ sister Solange attacking Jay-Z in an elevator, rumors of his infidelity swirled. Regardless of whether that theory is true, it sets the stage and informed the way we listened to Lemonade. The despair of “Pray You Catch Me” and the fire of “Don’t Hurt Yourself” may have done wonders for the album’s social media presence as we all experienced Lemonade in real time, but they’re also enduring songs about the different stages of feeling betrayed. “Sorry,” the album’s greatest song, is a masterpiece, beginning as a great fuck-off anthem (“boy, bye” just the latest in Beyoncé’s ouvre of enduring catchphrases) and finishing as a gentler but more intense stream of consciousness. And forget Pusha T, “Becky with the good hair” is the best barb of this decade in music.
Lemonade is fierce, occasionally sounding like a rock album. Jack White joins Beyoncé and Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” drum sample for “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She sings her first country song with “Daddy Lessons,” and we should pray it’s not her last. BEYONCÉ was a more subdued beast. There’s an energy coursing through Lemonade, and its runtime (shorter by twenty whole minutes) keeps her laser-focused.
Its final three songs complete her vision. On penultimate track “All Night,” she finds acceptance and the strength in herself to continue her relationship, “Spottieottiedopaliscious” horns sending that arc out on a high note. On “Freedom” and “Formation,” she gives space to what seems like the real point: making music to empower black women. And these anthems are made more powerful by emerging through the pain of the album’s first act. She was served lemons and, well, you get it.
After drastically stepping it up on her 2005 self-titled album and the singles that followed (“With Every Heartbeat” even going #1 in the UK), Robyn’s 2010 began with two eight song EPs. By November, she completed the Body Talk trilogy by releasing five more tracks but rolled them and choice songs from earlier in the year into a full length product. Body Talk is exactly what you might imagine when you think the words “pop music,” its sound fuller than her previous album (props to Klas Åhlund) and its lyrics with broader aim. “I’m in the corner/Watching you kiss her,” “Just don’t fall recklessly, headlessly in love with me,” “Call your girlfriend/It’s time you had the talk,” Robyn’s biggest songs here have become anthems to loneliness, infatuation, and breaking up.
Every single song is a certified bop, too. Max Martin and Shellback put their shine on “Time Machine,” Diplo puts his unique fingerprints on “Dancing On My Own” flipside “Dancehall Queen,” Röyksopp preside over the album’s most subdued track “None of Dem,” and Snoop Dogg hops on “U Should Know Better” to flex with Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” style.
But the craziest thing about Body Talk is that Robyn leaves off Body Talk Pt. 1 standout “Cry When You Get Older.” The decade’s best pure pop album could have been even better.
Whoa! This album is awfully high up, isn’t it? But make no mistake, I Love You Like A Brother so deserves to be here. Right from the get-go, the skip and hop of the guitar on “Every Day’s The Weekend” lets you know how fun Alex Lahey’s music is. Then the first “WHOA-OH WHOA-OH WHOA-OHH” lets you know that this is the decade’s most fun music, and its best rock album.
After the Australian’s 2016 EP B-Grade University (which includes three phenomenal songs), Lahey brought the same approach to her 2017 debut album but made everything a little bigger. ILYLAB is nasty with wordless shout-alongs, from the joyous whoa-oh’s of “Every Day’s The Weekend” to the manic doot-da-da’s of “I Haven’t Been Taking Care Of Myself.” This all makes for a shockingly millennial product: a good times album about the sunny side of barely keeping your life together.
Her songs feel so relatable because of the small ways in which she fleshes out her own life: her relationship with her brother enduring her parents’ divorce, her begrudging admiration for Perth, her brief callout of Australia’s lateness to marriage equality, and generally her anxieties spilling out everywhere. I enjoy listening to I Love You Like A Brother more than any other album of the past ten years because of how much space and reverence she gives these anxieties, deploying them with a foolproof formula.
Section.80 was among 2011’s best rap albums and it established Kendrick Lamar as the rapper to watch, but good kid, m.A.A.d city was so much more than anyone dared to expect from him. Few albums this millennium have so obviously been instant classics.
Kendrick’s narrative of a young man finding himself lost in gang violence and peer pressure, hitting rock bottom, and pulling himself out of it is simple but astonishing, with few concept albums throughout history equaling the sustained quality of its storytelling. “The Art of Peer Pressure” is an early turning point, detailing him and the homies breaking into a house and robbing it. “m.A.A.d city” is a monstrous two-part epic, a rapidfire soliloquy to end the second act. “Sing About Me, I’m Dying Of Thirst” is a late album showstopper, meditating on the death of one of his companions with three masterful verses from three different perspectives before accepting the need for salvation. “Am I worth it? Did I put enough work in?” just hangs there, the nagging question at the heart of the album.
Less talked about is good kid’s music, a unique atmosphere in which a haunted Beach House sample fits right in. The voice modulation on “m.A.A.d city” and “Swimming Pools (Drank)” help you hear Kendrick’s anguished mind. “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” is elevated by its relaxed disposition, raising many Aquemini comparisons.
good kid, m.A.A.d city is a stunning accomplishment, and for nearly any other artist, it would be all downhill from here. But this album was too determined and too well-imagined for Kendrick Lamar to have wound up a flash in the pan.
2009’s BiRd-BrAiNs is a wonderful album, and it was already clear that Merrill Garbus had a knack for songwriting. And while its lo-fi recording (edited using Audacity) isn’t exactly a fault, it’s immediately clear on whokill that she fiended for more from her music. BiRd-BrAiNs was mostly just her soft voice and ukulele, only sometimes getting louder and more complex. whokill immediately thrashes you with a lively drum machine, stacked instrument loops, horns, thick bass guitar, and Garbus just belting. Lead single “Bizness” and album opener “My Country” were each such shocking introductions to this transformation, which sounds so natural while being so dramatic.
But its real triumph is the intimacy of its politics. She frequently focuses not just locally, but in her own neighborhood. Amidst “Gangsta”’s horns bleating like police sirens, she contemplates her role in her neighborhood’s gentrification. She further considers her own privilege on “My Country” and “Killa.” The central line to her national anthem is “we cannot all have it.” Police violence occurs near her home in two songs, once on her very own doorstep. The closest her songs have to an answer is her howling, “THERE IS A FREEDOM IN VIOLENCE THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND, AND LIKE I’VE NEVER FELT BEFORE.” But most revolutionary still is “Powa,” as in sex (as in the quote misattributed to Wilde), where she stretches her singing to its limits.
whokill’s political lyrics and imagination along with its extremely distinct sonic approach make it the best indie music of the past ten years.
In February 2011, the collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All gained newfound levels of prominence when head honcho Tyler, The Creator released his video for “Yonkers.” Based on “Yonkers” alone, one gained the sense that these kids would somehow take over the world. We were both right and wrong. Syd, Earl Sweatshirt, and Tyler, The Creator did become large figures in popular music. But, of course, one member of Odd Future became far and away more prolific than any of them.
Six days after the “Yonkers” video released, lone Odd Future singer Frank Ocean posted nostalgia,ULTRA. to his Tumblr. Though certainly noticed, nostalgia,ULTRA. was quietly received relative to some Odd Future brethren, and eight years later it’s much less discussed than its successors channel ORANGE and blond.
This is mostly because in the streaming age, nostalgia,ULTRA. might as well not exist. Three of its ten songs and several of its skits rely heavily on uncleared samples, most infamously “American Wedding,” which uses “Hotel California” in full for Frank’s tale of rushed and failed young love. He keeps the entire guitar solo section in, and Don Henley threatened to sue when he performed “American Wedding” live while playing “Hotel California” on Guitar Hero.
Along with besting Eagles on their own song, he does Coldplay one better by taking “Strawberry Swing” and blasting it with a heavy dose of nostalgia before its bridge sucks it into armageddon. He seizes MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and reimagines it as Adam and Eve stumbling upon sex for the first time in the Garden of Eden.
Frank established himself as a storyteller, a lyrical powerhouse. On single “Novacane,” he relays a tale of meeting a college student at a music festival, sharing her ice blue bong before the two disappear into each other. Then we leap out of the chorus: “Sink full of dishes/Pacing in the kitchen/Cocaine for breakfast/…yikes!” Frank’s capacity for imagery is endless, and he has a knack for spitting you out in new and interesting places in a narrative.
“Dust” and “There Will Be Tears” show off his sensitive side while “Swim Good” and “Songs 4 Women” put his charisma and sense of humor on display. But the most astonishing song on nostalgia,ULTRA. is “We All Try,” where Frank contemplates existence and humanity. Marriage equality, abortion, and the moon landing all feature on the journey to this affirming refrain: “I still believe in man/A wise one asked me why/’Cause I just don’t believe we’re wicked/I know that we sin/But I do believe we try.” “We All Try” is the most explicit example, but nostalgia,ULTRA. goes so far in part because Frank Ocean is always trying to grapple with something unimaginably huge.
And while that trend continued well into his career, much of what makes nostalgia,ULTRA. so wonderful has become less and less present. He no longer tells stories and his music has gotten more and more formless, and while publications have championed channel ORANGE and blond on their decade lists, nostalgia,ULTRA. is far and away his best album, this millennium’s benchmark for lyricism.
If good kid, m.A.A.d city hadn’t already established Kendrick Lamar as the world’s greatest rapper, his scorching verse on “Control” in 2013 firmly established how far ahead of his peers he was. Still, the idea of following up his masterpiece seemed unthinkable.
Fast forward a year and the police assassinations and subsequent protests in the wake of the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray (among others) became among the most common topics for rappers, most notably from Run The Jewels and J. Cole. Even D’Angelo sped up his long-delayed Black Messiah in response. But especially after performing an untitled track (“We don’t die/We multiply”) as the final musical act on The Colbert Report, Kendrick’s forthcoming album was slowly taking on insurmountable expectations.
The first voice you hear on To Pimp A Butterfly is Boris Gardener’s on a sample of the 1974 track “Every N—-r Is A Star.” The next is funk titan George Clinton’s. To Pimp A Butterfly is a musical tribute to so many black musicians that came before. Along with reggae and funk, “King Kunta” is an homage to the blaxploitation music of Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. Nineties hip hop legends Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur appear. The lead single is built around an Isley Brothers sample. Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, and Terrace Martin make jazz one of the album’s go-to backdrops. To Pimp A Butterfly is an immense step up musically for Lamar.
To Pimp A Butterfly’s throughline is reminiscent of good kid m.A.A.d city’s. Kendrick’s character falls into a deep depression and almost destroys himself, but is saved through the power of self-love and self-respect. And while no song on good kid, m.A.A.d city really floundered, the connective tissue was flimsier and “Real” wasn’t the most convincing resolution. But here, “u” drowns in its sorrows, almost suicidal. “The Blacker The Berry” ruthlessly clarifies Kendrick’s self-hatred. The faster, far livelier version of “i” sounds more convincingly like a revelation, and a celebration of finally turning the corner for the better.
But To Pimp A Butterfly isn’t just about one man saving himself. The album wasn’t wholly a response to the recent string of high profile police assassinations, but it still paints a compelling picture of the way that the United States has screwed over black Americans: “No condom, they fuck with you/Obama say, ‘what it do?’” It was so vital to point out that so much suffering was still taking place under even a relatively progressive administration.
To Pimp A Butterfly is a massive contemplation of these facts and a debate between facing them with hope or hopelessness. “We gon’ be alright” might be getting harder and harder to believe, but he doesn’t open with “Alright.” It’s the album’s centerpiece, a conclusion he arrives at after a good deal of accounting for musical and African-American history.
It is a dizzying achievement. It is the greatest American album of all time.
You’ll get the most out of Art Angels if you think of it as a rock album. Though Grimes grabbed everyone’s attention in 2012 with her slightly off-kilter art pop, these loud, abrasive dance songs are driven by an undercurrent of guitar. And nothing captures what’s wonderful and horrible and *holds up spork* about Grimes better than a song about Al Pacino in The Godfather Pt II, “except he’s a vampire who can switch gender and travel through space.” Grimes might just be the most interesting musical figure of the decade. This is where it all came together.
This is simply Jens Lekman’s greatest storytelling by a fair margin. And it’s not just the telling but the stories themselves: the 3D printing of a tumor, trespassing to hotwire a ferris wheel, a conversation with a cold-footed bride, of course the Mormon missionary walking through Vasa Lane, and…the history of the universe? And thanks to Jens’ unique arsenal of sounds this time, each is independently presented so tenderly but cuts deep. If there’s a unifying theme to be found, it’s finding our place for a short life in a vast universe. Profound, hilarious, heartbreaking.
Written about the summer when he first fell in love with a man, channel ORANGE brought more ambition to the table and saw him getting rawer than before. Frank Ocean moved away from the tightly-woven episodes of nostalgia,ULTRA. but put his back into more colorful compositions and more memorable performances. “I wanted to create worlds that were rosier than mine. I tried to channel overwhelming emotions,” Frank wrote on Tumblr. The style in his coming out note was just what he brought to his music: contemplating the biggest questions while fucked up by the bigness of it all.
Acid Rap once and for all shattered the stigma of the mixtape being a lesser product. Instantly you heard the glow and gush of the live instrumentation and you knew it’d be a fool’s errand to wait on his “official” debut. Paired with the playfulness of his backing tracks, his youthful exuberance manifests as a spinning Tasmanian Devil of sly references and guttural yelps. His hyperactive train of thought speeds through his and our senses of nostalgia and interrogates it. Acid Rap was his moment, and he knew it. You can still hear how tickled he was.
Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe have both spent the decade making incredible music and Miranda Lambert towers over all other country artists, but none of them have put out anything as wonderful as when they came together in 2011. The jams (“Takin’ Pills,” “Boys from the South”) and ditties (“Lemon Drop,” “The Hunter’s Wife”) are all fantastic, but the music truly shows its power in its quiet, violent, bare bones moments, as on “Housewife’s Prayer” and “Trailer for Rent.” These women broke from making their own grand statements to come together for a simpler, more understated kind of masterpiece.
After spending the decade scratching the itches of Pavement and Velvet Underground fans, Parquet Courts’ newest and best approach most closely resembles The Clash. Andrew Savage’s bark really does evoke Joe Strummer, his yowl both world-weary and hopeful. And though the album’s most famous line is “FUCK TOM BRADY,” it’s the dreary “Violence” that lies at its heart. In its “Know Your Rights”-style rant, Savage contextualizes the accusation that riots are violent by listing the small ways in which that escalation has already been made in your daily life.
Completing Parquet Courts’ portrait of 2018 America, Savage also rattles off anthems about collectivism (“Total Football”), climate catastrophe (“When The Water Gets Too High”), and normalization (er, “Normalization”). But complemented by three songs from co-frontman Austin Brown, including the “Range Life”-reminiscent “Mardi Gras Beads” and the mourning children’s choir on “Death Will Bring Change,” Wide Awaaaaake’s great triumph is in its touching resolution “Tenderness,” a hopeful song that wonders if we might come out on the other side of this stronger. Entirely unexpectedly, Parquet Courts has released the best political rock of the Trump era. Right now, they’re the world’s greatest rock and roll band.
After 2009’s solid but timid Post-Nothing, Celebration Rock is an astonishing upgrade of Japandroids’ heartland rock, showing off their new, humongous sound. Their production makes it sound much more like a live show, the drums booming and the voices scratching. Japandroids shed their inhibitions and sing about adrenaline, sexual red, and hearts from hell colliding. Punctuating the affair at every juncture is an “ALL RIGHT” or “WHOA-OH” or “OH YEAH.” Celebration Rock is the sound of sweat on concrete.
Six of the eight songs here follow a similar blueprint of unrelenting, wild-eyed momentum and bombastic, wide-eyed lyrics, frequently reclaiming former glory or seizing this very moment. The other two songs close out each side: One is a vicious cover of The Gun Club, the other is the relatively quiet finale “Continuous Thunder.” It has a line that goes “and if the cold, pissing rain flooded that fire.” Even dialing it back, Japandroids didn’t have an off switch. It’s such a thrill.
18. Azealia Banks: Broke With Expensive Taste (2014)
No song this millennium has had the same big bang nothing-into-everything effect of “212,” Azealia Banks’ skillful working of Lazy Jay’s bouncing “Float My Boat” beat. Her employment of a certain c-word lifted it to virality, but the song was nasty with promise alongside its plain old nastiness. Her flow was smooth, her voice was fierce, she could shift gears on a dime, and her singing voice was incredible.
Three years passed, and after great but minor releases (2012 gave us the 1991 EP and Fantasea mixtape), we finally got Broke With Expensive Taste, and it delivers on the promise of “212.” From the opening moments of “Idle Delilah,” it’s apparent that Banks has a unique ear for beats, and her rapping sounds so effortless, her boasts rolling naturally off her tongue, her writing stuffed with assonance. When she sings her own hooks, as she best does on standout “Chasing Time,” her power and versatility as a performer is terrifying. Broke With Expensive Taste is a perfect showcase for the most talented hip hop artist out there. Just pray she bothers to give us another.
17. Against Me!: Transgender Dysphoria Blues (2014)
“And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman/My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.” In 2007, these lines were part of the unreal New Wave finale “The Ocean,” and in May 2012 Laura Jane Grace came out as transgender to Rolling Stone, instantly becoming the most high profile trans figure in music. Grace’s first album as an out trans woman rose to the task and tackled all this head on, and it was…despondent.
With song titles like “Osama Bin Laden As The Crucified Christ” and “FUCKMYLIFE666” and lyrics as coldly straightforward as “you don’t worry about tomorrow anymore, because you’re dead,” Transgender Dysphoria Blues is an unflinching dive into the existential despair that can come with transition. Near its end, its bleakest song details a trans woman killing herself in a hotel bathtub, capped by the gut-wrenching line “Standing naked in front of that hotel bathroom mirror/In her dysphoria’s reflection, she still saw her mother’s son.” It’s compelling, captivating rock music, but this might be too brutal a listen for many. But for those who stick it through, its honesty is beautiful, devastating, and revelatory.
The endpoint of Tegan & Sara’s voyage from indie to indie pop to full-on, no asterisks pop, Heartthrob has nine perfect songs of ten. From the second the synths on makeout jam “Closer” start buzzing, they’re fully realized in this mode. It’s sacrilege I’m sure, but they’re even better with synths than they are with guitars, and Greg Kurstin’s tight production helps keep their heavy songs fun.
As always, they specialize in breakup songs that cut to the bone. Sometimes they reminisce (“Drove Me Wild”), sometimes they agonize (“How Come You Don’t Want Me Now”), sometimes they join the two (“Now I’m All Messed Up,” a stadium-ready track up there with their best songs), but the best moment is their upsetting dose of reality: “WHAT. YOU. ARE. IS LONELY.”
Somehow tying it all together is their song about “Tegan & Sara”: “I’m Not Your Hero,” their reckoning with just how many other young lesbians they inspire. It’s perhaps the biggest reminder that even with this radically different approach, Tegan & Sara’s music still has the same heart. And while they never get as intimate as they did on The Con, I think their ears for melody are best here.
Is Lana Del Rey authentic? So went the discourse around her 2011 single “Video Games,” and her proper debut Born To Die landed with a thud. It was unfair, sexist bullshit. But right away she let us know what she wanted: “Tell me I’m your national anthem.”
On Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey is really going for it, trying her hand at writing the next best American record. She’s always been suited for the role: her knack for plumbing nostalgia and Americana would make for a great chapter in Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train. She brings her style (shameless triplets like “Lying on your chest/In my party dress/Baby I’m a mess”) and gives them her best melodies and lush arrangements. Daring to write a drugged out, ten minute song or a song as triumphant as “The greatest” (her greatest) is the difference this time.
It’s a little jarring to remember a time when Beyoncé wasn’t one of the decade’s most auteuristic music makers. Then twin wonders “Countdown” and “Love On Top” ramped up her hype leading up to her Super Bowl XLVII halftime performance, the moment when she became even more than a superstar. The following December, Beyoncé somehow surprise released an album in an era of constant leaks, and it marked the official start of this new era of her career.
Her self-titled album is by far her most cohesive long-release, a dark, electronic sound permeating every song. “***Flawless” is a microcosm, its “bow down, bitches” emphasizing her new place as queen of the world, the passage by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie affirming the central place feminism now had in her career (enough for bell hooks to call her a terrorist), and “I woke up like this” as ready for the meme big time as her videos for every track (!) were for Tumblr gifs. The album is both a victory lap and the start of a new chapter for one of the most massive recording artists of the millennium.
On just their second album, Titus Andronicus went all out. The Monitor is an insane, sprawling rock concept album built around Civil War imagery. Its ten tracks more often than not exceed seven minutes, although this is partly because of interludes in which indie figures like Cassie Ramone and Craig Finn recite writings of figures like Jefferson Davis and Walt Whitman.
Somewhere between The Pogues, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen, and The Replacements, Titus Andronicus’ music joyously ventures into the saddest, most pathetic feelings you’ll have: “I will not deny my humanity/I will be rolling in it like a pig in feces.” Patrick Stickles’ lyrics are phenomenal, most impressive on 14-minute epic “The Battle of Hampton Roads,” where the lines seem to endlessly flow from him. Titus Andronicus excels at songs to listen to while crying on the bathroom floor and at leaving you smiling by the end. The Monitor is among the finest monuments to human misery ever concocted.
12. A Tribe Called Quest: We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service (2016)
Two men loom large over A Tribe Called Quest’s first album in 18 years. The first is the late Phife Dawg, who had passed eight months before release but who still has verses on most songs here. The second is Donald Trump. In fact, We Got It From Here dropped just three days after his surprise 2016 election. And while it sounds like Tribe thought we’d have another President Clinton, the fact of President Trump makes the album so prescient and necessary. Hearing “Muslims and gays/Boy, we hate your ways” that November was just gutting.
If the situation weren’t so serious, We Got It From Here would be a bit of a party: guests include Busta Rhymes, Elton John, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Jack White, and many more. This all gives the album a unique feel that wonderfully fit both the political tracks (“The Space Program” calls out the notion that society’s advance will necessarily bring any equality) and the memorials (“Black Spasmodic” is a deeply touching tribute). It’s so unexpected and beautiful that Tribe can come back after so many years and create a contender for their best work.
11. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires Of The City (2013)
Moving beyond the electronic sound of Contra and shedding the African influence that brought their music fame, Modern Vampires of the City is Vampire Weekend’s best album, full of their most intricate compositions. Quite a few songs here are explicitly about God and religion, and even when he’s on another topic, Ezra Koenig speaks in huge terms: “There’s no future. There’s no answer,” ”I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die.”
The band’s writing is at its peak, most thrillingly in the knotty, reference-loaded “Step.” And while Koenig is still a smartass, it’s a lot cuter when he doesn’t come off as so knowing, helped here by constantly wondering aloud about the meaning of life. “Ya Hey” is likely the best song any of them will ever write, a choir-adorned track that shouts into the void, begging to know God and coming the closest when hearing “you spinning ‘Israelites’ into ‘19th Nervous Breakdown.’” Modern Vampires of the City is the 21st century’s greatest album centered on religion this side of The Hold Steady.
Pageant Material was just a worthy retread, so when Musgraves’ new single came drenched in disco, it was a revelation. She’d finally stepped beyond being the queen of smartass rhymes and lovely melodies. The hoedown of “High Horse” and the echo and boom of “Space Cowboy” are one thing, but the real wonder is the arrangements, her growth in songwriting showing up in force on “Oh, What A World” and “Love Is A Wild Thing.” Her relentless positivity and ear for melody have put Musgraves on track to broaden what country can be and, vitally, who can listen.
After two fantastic, deeply intimate bedroom guitar albums, it was a bit of a jolt for Mitski to come out with Be The Cowboy, a pop-curious album that’s big and small and big and small again. It sometimes even comes off like a St. Vincent album, but the soul of her music remains the same, with deep-cutting lines like “nobody fucks me like me” coming left and right. Still, this is her most serene body of work, with anxious dance tracks, including best in show “Nobody,” feeling somewhat at peace.
After putting out a new album every year, Rihanna finally took her first break in 2013, taking a two years before releasing by far her greatest achievement, ANTI. On her first album that isn’t defined by its singles (“Work” wishes), every single track is an absolute vibe, from the whirr and chirp of “Needed Me” to the resounding triumph of “Love On The Brain.” Even the Tame Impala cover, easily the longest song here, is apiece with the album’s relaxed demeanor. With ANTI, Rihanna finally has a document worthy of her superstardom.
A radical departure from the warm African-inspired guitar of their debut, Contra’s use of electronic music, auto-tune, and even an M.I.A. sample require you to reimagine Vampire Weekend as a project. But once you do, you’ll realize that Contra is a significant level-up in songwriting for the band, with topics ranging from Japanese samurai to a gay romance that might sneakily be about Joe Strummer. Contra was a change-up and is still their odd duck, but it remains Vampire Weekend’s most consistent album. Contra was not the album we wanted, but Vampire Weekend knew what we needed.
46. Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park (2013)
Almost no one knew Kacey Musgraves when she bowled us over with “Merry Go ‘Round,” a bleak, vivid, and unflattering portrait of small town America. An album of that would have been fantastic, but it never came. From moment one, Same Trailer Different Park is almost comically sunny, sometimes verging on precious. But Musgraves’ ability to turn a phrase is considerable and her ability to evoke a feeling is infectious. These stupid simple songs are each somewhere near perfect, and submitting “Follow Your Arrow” to country radio was a pretty radical act back in 2013. Still would be today.
To follow up smash hit “Call Me Maybe” and her overlooked Kiss, Carly Rae Jepsen unleashed a humongous love letter to the sensibilities of ‘80s radio hits. E•MO•TION’s warmth and swells and release are overwhelming pop majesty, the album stacked with simple songs about the rush of romance. Every refrain is a home run and even the three ballads are marvelous. The way the saxophone introduces signature song “Run Away With Me” and the way the bass bounces along on “Boy Problem,” E•MO•TION sounds like somebody’s perfected a formula. God help us all.
More than just a worthy sequel to breakout Fearless, Speak Now finds Taylor Swift building a friendship with the electric guitar. The exceptions, the airtight “Mean” and the lullaby “Never Grow Up,” are stunners in their own rights, but this album is defined by those guitars: the nimble, soaring heights of “Mine,” that confident descent on “Sparks Fly,” the frantic tumble of “The Story of Us.” Speak Now remains Swift’s most consistent collection of music, the ultimate realization of her first iteration as an artist, and by far the best of her infamous barb-throwing.
The easy narrative around Red is that it’s when Taylor Swift dipped her toe into pop aesthetics. While quite a few songs fit that narrative, Red isn’t her best because it hits a sweet spot in the evolution of her sound but because here her songwriting ambitions hit maximum, beginning the album with echoing drums and centering it around a six minute magnum opus. Songs like “All Too Well” and “Holy Ground” are demonstrations of everything Swift does well. Her muscles for imagery and storytelling were never as strong before or since. Even two dud duets can’t weigh Red down.
42. billy woods & Kenny Segal: Hiding Places (2019)
Rather than dealing in impressive flow or deft metaphors, billy woods’ rapping is straightforward, delivering each tightly written line with maximum possible impact. On Hiding Places, he uses this talent to stare unflinchingly into the abyss of American poverty, countering Public Enemy to show there are scarier letters you can receive than a draft notice. Kenny Segal’s bleak but fascinating production perfectly backdrops woods’ pictures of lives that can collapse financially at any second. All society offers is an orchestra at Carnegie Hall to woods’ fellow observer Nas and “anthropologists watchin’ negroes sell dope.”
Her career no longer buoyed by the shocking fact of her teenagerdom, Lorde stepped all too comfortably into the lofty expectations for her follow-up. “She thinks you love the beach, you’re such a damn liar” is a hilarious way to introduce a collection of ultra-intense heartbreak jams. And Lorde shows her strongest form isn’t even classic youth anthems like “Royals” or “Green Light,” but unreal hyperspace trips through lost love: “Supercut” is her best song to date and represents her at her most powerful. Among today’s pop singers, few are as distinct as Lorde. Even fewer are as fearless.
40. Billie Eilish: WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (2019)
Many musical wünderkinds are celebrated for how grown up they come off. Billie Eilish takes that trope and breaks it over her head, immediately reminding you she still wears a retainer before leaping into cutesy, crawly number one jam “bad guy.” That, “you should see me in a crown,” and then one that samples latter day The Office demonstrate why she conquered the moment, but her debut is defined by shockingly accomplished and catching slow songs. Eilish’s music is hyperactive and haunted as fuck, and despite comparisons to Lorde and Lana, there’s no one else even remotely like her.
Sky Ferreira performs psychologically fraught yet picture-perfect pop songs, each vaguely clouded in bits of darkness. The manic pop drive of the first four songs is only half of the equation. “Heavy Metal Heart” comes off like those rare sane Sleigh Bells songs, “Love In Stereo” is a lightly digital, drifting tune, and “I Blame Myself” is her most singular moment aside from “Everything Is Embarrassing.” Its origin a throwaway line from Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks film Fire Walk With Me, Night Time, My Time oddly fits the source of its title.
HEAVN is one of the most understated, underrated achievements of the decade. Her songs play off – and “play” is indeed the appropriate word – Incubus, The Cure, Stereolab, “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom),” the Dawson’s Creek theme, and, on the best song here, famous schoolyard rhyme “Hello Operator.” And the darker, more determined “Blk Girl Soldier” makes the happiness and assuredness elsewhere feel so satisfying. HEAVN is remarkable because it sees Jamila Woods respond to tragedy by finding joy and strength in herself and her blackness and her womanhood. It’s beautiful and powerful as flowing water.
Miranda Lambert is the best country artist of the millennium. And while her lightning-in-a-bottle moment Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is her greatest album, Platinum is her fullest showcase, the most comprehensive demonstration of her talent. From wonderful, schlocky lead single “Automatic” to the rip and roar of “Little Red Wagon” all the way to radio-ready new classics “Platinum” and “Priscilla” and onto her greatest epic “Bathroom Sink,” Lambert covers all her creative bases. Completing her transition from an of-the-moment superstar to an ever-dependable veteran, Platinum is Miranda Lambert’s definitive statement of excellence.
Jamila Woods’ sophomore effort is among the most ambitious albums in recent years. Following up a project about the struggle and joy of black womanhood, she dives even further, this time plunging herself into one of her heroes of color every song: Muddy Waters, Eartha Kitt, Sun Ra, and so on. But she doesn’t just idolize them. Woods inhabits and interrogates her subjects, challenging James Baldwin and channeling Nikki Giovanni. LEGACY! LEGACY! is a perfectly imagined showcase of not just her talents but her self. It’s well worth losing yourself in its footnotes.
35. Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady (Suites IV And V) (2013)
On her second album, Janelle Monáe comes out guns blazing. Miguel. Solange. Erykah Badu. PRINCE. She overwhelms the listener with theatrics and starpower, and lead single “Q.U.E.E.N.,” her best song, especially knocks you over with its pulsing energy and its epic rap conclusion. The Electric Lady is unfortunately a bit frontloaded, but it’s still brimming with life throughout, its skits in particular illustrating the fun in Janelle’s vision in a way that The ArchAndroid couldn’t. It’s The Electric Lady’s fun and livelihood that made it clear that stardom was an inevitability for Janelle Monáe.
With apologies to Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris put out the breakout country album of the 2010s. Her keen sense for pop results in excellent melodies, and her voice absolutely thrashes its way through her sassy lyrics. Even the slower, sappier songs are expertly executed and don’t wear out their welcome, but her anthems really stand out: The kiss-off song “Rich” and two all-time great car songs, “My Church” and crowning achievement “80s Mercedes.” The way her big voice meets her big choruses (“FEEL LIKE A HARD-TO-GET STARLET WHEN I’M DRIVING/TURNING EVERY HEAD, HELL, I AIN’T EVEN TRYING”) is indelible.
High Violet is The National’s third and best entry in a trio of classic indie albums. Even the would-be sadsack songs (one’s even called “Sorrow”) near the front are lifted by the Dessners’ arrangements enough so that when you run through them up to the majesty of “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” it feels natural. The production can get in the way (“Terrible Love” is drowning in a warm fuzz), but it does wonders for new parent anthem “Afraid of Everyone” and their most satisfying closer ever, “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” High Violet’s triumphs are so hardwon.
Miguel’s silky smooth voice receives its finest demonstration here. He plays the part of a casanova and flips between R&B and rock, his magnetic intensity giving this album a distinct and sexy feel. Most illustrative of his charms is the slightly corny and very cute “Do You…,” in which he makes a “do you like hugs”/”do you like drugs” mixup somehow work. And of course there’s the magnificent “Adorn.” But the greatest expression of his power is “Arch & Point,” a sensual rock song whose sound contrasts the “Adorn”’s soft, trippy approach.
31. Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)
Barn burning hit single and fan favorite “Pedestrian At Best” is the stunner, yeah, but it’s the odd duck of this album. Courtney Barnett is just so infectiously comfortable elsewhere on Sometimes I Sit And Think, rocking out more convincingly – if not harder – on “Nobody Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party.” Barnett is better when her way in is a little more unconventional and she’s sighing detached, intricate little yarns about truck drivers or elevator operators. “Pedestrian At Best” is her flex of all flexes, but the other ten tracks are her real statement.
Listen: “Dead Fox”
30. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2 (2014)
A theme of this decade was the destigmatization of righteous, unapologetic rage. When Run The Jewels dropped their second album, it was hard not to think of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Laquan McDonald (killed just a few days earlier). But Killer Mike and El-P kept all that as subtext, instead making an album more broadly targeting American systems of power. Mike’s fantastic emceeing is buoyed by El’s aggressive production. Their craft would improve on their next release, but nothing touches the edge Run The Jewels had on their second album. And the rage felt so important.
Strawberry stands out as Wussy’s most well-imagined album. This was the first time they made their sound bigger, Chuck and Lisa once again trading tales of devastation but this time letting their guitars and voices really soar. Their images are also at their most striking, making the most of a mountain of tires, a grand champion steer, an Indianan pizza chain, and a heart floating in a frozen void. Then the album builds such that the sky breaks in two. Strawberry remains their only album where Wussy doesn’t feel like they’re selling themselves short for even a second.
28. Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid (Suites II And III) (2010)
A 70-minute concept album about a messianic, time-traveling robot sounds more like a groanworthy Rush album than one about black and LGBT liberation, but Janelle Monáe is a confounding sort of artist, so much so that when of Montreal take over for a full song, it only feels natural. Especially for a debut, it’s mesmerizing the way The ArchAndroid’s songs gently tumble into each other as Monáe jukes between styles, and here she still has such an itch for meticulously crafting this world of hers. Though she’s refined her approach in the years since, this stands as her grandest statement.
The hourlong Summertime ‘06 is such an outlier in Vince Staples’ discography, whichi s mostly full of twentyish-minute releases. Its length, only cumbersome by his own standard, justifies itself, as it really sounds like he’s trying to work through something. Vince’s nihilism is all too apparent here, the bleak backing tracks reflecting his struggle in finding hope between gang violence and police brutality. On some songs he sounds outright desperate to. Since Summertime, Vince sounds more guarded and releases music in shorter spurts. These days, I find myself wishing he was spending more time with us.
Chance’s verse on “Ultralight Beam” was the musical moment of 2016 and teed up this: the gospel album (well, mixtape) that we all wished Kanye would make. Walking a razor’s edge between corniness and catharsis (an edge over which he’d later trip), Coloring Book is mostly a collection of gospel rap but also successfully goes so many other places: a ballad, a party anthem, even a straight up Young Thug track. Musically, lyrically, and personally, Coloring Book succeeds so wildly because Chance puts himself out there. In fact, it sounds like he’s been dying to.
Joey Daniewicz 