We already posted our lists of the 100 Best Punk & Emo Albums of the 2010s and the 100 Best Rap and R&B Albums of the 2010s, and now -- on the day the decade ends -- here is our list of our favorite albums of the decade overall, in any genre. We tried to cap the list at 100, but that just wasn't enough slots, so we ended up making it 141. Even that number is so low to represent an entire decade, so we unfortunately had to leave off a lot of music that we love, but we tried our best to narrow it down to the albums that most represented the 2010s to us, and we hope this list offers up some new discoveries and/or a fun trip down memory lane.

Thanks for spending an entire decade with us, and here's to the next one. Read on for our list...

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141. Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker (Columbia, 2016)

Right before he passed away, legendary poet and folk singer Leonard Cohen released one of the darkest albums of his 50-year career. Nothing else in his massive discography is quite like it.

140. Inter Arma - Paradise Gallows (Relapse, 2016)

By mixing sludge, death, black, prog, post-rock, Swans/Neurosis-style folk, and more, Inter Arma has become one of the most singular metal bands of the decade and Paradise Gallows is just one of their many peaks.

139. The Radio Dept - Clinging to a Scheme (Labrador, 2010)

The Radio Dept’s hushed pop -- even when presented as dub reggae or baggy indie disco -- has always felt like a secret club but Clinging to a Scheme is them at their most inviting.

138. Blood Orange - Cupid Deluxe (Domino, 2013)

Could the new wavey '80s pop revival of the 2010s happened without Dev Hynes and his 2013 sophomore album Cupid Deluxe? Maybe, but it probably would've turned out a lot differently.

137. MGMT - Congratulations (Columbia, 2010)

Refusing to repeat the danceable pop of their breakthrough singles, MGMT holed up in a studio with Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, tapped into their weirdest '60s psych-pop and '80s post-punk influences, and made a genuinely risk-taking album that reinvented the band entirely. The Pinkerton of the 2010s.

136. Thou - Magus (Sacred Bones, 2018)

On their devastating 2018 album Magus, genre-defying metal band Thou tackle everything from harsh sludge to accessible grunge to hauntingly beautiful instrumentals.

135. The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (History Always Favours the Winners, 2011)

Based on a study of alzheimer’s disease and using samples of ‘20s and ‘30s ballroom jazz, James Leyland Kirby’s first exploration of the connection between music and memory remains his most affecting.

134. Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä (20 Buck Spin, 2016)

Who made the best psychedelic rock album of the 2010s? King Gizzard? Tame Impala? It just might have been Finnish black metallers Oranssi Pazuzu.

133. Marissa Nadler - For My Crimes (Sacred Bones, 2018)

Marissa Nadler's dark dream-folk is one of the most hauntingly beautiful things on this earth, and her consistently rewarding career hit its highest peak yet on 2018's For My Crimes.

132. Title Fight - Floral Green (SideOneDummy, 2012)

In between the punk/post-hardcore of 2011's Shed and the shoegaze of 2015's Hyperview came Floral Green, which occupied the perfect middle ground and was one of the first classic albums of the whole punk/indie/emo crossover.

131. Paramore - After Laughter (Fueled by Ramen, 2017)

Paramore reinvented themselves from arena emo/pop punk stars to sharp new wavers on After Laughter, which isn't just one of the decade's best albums within punk and emo but within any genre and it's Paramore's best album yet.

130. Ty Segall – Manipulator (Drag City, 2014)

By our estimation, psych/garage rocker Ty Segall has released approximately 73 albums this decade and most of the them are worth hearing, but Manipulator is where energy, songwriting and creativity are really peak while maintaining a high ripper count.

129. Holly Herndon - Platform (4AD, 2015)

Experimental artist Holly Herndon blended Laurie Anderson and ASMR on one of the decade's most breathtakingly weird albums.

128. Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again (Drag City, 2015)

If you wanted to hear a modern-day artist this decade tap into the obscure, cultishly loved sounds of late '60s / early '70s psychedelic folk, you can't do much better than Jessica Pratt on On Your Own Love again.

127. Todd Terje – It’s Album Time (Olsen, 2014)

Originally known for his disco edits of other people’s tracks, Norwegian producer Todd Terje finally got around to making an album 10 years into his career which showed there was a lot more up his sleeve than vintage synths.

126. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints (Souterrain Transmissions, 2011)

Erika M. Anderson combined the noise rock of her previous band Gowns with incisive, melodic songwriting on one of the decade's most distinctive debuts.

125. Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial (Matador, 2016)

After gaining a cult following for self-releasing a zillion albums on Bandcamp, Will Toledo hit the studio with veteran producer Steve Fisk for Car Seat Headrest's Matador debut Teens of Denial, making good on the promise of all those Bandcamp albums and coming out with some of the decade's finest trad-style indie rock.

124. Total Control – Henge Beat (Iron Lung, 2011)

The members of this Melbourne garage/post-punk band (including the ubiquitous Mikey Young) have a couple dozen other active bands between them but Total Control are the best one and this is their most vital moment.

123. King Krule – 6 Feet Beneath the Moon (True Panther, 2013)

Archy Marshall released 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, his debut as King Krule, on his 19th birthday but the record -- and his gravelly, marble-mouthed delivery -- revealed him to be an old soul trapped in a teenager’s body, crafting a sound that doesn’t quite belong to any era, floating buoyantly in dreamy limbo.

122. Zola Jesus - Stridilum (Sacred Bones, 2010)

The most purely addictive goth-pop album of the decade.

121. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop, 2011)

As the harmony-fueled folk-pop of Fleet Foxes' helped inspire the cringey trend of stadium-ready bands in old-timey get-ups, Fleet Foxes themselves went in weirder, more psychedelic directions, as on their excellent sophomore LP Helplessness Blues.

120. Metronomy – The English Riviera (Because Music, 2011)

Purveyors of twitchy, decidedly British disco, Metronomy widened their reach on their third album, embracing sweeter melodies and mellowing things out in the best, most charming ways.

119. The Hotelier - Goodness (Tiny Engines, 2016)

The album where The Hotelier went from being one of the decade's best emo bands to one of the decade's best bands, period.

118. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Harmlessness (Epitaph, 2015)

It's one of the best emo albums of the decade because it totally defied the genre, branching out into indie rock, chamber pop, folk-pop, sludge metal, and more. There's really no other band in the world like this.

117. Kevin Morby – Singing Saw (Dead Oceans, 2016)

Though he’d been writing great songs since his days in The Babies, Kevin Morby found a creative partner in Sam Cohen who helped him hone all his best qualities and bring his songs to life like never before.

116. Margo Price - Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (Third Man, 2016)

With a natural-born knack for classic country and Southern rock and a songwriting style that's wise beyond her years, Margo Price aimed right at the heart on her powerful debut Midwest Farmer's Daughter and hit it straight-on.

115. Four Tet - There Is Love In You (Domino, 2010)

UK electronic icon Four Tet released a ton of great material this decade, but none more euphoric than There Is Love In You.

114. A Tribe Called Quest – We Got it From Here… Thank U 4 Your Service (Epic, 2016)

Jazz-rap legends A Tribe Called Quest reunited to release one last album before Phife Dawg sadly passed away, and it re-captured the essence of their classic era and made it fit right in with modern rap, thanks in part to help from Kendrick Lamar and Anderson .Paak.

113. Chelsea Wolfe - Apokalypsis (Pendu Sound, 2011)

Before Chelsea Wolfe emerged from the depths of the underworld as one of the decade's biggest goth artists, she released this raw, filthy mix of noise rock and dark folk that sounds like it was imported straight from hell.

112. Grizzly Bear - Shields (Warp, 2012)

Grizzly Bear weren't at the height of the indie zeitgeist in the 2010s like they were in the 2000s, but they kept progressing and the blissful choruses and inventive psych/prog arrangements of Shields make it one of this decade's true gems.

111. Disclosure - Settle (PMR/Island, 2013)

Disclosure put a fresh twist on '90s house and dance-pop, landed a slew of perfectly-matched guest vocalists (including a pre-superstardom Sam Smith) and came out with one of the most fun records of the decade.

110. Grouper - Ruins (Kranky, 2014)

Grouper's knack for blending ambient and singer/songwriter music excelled on all of the many albums she released this decade. She always makes quiet music, but somehow Ruins feels loud.

109. Darkside - Psychic (Matador, 2013)

Mixing Nicolas Jaar's vocals and electronics with multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington's knack for proggy guitar, bass, keys, and more, the sole album from Darkside remains a masterclass in both modern electronic music and prog.

108. Big Thief - U.F.O.F. (4AD, 2019)

Big Thief are one of our generation's best folk rock bands, and on UFOF, they took things in a more cerebral direction that's often more Radiohead than Neil Young.

107. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni, 2013)

As folk, indie rock, emo and punk continued to cross paths throughout this decade, it became clearer and clearer that Waxhatchee's sophomore album Cerulean Salt would go down as a touchstone of this sound.

106. Alcest - Écailles de Lune (Prophecy Productions, 2010)

Before Deafheaven exploded in America, France's Alcest had already perfected the shoegaze/black metal blend (sometimes called "blackgaze") that Deafheaven brought to the masses, and Écailles de Lune remains one of their greatest triumphs.

105. Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph, 2012)

Whether you consider it punk or metal, it's one of the best albums of the decade and proof that Converge are still evolving over 20 years into their career.

104. Nicki Minaj - The Pinkprint (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic, 2014)

"Monster" solidified Nicki Minaj as one of the decade's most distinct new rappers, but it wasn't until The Pinkprint that she turned in a masterful album that combined her knacks for rap, pop, and R&B and was worthy of being deemed a classic.

103. Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music (Williams Street, 2012)

Before El-P and Killer Mike dominated the decade as Run The Jewels, El produced Mike's 2012 solo album R.A.P. Music which remains one of the hardest-hitting rap albums of the decade.

102. Joanna Newsom - Divers (Drag City, 2015)

Whatever the unparalleled Joanna Newsom touches turns to gold, and though Divers is more dialed back than the baroque folk masterpiece Joanna put out directly beforehand, it's still out of this world.

101. Angel Olsen - My Woman (Jagjaguwar, 2016)

My Woman is the album that fully elevated Angel Olsen from psychedelic folk revivalist to top-tier indie rock icon, and it deserves a spot on this list for the instant-classic "Shut Up Kiss Me" alone.

100. A$AP Rocky - Long.Live.A$AP (ASAP Worldwide/Polo Grounds/RCA, 2013)

After emerging out of the hazy, short-lived subgenre of cloud rap (remember cloud rap?), A$AP Rocky inked a deal with a major and his official debut studio album Long. Live. ASAP became an instant classic. It remains a snapshot of its time, but also timeless. At the turn of the decade, super mainstream rap was getting stale and a new generation of hungry, game-changing rappers took to the internet to get their new sounds out there, whether or not major labels would care. Seven of them -- Kendrick Lamar, Joey Badass, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson, Big K.R.I.T., and Rocky himself -- teamed up for the moment-defining posse cut "1 Train," which lives on Long. Live. ASAP. It might be weird to think now, but in early 2013, those rappers were all pretty much on the same level and all still relatively underground, and "1 Train" marked the moment they teamed up and said they're ready to take over the world. Kendrick, who had just released good kid, m.A.A.d city only three months earlier, also appeared on "Fuckin' Problems" alongside Drake, who was still proving himself at the time and didn't fully have his head in the clouds yet. Together (plus a hook from 2 Chainz), they came up with another moment-defining song and Rocky's biggest hit. Kendrick associate Schoolboy Q (who Rocky aided about a year earlier on his breakthrough single "Hands on the Wheel") returned the favor on "PMW." Skrillex, who was in the process of leaving brostep (remember brostep?) behind and proving himself as a Serious Artist, made some pretty serious art when he teamed with Rocky for the bass-wobbling rap of "Wild for the Night." And indie-friendly artists like Santigold, Florence Welch, and Danger Mouse lent their talents to the album, which not only sounded good but helped position Rocky as an artist who wanted to stay loyal to indie even as he entered the mainstream. The guests were clearly a major part of Long. Live. ASAP, but Rocky carried a ton of the album's weight himself too. As he has gotten increasingly psychedelic on later albums, Long. Live. ASAP remains Rocky's best pure rap album and it contains some of the best rapping of his career. [Andrew Sacher]

99. Cate Le Bon - Mug Museum (Wichita, 2013)

Cate Le Bon really came into her own with her third album. Written in Wales after the death of her dear maternal grandmother but recorded after she moved to Los Angeles, Mug Museum, embodies both states of mind -- melancholic introspection as Cate wonders about her place in her maternal lineage, but also the sunny promise of California’s West Coast. The boggy skronk that was all over 2012’s Cyrk remains, but it’s smoothed out just a little with poppier melodies. Cate’s unique voice brings everything together, whether it’s dueting with Perfume Genius on “I Think I Knew” or just the sighing ahhs of “Are You With Me Now?” Mug Museum continually hits a happy/sad sweet spot whose vibe sticks with you. As she sings on the title track, “I forget the detail but know the warmth.” [Bill Pearis]

98. Jon Hopkins - Immunity (Domino, 2013)

Having spent years creating textural electronic music with Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, Coldplay, King Creosote, not to mention his own work mixing electronics with orchestral compositions (see 2009’s Insides), Jon Hopkins embraced serious dance music with this concept album exploring, instrumentally, an epic night out. From the pre-party, to deep-hitting club bangers to the sunrise comedown, Immunity is a stummer. While “IDM” is not a term that’s used so much anymore, there’s no denying the intelligence behind Immunity, a record that works best when listened to as a whole. That said, for all the thought put into it, it’s also deeply felt, with these machines throbbing like a beating heart. [B.P.]

97. Future - DS2 (A1/Freebandz/Epic, 2015)

Atlanta trap became one of the most prevailing trends in 2010s hip hop, and though trap wasn't always an album game -- at least not in the traditional sense -- there's a good argument to be made that if there's one definitive 2010s trap album, it's Future's DS2. Titled as a sequel to his buzzed-about 2011 mixtape Dirty Sprite, DS2 came after Future tried to go mainstream with two just-okay major label albums, and then reverted back to his mixtape roots and put out the unstoppable run of Monster, Beast Mode, and 56 Nights that eventually led to him making this proper studio album in the same druggy, rough-around-the-edges style. It was a big hit, but it wasn't Future trying to go pop; he made pop come to him. Various tracks from the three preceding mixtapes ended up on DS2's deluxe version (the deluxe version is really the one to get), and every other song on the proper album is just as good. One of the big shifts in rap in the 2010s was rapping about doing lots of drugs, rather than selling them, and DS2 sounds like a rap album that's been doused in a bottle of Robitussin. It's sexed up, drugged up, melancholic, angry, and all kinds of fucked up, and Future delivers every mood with conviction over gorgeous, innovative production from some of trap's key producers (Metro Boomin, Southside, Zaytoven). Within what remains a very crowded subgenre -- including countless subsequent releases by Future himself -- DS2 still stands out as a masterpiece. [A.S.]

96. Tool - Fear Inoculum (RCA, 2019)

After a very long 13-year wait, Tool finally returned this year with an album that isn't just a good comeback, but that rivals just about any of their classics. Fear Inoculum is unmistakably a Tool album, yet it sounds like no other album in their discography. It focuses a lot more on their psychedelic and progressive rock sides than their metal side, and Tool had been heading in that direction for a while but they didn't fully commit until this album. It feels like an album they might have always wanted to make but couldn't during the height of their fame and the height of alternative metal's fame, and 2019 felt like a perfect time to release it. In a time where atmospheric sounds dominate the alternative music landscape, Fear Inoculum feels as relevant to 2019 as Ænima felt to 1996. [A.S.]

95. The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (Dirty Hit/Polydor/Interscope, 2018)

Lots of bands this decade made music that sounded like The Smashing Pumpkins, or albums that were structured like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but if there's any band that's a modern-day parallel to the Pumpkins, in all their deeply cheesy, stupidly ambitious, teenage-feelings-invoking glory, it's The 1975. Like with the Pumpkins, The 1975's debut is relatively straightforward and anything but "cool." The 1975 didn't start out with indie cred, but they were determined to make such great, over-the-top indie music that the haters would just have to finally admit they were good. And with their second (2016's I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It) and third (2018's A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships) albums, that's exactly what they did. There's a lot of great stuff on I Like It When You Sleep, but there's also a little too much filler and a little too much indulgence in cheese, but A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships succeeded in just about every way. It's the best 1975 album to listen to front to back, and it does a better job of reeling in The 1975's reckless ambitions, while still remaining a massive musical feat that channels indie rock, mainstream pop, jazz, R&B, ambient music, and so much more into one melting pot of sounds that threatens to boil over at any second but never does. Matty Healy tops it off with lyricism that's got the lack-of-filter and subtle wit of a Twitter feed, and completely captures the chaotic millennial mindset in the process. [A.S.]

94. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour (MCA Nashville, 2018)

It seems as though, in the year and change since Golden Hour’s release, it’s only gotten more agreed-upon. Country fans like it, indie fans like it, pop fans like it, people without strict allegiance to one genre or another like it just the same. It’s the rare album that can outlast the initial hype, or worse yet, consensus around its release. It won the Grammy for album of the year for chrissakes, and still nobody has an unkind word to say about it. It’s just so blissfully, transparently good. It isn’t complicated, it just hits exactly the way it should, the type of album where your favorite song changes every time you listen to it. Right now, mine is the exquisite alone-at-the-party melancholy of “Happy and Sad” and the incantatory chorus of “Love is a Wild Thing,” but seriously, you could just pick any of them. It hasn’t been around long, but it already feels timeless. [Rob Sperry-Fromm]

93. The War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian, 2014)

Somewhere along the line, The War On Drugs became the most influential band in indie. There always seems a new indie record every two or three years that everyone rushes to rip off -- be it For Emma, Forever Ago or Merriweather Post Pavilion or James Blake -- and for a while this decade, it was Lost In The Dream. Plenty of indie bands who had already established themselves with a different subgenre quickly changed pace and aimed to channel The War On Drugs' psychedelic, synth-fueled indie heartland rock. A lot of good records came out of that craze, but Lost In The Dream remains indie heartland rock's finest hour. Lost In The Dream tastefully tapped into cheesy influences like Don Henley, and it repurposed the cheese in a way that somehow became entirely cool. And it also came out with some of the decade's most eternally catchy indie rock songs. This album deserves a spot on this list for the immortal power of "Red Eyes" alone. [A.S.]

92. Robyn - Honey (Konichiwa, 2018)

The rise of alternative, uncompromising pop music this decade probably wouldn't have happened without Robyn's 2010 masterwork Body Talk, and though alt-pop went through so many evolutions in the eight years that Robyn refrained from releasing a followup, 2018's Honey saw her reclaiming the throne and positioning herself on the cutting edge of pop music once again. Honey is a more heady, experimental album than the sugar rush of Body Talk, but no less instantly satisfying. If Body Talk opened the doors for pop music to be as weird as it wanted to be this decade, Honey knocked them off their hinges. [A.S.]

91. The National - High Violet (4AD, 2010)

Nearly a decade on, High Violet remains The National’s most widely-celebrated album, and it became known as a defining moment for the band. Riding high off the release of their highly-praised Boxer three years beforehand, High Violet, their fifth LP overall, shows the band branching out into much more elegant instrumental territory, filled with swirling string sections and dramatic crescendos, with their use of buzzing guitars and Matt Berninger’s poetic, intricate lyrical style still intact. The album is filled to the brim with memorable lyrical moments and song topics, sung through the filter of Berninger’s drawled, haunting baritone, which often swing between simple observations, to surreal visions of New York and Ohio, and heartbreaking accounts of personal insecurity. It’s a record that’s as wonderfully dense lyrically as it is sonically majestic, and the many layers of detail across the album demand the listener to keep revisiting, even after all these years. [Jeremy Nifras]

90. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid (Wondaland Arts Society/Atlantic/Bad Boy, 2010)

Before "alt-R&B," before Rihanna covered Tame Impala and every indie artist covered Frank Ocean, there was The ArchAndroid, the momentous debut album from Janelle Monae. Janelle featured psych-pop lifers of Montreal on the album, and made her own psychedelic classic with "Mushrooms & Roses." The Big Boi-featuring "Tightrope" was as groovy as anything on the Big Boi album from that same year, and Janelle made her own OutKast-y song with the great, "Bombs Over Baghdad"-esque "Cold War." She also channelled Bowie, Prince, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, George Clinton, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and tons of others into this album that seamlessly hopped between R&B, soul, rap, funk, rock, psychedelia, art pop and more. In some ways, The ArchAndroid predicted the genre-crossing path that music as a whole would take throughout the 2010s, and it's impossible to talk about this decade's musical cross pollination without mentioning that this album did it first. Like Bowie, Janelle proudly wore her influences on her sleeves and paid direct homage to her heroes, and she still does so to this day. But also like Bowie, she managed to do all of that while cultivating a persona that was uniquely her own. And it's all laid out on her first and still-best album The ArchAndroid. [A.S.]

89. Joyce Manor - Joyce Manor (6131, 2011)

It took Joyce Manor a little while to catch on outside of niche punk and emo circles, but quality wise, they came out of the gate swinging on their 2011 self-titled debut. They'd go on to become of the most consistently rewarding rock bands of the '10s, and they continued to hone and expand their sound in interesting ways on each album, but the main idea was already there on their debut, an 18-minute-and-48-second barrage of near-perfect punk. Borrowing the melodies and quotable lyricism of '90s pop punk and emo and the lo-fi brevity of Guided by Voices, Joyce Manor's debut helped write the blueprint for the entire past decade of indie/punk crossover. Blurring the lines between pop punk, emo, and indie rock is now commonplace, but when Joyce Manor did it on their debut album, it felt revolutionary. I'm still not entirely sure which of those genres most accurately describes Joyce Manor, but it doesn't really matter and that's kind of the point. Like other casually groundbreaking bands before them, Joyce Manor were just channelling all the music they loved at once and the results ended up being something entirely fresh. Their style has already been replicated hundreds of times, but their substance has not. Underneath the genre-blurring exterior was a natural knack for songwriting that tons of bands only dream of. The fast-paced Joyce Manor is just one fan fave after another; if Joyce Manor ever release a best-of, they could probably include every song on this LP without turning any heads. And it all leads up to "Constant Headache," the first stone-cold classic they ever wrote and possibly still their finest moment as a band. At 3 minutes, it's about twice as long as most other songs on this album. It's a little slower, really giving Barry Johnson's words room to breathe, and it peaks with a stripped-back bridge, where everything drops out except bass and vocals, as Barry delivers one of the best one-liners ever sung about the emptiness of a one night stand. As long as kids are getting drunk and breaking each other's hearts, there will be a need for songs like this one, and "Constant Headache" remains one of the best. [A.S.]

88. Mitski - Be the Cowboy (Dead Oceans, 2018)

Mitski's rise from DIY punk/emo-adjacent singer/songwriter to one of the decade's biggest and best indie acts has been thrilling to watch. Each album since her 2014 breakthrough Bury Me At Makeout Creek has been more ambitious, more distinctive, and more accessible than the last, and it's not everyday you see an artist progress this drastically and this rapidly. I don't love using this cliché, but they really don't make 'em like this anymore. Be the Cowboy is one of those purely indie records that can and did compete with mainstream pop, the way tons of indie bands did in the previous decade. But it's also an innovative, forward-thinking record and not at all a throwback to a previous era of music. It's one of a kind. [A.S.]

87. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy (4AD, 2011)

St. Vincent started from the bottom and she's now at the top of the indie/art rock totem pole, and if 2017's MASSEDUCTION was the album that cemented this for good, then 2011's Strange Mercy was the album where she took the leap. After her first two great records, she knocked it out of the park on Strange Mercy, which pushed her "art" and "pop" sides to new levels and helped establish her as perhaps the most innovative guitarist of her generation. Five decades into rock existing and guitar being its primary instrument, Annie Clark practically reinvented the way the thing is played, and she applied her distinct, unparalleled riffage to euphoric pop songs like "Cruel" and "Northern Lights." Around the same time she released Strange Mercy, St. Vincent also covered underground heroes like Big Black and The Pop Group, and by the time Strange Mercy had fully settled in, it was obvious that she had become an underground hero herself. [A.S.]

86. Purple Mountains - S/T (Drag City, 2019)

It’s impossible to separate David Berman’s debut as Purple Mountains with its songs about loneliness, depression, heartbreak and existential crises, and with his suicide less than a month after its release. It hurts all the more as this is one of Berman’s best-ever records, with the onetime Silver Jews frontman’s eloquence, wit and humanity in full display. “Songs build little rooms in time, and housed within the song’s design / is the ghost the host has left behind / to greet and sweep the guest inside.” Ultimately Berman left us with one last wonderful gift that lyrics like this from “Snow is Falling in Manhattan” -- the album’s most deeply affecting number -- remind us not to take for granted. [B.P.]

85. The Menzingers - On The Impossible Past (Epitaph, 2012)

Not unlike The Gaslight Anthem before them, The Menzingers' formula was simple: take the melodic punk of bands like The Bouncing Souls and Rancid, throw in a dash of Springsteen's blue collar heartland rock, and tell the stories you know. And with On the Impossible Past, The Menzingers wrote a record so instantly classic that it rivaled all of those aforementioned forebears, and it still does. On the Impossible Past takes place in diners, parking lots, muscle cars, rooftops in Brooklyn that were covered in bad graffiti, and at parties thrown by some guy named Chris. It's steeped in nostalgia, and full of highly specific stories, like an old photograph. Like with any memories, some of those details are probably a little romanticized -- especially when you're singing about the kinds of nights you'll never remember -- but On the Impossible Past doesn't feel fake or dishonest. Even if you can't relate to the depictions of small town American life, the feelings are nearly universal. From self-doubt to self-medication, from young love to broken hearts, On the Impossible Past taps into life experiences than can happen just about anywhere, and it does so in such a way where your brain starts to blend your own fuzzy past with the vivid settings in The Menzingers' songs. These are the kinds of songs that can really mean a lot if they find you at a rough point in your life. But even if they don't, they'll likely linger in the back of your head anyway, just because they're so damn catchy. [A.S.]

84. Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (High Top Mountain, 2014)

Without the usual support from within the country music machine, Sturgill Simpson rebelliously burst on to the music scene in 2014 with his second album that helped usher in a new era of "alt-country" and that ended up being embraced by the mainstream and alternative music fans alike. Like his 2013 album, this one was produced by Dave Cobb who also worked with fellow movement leader Jason Isbell in 2013 and 2014 before going on to put his mark on many of our favorite albums in this subgenre (Chris Stapleton, Colter Wall, John Prine, Amanda Shires, and Brandi Carlile to name a few). Appealing to indie rock, folk and country music fans, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music introduced many of us to Sturgill's psychedelic outlaw country and deft lyricism, complete with album highlight cover of When in Rome's "The Promise." Stugill went on to release two more albums this decade -- the even bigger and acclaimed A Sailor's Guide to Earth and the "holy shit"-inducing, blues rock-tinged, controversially not-country album Sound & Fury at the end of 2019 -- but this is where it all began and the album I still reach for most, "So don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes or fairy tales of blood and wine. It's turtles all the way down the line." [Dave]

83. Touche Amore - Is Survived By (Deathwish, 2013)

Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me remains the favorite Touche Amore album of many fans, probably in part because it's one of their most personal. It's the kind of album you write when you're going through a rough patch, and the kind of album that thousands of fans will connect to when they're going through their own rough patches. But what do you do when you've already written that record, and now you're happy, and you're worried about hurting your legacy? In Touche Amore's case, you write a record about how hard it is to write when you're happy, and about worrying what your legacy will be in the future. And, in Touche Amore's case, you end up making an album that cements your legacy in the process. It's a little reductive to say the album is only about those things -- there are also more personal songs like "DNA" where Jeremy Bolm sings about the fear of becoming his father -- but it is definitely a dominant theme. And it turns out his writing can be just as powerful when he breaks the fourth wall as when he's caught up in his own inner turmoil. And musically, Is Survived By was a clear maturation from Parting the Sea. The production is gorgeous (thanks to Brad Wood, who's also worked with Sunny Day Real Estate, mewithoutYou, and more), the melodies are stronger than they ever were before, and the band played tighter than they ever did before. Even more so than on Parting the Sea, Touche Amore blurred the line between hardcore and post-rock on Is Survived By, coming out with songs that are fast like the former but ebb and flow like the latter. (It was an album that paired especially well with Deafheaven's Sunbather, which came out on the same label the same year, and had similarly watercolor-y artwork to Is Survived By, both of which were designed by Touche's Nick Steinhardt. Deafheaven may be black metal and Touche may be hardcore, but both combined melody and aggression in ways that were similar more often than they were different.) Is Survived By came out six years ago at this point, and because there's so much music out there, I don't listen to it these days as much as I did in 2013. But as soon as I hear that opening drum fill on album opener "Just Exist," I'm transported right back to the place I was the very first time I clicked play on this masterpiece. [A.S.]

82. Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden (Profound Lore, 2014)

Pallbearer proved they were a force to be reckoned with on their trad-doom reviving 2012 debut Sorrow and Extinction, and they proved their ambitions were limitless on their third album, 2017's Heartless, which saw Pallbearer pushing their sound to two different extremes, from digestible sludge-pop to sprawling prog. And right smack in the middle of those two albums is Foundations of Burden, the sweet spot between where they started and where they are now. They're still a trad-doom band on this album, but you can tell from songs like "Worlds Apart," "Foundations," and especially "The Ghost I Used to Be" that Pallbearer were getting interested in crafting great pop melodicism, not just copying Sabbath and Candlemass riffs. And on "Ashes," Pallbearer begin to venture outside of metal with a glistening nugget that's more like Sigur Ros or Bon Iver than like any doom band. "Trad-doom" is a tricky genre, because, as satisfying as it can be to listen to, it's tough to do anything new when your genre literally includes an abbreviated version of the word "traditional." But on Foundations of Burden, Pallbearer managed to (mostly) stick within the confines of the genre, while making a record that we really hadn't heard before, and that remains fun as hell to listen to. [A.S.]

81. Burial - Tunes 2011-2019 (Hyperdub, 2019)

When we were putting together this list, we kept wondering if there was a way to include all the great music Burial put out this decade, though he hadn't really released an album that would make sense to include. Conveniently, he released this compilation in the very last month of the decade, and if you wish Burial made a third album, this is probably it. (Given its length and the fact that it's a double album, this might be his fourth album too.) Since Untrue, Burial has remained at the top of his game and has continued to write innovative music that is a clear step forward from his early material but retains enough of the distinct Burial sound that you always know who you're listening to. The songs have gotten longer, darker, weirder, and more experimental, yet they still contain moments of immediate bliss. And on Tunes 2011 to 2019, nearly all of Burial's post-Untrue work -- including major highlights Kindred and Rival Dealer -- is here in one place, artistically sequenced in the way Burial thought would flow best, not necessarily chronologically. Hearing the comp start to finish is a time-consuming, sometimes-taxing experience. But it's worth every second. [A.S.]

80. Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory (Carpark, 2012)

Cloud Nothings emerged out of the buzzed-about lo-fi boom of the late '00s, but with Attack On Memory, they ditched all of their trendy traits and came out with the best and most widely-loved record of their career. It ditched the lo-fi indie pop of their early work in favor of abrasive post-hardcore, and it tied together elements of various '90s rock bands -- from Nirvana to Sonic Youth to Weezer to Sunny Day Real Estate -- in a way that felt both like the nostalgia dose you didn't know you needed and the freshest new rock record around. They made it with Steve Albini, whose raw, bare-bones style and killer snare sound was the perfect fit for a record that bounced seamlessly between punchy hooks ("Fall In," "Stay Useless"), entrancing noise rock ("Wasted Days"), dark post-hardcore ("No Future/No Past"), angst-ridden grunge ("No Sentiment"), and more. It helped bring all of this music back into the indie rock zeitgeist, but Attack On Memory doesn't succeed just because it helped kickstart a sea change within the genre. It holds up today as one of the most brilliant, impassioned, and endlessly listenable rock records released this decade. [A.S.]

79. Cardi B - Invasion of Privacy (Atlantic, 2018)

The world is littered with talentless stars and with uncharismatic virtuosos, but every once in a while we're gifted with someone like Cardi B, who was born to be a star and who just so happens to be impeccable at her craft. Once "Bodak Yellow" swept the nation, it wasn't a question if Cardi would achieve stardom but when. And even though her success was a given, we've still seen great potential tainted by botched album rollouts, so it's no small feat that Cardi's official debut album neared perfection. There are no songs where she sounds out of her comfort zone, no throwaway radio bait, no filler, no out-of-place favors from big-name guests (if anything, Cardi quickly eclipsed nearly every guest on the album); it’s just a consistently great album that proves Cardi has lyrical depth and a grasp on a wide variety of music. Of its 13 songs, at least ten of them feel like moment-defining singles. "Bodak Yellow" was the song of 2017, "I Like It" -- which helped open up English-speaking audiences to the already-rich world of Latin trap -- was the song of 2018, and even those two can't overshadow the many other memorable songs. It was an album that felt like a classic upon arrival, and that feeling has only strengthened since. [A.S.]

78. Japandroids - Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl, 2012)

There might not be a more accurately titled album on this list than Celebration Rock. It's exactly what this album does; it celebrates the pure thrill that you can only get from rock and roll. Every song (except the initially underrated album closer "Continuous Thunder") is turned up to 11 and played like the two members of Japandroids are challenging each other to play just a little bit faster. They've said they included all the "whoa"s because they were trying to think of how fans would sing along at shows. They stuffed the album with fist-raising heartland punk anthems that sounded like The Replacements with a literal fire lit under their asses, and they included such classic rock-isms as "Hearts from hell collide on fire's highway tonight" and "hitchhiked to hell and back, riding the wind / waiting for a generation's bonfire to begin." These eight songs sound like all the most fun parts of rock, stripped of all the pretension. It felt like a breath of fresh air in 2012, when stuff like art rock and psych-pop was still dominating indie rock, and -- along with Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory -- it helped open the doors for modern indie rock to embrace music that actually rocked. It holds up after all these years not just because it rocks so hard, though, but because underneath all the ruckus, Japandroids conveyed enough raw emotion to shake the hearts of anyone who listened to the core. "It's a lifeless life, with no fixed address to give / but you're not mine to die for anymore, so I must live," Brian King shouts as the drums drop out of penultimate song "The House That Heaven Built," and it's among the most life-affirming sendoffs put to tape this decade. [A.S.]

77. Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right (Hardly Art, 2014)

Post punk sounds and industrial towns go hand in hand. Detroit’s Protomartyr have a sense of urgency and anger that could’ve sprouted from somewhere like Manchester or Cleveland in 1979 but frontman Joe Casey’s lyrics could’ve only sprung from one time and place. With a half-sung, half-shouted delivery, Casey is a true original, spewing literate bile that is usually funny, bleak and thoughtful all at the same time, while his three talented bandmates match his words with dark, powerful, exceptionally well-crafted music. Their second album, Under Color of Official Right, has them firing on all cylinders with Casey pointing his lens at, among other things, coastal invaders of his Detroit, absentee dads, local politics and inter-band dynamics. [B.P.]

76. Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle (6131, 2015)

The first time we saw Julien Baker play, she was opening first of three for The National side project EL VY, and she was added to the show long after it sold out, so it was safe to say no one had bought their tickets to see her. Her debut album Sprained Ankle had just come out a few weeks earlier, and when Julien performed her then-little-known songs from that album, with nothing but her own guitar and voice, she silenced the crowd for her entire set, including hundreds of people who were likely hearing her for the very first time. It was instantly clear at that show that Julien and Sprained Ankle had a bright future ahead of them, and that's exactly how things turned out. By the time Julien signed to the larger Matador Records and released the even more widely acclaimed Turn Out the Lights, Sprained Ankle already felt like a classic. Now, Julien regularly headlines bigger rooms than the one we saw her open for EL VY in (as a solo artist and as a member of boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus), and it's all because of the doors Sprained Ankle opened. With her many covers and collaborations, she's helped bridge the gap between '90s emo, classic folk and country, modern indie, and more, and she has become a force of her own in the process. We're already starting to see new artists emerge that cite Julien as an influence, and it's not surprising at all. Julien's music, especially on Sprained Ankle, has felt like a breath of fresh air within all of the aforementioned styles of music and beyond. [A.S.]

75. Foxing - Nearer My God (Triple Crown, 2018)

After Foxing released their crowdpleasing 2013 debut The Albatross but before they released 2018's genre-defying art rock magnum opus Nearer My God, they put out Dealer, the most meditative album in their discography thus far. Instead of building to explosive catharses like the two albums it's bookended by, Dealer saw Foxing exploring post-rock and atmospheric singer/songwriter material, and coming out with music that gradually draws you in rather than hitting you in the face. Nearer My God is Foxing's most experimental album, but Dealer is probably their most "difficult" -- so to speak -- and it's definitely their most consistently gorgeous. The album is as lush as the greenery on the artwork, and without the in-your-face parts of the other two albums, it relies on pure sonic beauty and Conor Murphy's storytelling to keep you hooked, which it has no trouble doing. Dealer made it clear that Foxing were not going to be pigeonholed, and it helped open the doors for them to eventually make an album like Nearer My God. It's so much more significant than just a stepping stone on the path to Nearer My God, though. Half a decade later, and there still hasn't really been album in or outside of the emo scene that sounds like it. [A.S.]

74. Drake - Take Care (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic, 2011)

Drake was corny from the start -- it was often part of his appeal -- but if you were still clowning Drake by the time he released Take Care, you just weren't paying enough attention. An enormous leap from anything he had had done before it and still better than anything he's done since, Take Care remains one of the most purely gorgeous and massively influential albums of the decade in any genre. He was arguably the first major artist to realize that the dark, atmospheric, indie-friendly "alt-R&B" was about to break, and he recruited alt-R&B pioneer The Weeknd to help him achieve his own version of that sound on Take Care. Though his most crucial collaborator is not The Weeknd but frequent Drake producer 40, who helmed the majority of the songs on Take Care and helped Drake craft the sound that Drake copycats have gone after for years. Together (along with a few other producers and some very key guests), Drake and 40 made an album that has it all. "Over My Dead Body" is the kind of tell-all intro track that we'd see several other rappers channel this decade. "Headlines" is one of the finest string-laden epics this side of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If you weren't already on board with The Weeknd from his mixtapes, "Crew Love" proved how powerful his music was. "Take Care" took the already-cool Jamie xx remix of the already-cool Gil Scott-Heron song, added in Rihanna, and turned it into something accessible and danceable enough for anyone. "Marvins Room" remains Drake's finest execution of atmospheric, post-James Blake R&B. "Buried Alive Interlude" helped introduce Kendrick Lamar to the mainstream a year before he released good kid, m.A.A.d city, and for that, you can thank Drake later. "Lord Knows" has one of the most triumphant Just Blaze beats of the decade. "The Real Her" has one of the best verses from the elusive Andre 3000 of the decade. At the risk of just listing all 18 songs, I'll stop here, but Take Care has no filler. It just celebrated its eighth birthday last month, and it still reveals more of itself with every listen. [A.S.]

73. Beyonce - Beyonce (Parkwood/Columbia, 2013)

Just around midnight on Friday, December 13, 2013, after many major year-end lists were already published, Beyonce changed the game with that digital drop. She released her self-titled album immediately to iTunes, without any warning, resulting in perhaps the most innovative major album release since Radiohead's pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows. It started the trend of surprise releases and the trend of visual albums, but most importantly, it brought the burgeoning "alt-R&B" genre to the mainstream and established Beyonce not as a waning star, but as a creative leader with her ear to the ground. Beyonce didn't invent alt-R&B just like The Beatles didn't invent psychedelic rock, but in both cases, a new bar was set for the genre once larger-than-life superstars got their hands on it. The cold, dark, atmospheric direction that R&B had been going in just sounded better when Beyonce did it. The album featured Frank Ocean (one of the pioneers of the sound) and Drake (an early adopter of the sound), but Beyonce's best interpretations of this then-new form of R&B were done with no guests at all ("Haunted," "Partition," "Jealous"). Beyonce also rapped ("Flawless," bonus track "7/11"), made sexed-up synthpop ("Blow"), continued to perfect the heart-wrenching balladry of 4 ("Heaven"), threw in a stadium-sized anthem for good measure ("XO"), and dabbled in a handful of other styles of music on what remains her most experimental album to date. She also sang of everything from unrealistic beauty standards to vivid depictions of her marriage with Jay-Z, to her miscarriage, to the birth of their first daughter Blue Ivy, and she sampled a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speech on feminism that quickly became a major milestone in the decade's mainstreamization of feminism. Beyonce is lyrically powerful and musically adventurous, both of which made it a significant risk for an artist of her popularity. It could have gone down as the album where a pop star yearned for more creative freedom but failed to leave an impact. Instead, it cemented Beyonce as the kind of musical force we so rarely see, respected as a high-brow artist by critics and one of the single most significant pop stars of our time. [A.S.]

72. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening (DFA, 2010)

At the turn of the decade, LCD Soundsystem were living pretty comfortably. Several years prior, James Murphy and crew released Sound of Silver, a near-perfect dance punk record that instantly cemented the band’s status among the giants of indie music. And like tons of great bands after releasing a widely-acclaimed album, the band was faced with a decision: where do they go from here? As the band headed into the studio to record their upcoming third LP, Murphy hinted in interviews that it might be the last LCD Soundsystem album, which only further raised expectations. Thankfully, the band’s third album, This is Happening, met these high expectations with ease, and was a powerfully entrancing effort that continued their creative winning streak into the 2010s. It wasn’t too much of a sonic departure from the band’s past work; instead, it showed them sticking to their guns by creating a solid collection of air-tight tracks made for the dance floor. The album’s bold genius is instantly on display during the record’s opening track, “Dance Yrself Clean,” which is an expert exercise in dynamics, transitioning from a whisper-quiet opening section into a colorful burst of energy, filled with Murphy’s harsh shrieks and impassioned yells. A handful of other tracks on the album continued the band’s reign of writing hypnotic, seven-minute plus dance tracks, with highlights “All I Want” and “You Wanted a Hit” ranking among their punchiest songs ever, and centerpiece “I Can Change” perhaps being among Murphy’s most honest, heart-wrenching lyrical outings. When it was confirmed LCD Soundsystem would be disbanding shortly after the release of this record, the album felt like a climactic moment in the band’s career, as they sat atop the Mount Rushmore of modern indie music without a bad record to their name. And while, of course, the band did regroup for another album years later, listening to This Is Happening knowing it isn’t the grand finale it was intended to be doesn’t diminish its quality at all; it remains an astounding, cohesive listen that still feels as fresh and invigorating as it did years ago. [J.N.]

71. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes (Warp, 2012)

Cosmogramma probably remains the most innovative Flying Lotus album, but Until the Quiet Comes is the most blissful, and -- in this decade of "chill" -- the most of its time. It still has the psychedelic, future-jazz freakouts, wacky Thundercat basslines, and show-stealing Thom Yorke guest appearance of its predecessor, but here that's all wrapped up in a more minimal, subdued package. (And this time there's a show-stealing Erykah Badu guest appearance too.) Its impact can be felt on some of the decade's major trends like atmospheric R&B and the jazz renaissance, and because it's remained so influential, it sounds as good today as it did the day it came out. If Cosmogramma is the chaotic acid trip that no one at the beginning of 2010 was prepared for, then Until the Quiet Comes is the comedown we've all been on since. [A.S.]

70. Deafheaven - New Bermuda (Anti-, 2015)

Sunbather might be the album that made Deafheaven metal's biggest critical darlings of the 2010s, but its 2015 followup New Bermuda is even better. The big talking point surrounding New Bermuda when it came out, was that it was a much heavier album than Sunbather. Sunbather took a lot of influence from shoegaze and post-rock and often sounded as pretty as its pink cover art, which was not unrelated to the cynicism the album was met with from many metalheads. But New Bermuda came with black artwork and riffs that were descended from Slayer and 1990s metalcore. It was a tougher, meaner, more traditionally metal version of Deafheaven, as if to convince the haters that they are a true metal band, or maybe to challenge some Sunbather fans with a more alienating album. But New Bermuda isn't just better than Sunbather by default because it's a heavier album, and it's selling the album short by only talking about how it's Deafheaven's heaviest. It also has some of Deafheaven's prettiest post-rock parts, and some of their most memorable, melodic riffs. Deafheaven didn't just get heavier, they also got better at everything they do. New Bermuda offers up the same beautiful/aggressive dichotomy that Sunbather did, but with more finesse than its predecessor and with a greater sense of musical diversity. It doesn't just give you heavy, baby; it gives you more of everything. [A.S.]

69. Rosalía - El Mal Querer (Sony, 2018)

Over a year since its release, Rosalia’s second and breakthrough album still feels as fresh and futuristic as it did the day I first heard it. I may not understand much Spanish, but the otherworldly beauty of Rosalia's voice is a universal language. Over the course of 11 songs in 30 minutes, Rosalia delivers an addictive blend of traditional music, modern R&B, and experimental pop not unlike Bjork. Co-produced by ex-hipster darling and Bjork collaborator El Guincho, the album is based on a 13th-century Occitan novel called Flamenca, and tells the story of a toxic relationship. The record samples both Justin Timberlake and Arthur Russell and speaks to fans of both. Standout tracks that showcase the experimental side include "De Aquí No Sales" and "Bagdad" (the one with JT). Things slow down in "Cordura," a religious experience in under three minutes. Meanwhile, Rosalía’s pop side comes through on the hand-clap-backed opening track/lead single (and first real hit) "Malamente" and even more so on the R&B-leaning "Pienso En Tu Mirá," one of the most cathartic pop songs released this decade in any language. Since the album's release, Rosalia's popularity and collaborator list have continued to grow, and she's still just getting started. We can't wait to see what she has in store for the decade to come. [Dave]

68. FKA twigs - Magdalene (Young Turks, 2019)

FKA twigs’ debut record LP1 released in 2014, contained a unique fusion of experimental pop, R&B, and electronic music which felt ahead of its time, and led to many critics and music fans alike to deem her as one of the most forward-thinking artists of the decade. Apart from dropping the just-as-great M3LL155X EP shortly afterwards, twigs faced many setbacks, including serious health issues, which forced her to take a five-year break between albums. Thankfully, she eventually rekindled her creative spirit in 2019 with her second LP Magdalene, which doesn’t fall into the “sophomore slump” trope by any margin, and instead shows twigs pushing her already-unique sonic vision even further than ever before. Across the album’s nine tracks, twigs often toes the line between deeply experimental, otherworldly alt-R&B and electronic sounds, like on the beautifully-layered “Mary Magdalene,” as well as more mainstream-leaning material, especially on album highlight “Holy Terrain,” whose Future guest spot ventures slightly into more commercial territory without compromising twigs’ usual aesthetic. The record also showcases a more tender side to twigs’ sonic landscape, with ballads like “Cellophane,” complete with a stunning vocal performance, easily ranking among her most sparse, emotionally-vulnerable tracks to date. Especially in the current landscape of indie music, where over-saturation of new albums and artists can dilute hype after a certain amount of time, it’s remarkable how after a multi-year absence, Magdalene not only repositioned twigs as one of the leading innovators in the experimental pop genre, but also proved her longevity as an untouchable creative force. [J.N.]

67. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me (P.W. Elverum & Sun, 2017)

Chronicling the death of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, and its aftermath, Phil Elverum created his masterwork in spite of himself. "Death is real," the album's first track "Real Death" begins; "someone's there and then they're not, and it's not for singing about, it's not for making into art." Elverum's diaristic account of the unspeakable realities of loss is spare, profound in its banality, and harrowing in its truth, so much so that it can be hard to listen to; the minimal melodies fall away and the words that are left are overwhelming, the small intimate details nearly impossible to attend to. It's not art because it's beyond art; it taps into the single universal certainty of our existence, that it has an end, and that someone will be left behind to pick up the pieces and continue on. As an album, as an act of love, or as a candle held against the darkness, it's a singular work, in this decade or any other. [Amanda Hatfield]

66. Baroness - Yellow & Green (Relapse, 2012)

Baroness have gone through lots of lineup changes and a nearly-fatal bus crash that threatened to end the band's career, but no matter what happens, they persevere in one form or another. Right now, frontman John Baizley is the only original member, and though they aren't a band with a clear-cut "classic lineup," the closest they would come to one is probably any lineup where Baizley, guitarist/backing vocalist Pete Adams, and drummer Allen Blickle are all involved. Blickle had been with the band since day one, and his intricate yet overpowering style became a key element of their sound, and once Adams joined for the making of 2009's Blue Record, the interplay between his and Baizley's voices and guitars became crucial to the overall sound on Baroness. The two became a dynamic duo on Blue Record, which entirely eclipsed the band's already-great debut album (2007's Red Album), and when it came time for Yellow & Green -- the final album with Allen Blickle (who left after the bus crash) -- Baroness pushed their sound drastically forward once again. It's the kind of double album where each disc has its own distinct vibe, and where a band takes advantage of the extra wax to try out just about every idea that comes to mind. They've got the two catchiest songs of their entire career (heavy alt-rock anthems "Take My Bones Away" and "March to the Sea") alongside some downright pretty balladry ("Twinkler"), danceable rock ("Little Things"), psychedelic art rock ("Collapse"), and still so much more. It completely defies the limits of heavy metal, but as far as how daring and uncompromising it is, it's metal as fuck. It's the past decade of heavy music's best answer to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and like that album, it aims to be a classic and succeeds. [A.S.]

65. Sun Kil Moon - Benji (Caldo Verde, 2014)

Very few songwriters of the modern era have captured the feelings of existential dread and the arbitrariness of life like Mark Kozelek on Sun Kil Moon’s sixth album Benji. Taking inspiration from life experiences both recent and old, Kozelek creates a stunning mosaic of a mid-life crisis, where mortality can seem to lurk around every corner, and where the past becomes even more distant with each day. This decade, Kozelek developed a stream-of-consciousness lyrical style that can more closely resemble a therapy session than traditional songwriting -- with ideas that usually stem from small observations that grow into something much larger -- and he perfected that style on Benji. On several tracks, Kozelek reflects on the deaths of distant family members, including his second cousin’s sudden passing on “Carissa,” and the more horrific death of his uncle on “Truck Driver,” and he mourns his grandmother and childhood friends on “Micheline.” Kozelek also takes time to reminisce on his childhood, reflect on his first sexual and romantic experiences, and examine a world in which his parents will no longer be alive. With these songs, Kozelek doesn’t just tell you these stories up front; he instead immerses you within the narrative, describing every emotion and thought with precise empathy. On Benji, Kozelek holds a magnifying glass up to his most intimate thoughts, before drawing back the glass to reveal much more universal concepts. By the end of the album, the listener realizes that these stories aren’t simply just random memories strung together, but rather an examination of how fleeting, tragic, and beautiful life can be. [J.N.]

64. Radiohead - The King of Limbs (XL, 2011)

What can I say about The King of Limbs that I didn't already say in my lengthy defense of the album last year? It somehow became the most underrated album of Radiohead's career, regularly placed last or second to last (behind Pablo Honey) in rankings of the band's discography, but it remains a huge gem that's like nothing else Radiohead has done before or since. It sounds like a live-band interpretation of the electronic artists Thom Yorke loves and collaborates with like Burial and Four Tet, and feels like a spiritual sequel to the trip-hop-informed Kid A. The more widely loved 2010s Radiohead album A Moon Shaped Pool is great, but that's an easy album for Radiohead to make. On The King of Limbs, they were taking risks and pushing the envelope, and the results remain thrilling. [A.S.]

63. Bjork - Vulnicura (One Little Indian, 2015)

Björk is a great '90s artist, a great '00s artist, and a great '10s artist. For three decades in a row, she has pushed the envelope of electronic art pop, and this decade birthed three essential additions to her already vast, impressive catalog: 2011's Biophilia, 2015's Vulnicura, and 2017's Utopia. It's so hard to pick a favorite, but the emotional, intimate power of Vulnicura -- which details the months before, during, and after Björk’s breakup with Matthew Barney -- puts it ever so slightly over the edge. [A.S. & A.H.]

62. My Bloody Valentine - m b v (self-released, 2013)

Which was the bigger shock -- that noted noise perfectionist Kevin Shields actually said “I’m done” and released the first My Bloody Valentine album in 22 years, or that he still had the power to blow minds. (Eardrums, we never had a doubt.) Many, many other groups have cribbed from Loveless and Isn’t Anything, but nobody else does it quite like this. Beautiful, crushing, and innovative, m b v proves some things are actually worth the wait. Bring on the next album...whenever you’re ready, Kevin. [B.P.]

61. Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free (Southeastern, 2015)

When Jason Isbell left the Drive-By Truckers in 2007, who would've guessed that he'd go on to become one of the most impassioned singer/songwriters of the 2010s? By 2013, he had started his own label, (temporarily) parted ways with his backing band the 400 Unit, and written Southeastern, his first of two highly emotive solo albums that dug into personal struggles and conveyed Isbell's tell-all lyricism with some of the most gorgeous melodies of his career. The second of these albums was 2015's Something More Than Free, and after that Isbell reunited with the 400 Unit and released 2017's The Nashville Sound, combining the powerful songwriting of his two recent solo albums with a harder rocking edge. All three feel like they're part of a trilogy and all three are essential, but something puts Something More Than Free justttt over the edge. The songs on this one just tug at the heartstrings a little harder, and "24 Frames" might be the most instant-classic song he ever wrote. If someone ever builds a hall of fame for 21st century folk-rock, that song alone deserves a plaque. [A.S.]

60. Tame Impala - Currents (Modular, 2015)

I wouldn't have predicted this when their debut album arrived in 2010, but Tame Impala somehow became the go-to reference point for psychedelic pop in the latter half of the 2010s. Rihanna covered them on ANTI, and when major pop acts like Harry Styles and Post Malone and a Paramore side project and even Michelle Branch decided to make things a little trippier, Tame Impala always sounded like the most direct influence. And their influence spread so wide all because the songs on Currents were that good and had that much staying power. As we speak, Tame Impala are finally set to release Currents' long-awaited followup in early 2020, and even as that album continued to get delayed, the songs on Currents never aged. Like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Oracular Spectacular and Merriweather Post Pavilion before it, Currents became the new standard for synthy, 21st century takes on '60s psych-pop, and it still hasn't been dethroned. That's a pretty impressive feat when you consider how many imitators it's spawned, and how big a lot of them are. Currents just has that special something that keeps it on top. [A.S.]

59. Swans - The Seer (Young God, 2012)

The 2010s saw many veteran bands coming out of hibernation to reunite and make great records, but Swans were the rare reunited band whose new music was sometimes actually better than the music they made the first time around. This was never truer than on The Seer, a two-hour epic double album that's as majestic and beautiful and horrifying as anything Swans did during their initial run, and then some. Its centerpiece is its 32-minute title track, and once that song sucks you in, the lengthy running time is up before you know it. As much as the album can often sound clanging and discordant, it also has moments of delicacy, thanks in part to gorgeous guest vocals from frequent Swans collaborator Jarboe, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, and the members of Low and Akron/Family. Swans have basically become a collective with a revolving door lineup over the years, and on The Seer especially, the guests brought as much to the table as the core members. The Seer is also just the most carefully constructed, most pristine sounding album of second-era Swans, if not of the band's entire career. Swans are a band where filth is always to be expected, but on The Seer, the filth somehow sounds so clean. [A.S.]

58. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition (Warp/Fool's Gold, 2016)

Part of Danny Brown's appeal is that he's always been a deeply weird rapper, and his weirdness was at its best on Atrocity Exhibition. The album was primarily produced by Danny's frequent collaborator Paul White (plus some contributions from Evian Christ, Black Milk, Petite Noir, The Alchemist, and Playa Haze), and even if Danny didn't rap a word on it, Atrocity Exhibition would be one of the decade's best electronic albums. It's his most musically innovative LP production-wise, and Danny rose to the occasion by matching these beats with some of his most out-there bars and most memorable hooks. Totally berserk songs like "Ain't It Funny," "Golddust," and "Dance in the Water" barely sound like hip hop at all, but then in the midst of all that, Atrocity Exhibition includes one of Danny's best traditional rap songs: "Really Doe." As a posse cut with Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Earl Sweatshirt, it's almost like a spiritual sequel to A$P Rocky's "1 Train," and it reminds you that, while Danny loves to make abstract, experimental music, he loves (and is really good at) making real-deal rap too. [A.S.]

57. Power Trip - Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord, 2017)

Way back in 2017 when Nightmare Logic came out, I used to say it solidified them as my favorite modern thrash band. Even then, I was underselling it. Power Trip are one of the best thrash bands, period. They regularly play shows with the bands who defined this genre in the 1980s, and they hold their own next to all of them. It's important to celebrate originality and the act of breaking ground, but to quote Drake, "It ain't about who did it first, it's about who did it right," and Power Trip did it very, very right. Nightmare Logic gives you all the thrills that you got from the best of 1980s thrash and crossover thrash, but it continues to feel like a new album. They take obvious influences from 30+ year old albums, but while lots of modern thrash bands simply pay homage to those albums, Power Trip breathe new life into the genre. At this point, they've been in the game for over ten years and they have their own festival. They're tastemakers, signifiers of cool, and they don't seem like they're going anywhere any time soon. I won't be surprised if they've got an even better album in them, but for now, Nightmare Logic is already going down as a classic. [A.S.]

56. U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited (4AD, 2018)

For years, U.S. Girls were, for all intents and purposes, Meg Remy and a sampler. And it was great. With In a Poem Unlimited, however, she took her vision -- a mix of girl groups, disco, new wave and searing feminism -- and gave it the full band treatment. Backed by Toronto collective Cosmic Range (that includes her husband, Slim Twig), Remy sounded more powerful and assured than ever, with her best batch of songs to date. A mad as hell call to arms, the album proves that sonically, there can be strength in numbers, too. [B.P.]

55. Courtney Barnett - The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (Mom + Pop, 2013)

It's no secret that rock music was a little retro-obsessed this decade, but there are ways to make retro feel fresh, and one of those ways is connecting the dots between various past eras and scenes and sounds and tying them together in new ways. And that's something Australia's Courtney Barnett has been doing her entire career. Lyrically, she's one of our generations Next Dylan's, and musically she's psychedelia, punk, grunge, slacker rock, and more all at once. She can sound like 1967 as much as she can sound like 1997, but that's what makes her seem so modern. In an era where the internet makes music more readily available than ever, Courtney Barnett sounds like someone who has absorbed an over-abundance of it. Even more importantly than all of that, though, is that she's just a natural-born great songwriter, and that was clear from her very first two EPs, which got compiled as The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas and functioned as her "debut album" for a lot of listeners, especially here in America. Some of the best songs she's ever written are on this release ("Avant Gardener," "Anonymous Club"), and it remains fascinating to hear just how distinct and compelling her music was from the get-go. [A.S.]

54. Hop Along - Get Disowned (Hot Green, 2012)

Before becoming one of the decade's most beloved indie rock bands, Hop Along grinded their way through the punk and DIY scene, playing tons of tiny rooms and opening for seemingly any band who asked. They aren't openers anymore -- now they headline decent sized venues on the regular -- but back in the first half of this decade, Hop Along were a well-kept secret. They hadn't really gotten much indie hype machine buzz yet, but they spread like wildfire thanks to good old word of mouth. Even when they'd be on first of three at a big venue, there'd always be a group of people near the front yelling every word. It was always obvious this band was destined for a breakthrough, and that was because of how damn near perfect the songs on Get Disowned were. The opposite of an overnight success, Hop Along had been around as Frances Quinlan's solo project since the mid 2000s (initially known as Hop Along, Queen Ansleis), and though she released the 2005 solo album Freshman Year as a teenager and some EPs, 2012's Get Disowned was their full-band debut album and the album that truly started it all. They'd eventually sign to Saddle Creek, have their long-overdue breakthrough, and earn a great amount of acclaim for Get Disowned when the label reissued it in 2016. But initially, Get Disowned came out on Algernon Cadwallader's tiny, seemingly now-defunct label Hot Green Records, and it was the kind of album that was just too good to stay underground forever. When you hear Frances yell "nobody deserves you the way that I do" on album standout "Tibetan Pop Stars," you're reminded why this band was once considered emo, but Get Disowned also has a Neutral Milk Hotel-esque folk side that gives it more of a shambolic, earthy edge than their later albums. They tightened up their sound on 2015's Painted Shut and successfully navigated more ambitious territory than ever on 2018's Bark Your Head Off, Dog, but the raw, humble charm of Get Disowned makes this album remain just as much a gem as it was the day it was quietly released. [A.S.]

53. Rihanna - ANTI (Westbury Road/Roc Nation, 2016)

Well before releasing her eighth album ANTI, Rihanna was well established as a generation-defining R&B star, but she'd never really released a great album. For most of her career, that was fine. R&B in the 21st century is pop, and pop is a singles game. But by 2016, some of the most instant-classic albums in the world were coming from stars like Kanye, Beyonce, and frequent Rihanna duetter Drake, so Ri knew she had to do it too. And with ANTI, she did. The atmospheric, downtempo "alt-R&B" craze had also fully risen from the underground to the mainstream at this point, and the EDM-pop direction Rihanna had taken on her last couple albums was already sounding outdated, so Rihanna proved that -- like Beyonce had done on her 2013 self-titled album -- she could do that sound just as well as (or better than) anyone. She nabbed a guest spot from rising indie-R&B singer SZA a year before SZA released her own masterpiece. Drake, who already started embracing atmosphere and minimalism on 2011's Take Care, reprised his role as Rihanna duetter on one of the best duets they ever released, "Work." Dark, moody songs like "Desperado," "Needed Me," and "Yeah, I Said It" truly beat the era's underground R&B singers at their own game. ANTI was an anti-pop record in other ways too. "Same Ol' Mistakes" is a cover of psych-pop band Tame Impala's "New Person, Same Old Mistakes," and even Kevin Parker agrees her version is now the definitive version. And Rihanna added in her dose of psych with the trippy ode to weed "James Joint." Then there's "Love on the Brain" and "Higher," which channel raw, vintage soul in a way that wasn't trendy, and they remain two of the albums best and most emotionally bare tracks. It's easy to peg ANTI as the album where Rihanna hopped on a hip bandwagon, but it's much more than that, and it only sounds better as it ages. [A.S.]

52. Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (Circus Company, 2011)

One of the most innovative electronic musicians of the decade, Nicolas Jaar blended ambient music, beat-driven techno and house, bits of jazz and classical, avant-garde, and even a taste of straight-up pop ("Space Is Only Noise If You Can See") on his 2011 proper debut album, Space Is Only Noise. Jaar went on to release so much more great material throughout the decade, under his own name, as one half of Darkside (whose sole album is also included on this list), and as Against All Logic. His discography can already feel a bit overwhelming, but if you're looking for an easy entry point, you can't go wrong by returning to the breakthrough album that (mostly) started it all. [A.S.]

51. Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love (Sub Pop, 2015)

A lot of '90s-era punk bands made long-awaited comebacks in the 2010s, but none went as smoothly as Sleater-Kinney's. Right off the bat, Sleater-Kinney announced a reunion tour and a new album the same day. Their reunion was never going to be about nostalgia, and they didn't even do one round of dates dedicated to the classics. By the time the tour began, No Cities To Love had been released, and their setlists were as dedicated to that album as their 2005 setlists were to The Woods. Not a lot of bands can pull off something like that, but Sleater-Kinney could because No Cities To Love was on par with any of their best albums. It's stacked with so many great songs, which all have the same strong hooks and same sense of purpose as Sleater-Kinney's classic songs (and even more guitar heroism). It's the rare reunion album that you quickly forget is a "reunion album," because it so naturally and quickly became an essential part of this band's already-fruitful discography. [A.S.]

50. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen (Bad Seed, 2019)

Nearly twenty albums and four decades into his career, it’s remarkable how Nick Cave managed to release one of the greatest albums of his lifetime, Ghosteen, in the year 2019. The album concludes a trilogy of releases -- which started with 2013’s Push The Sky Away and 2016’s Skeleton Tree -- and by all accounts, it’s a near-perfect, emotionally-complex conclusion to an excellent run of albums. Although Skeleton Tree was released shortly after the passing of Nick’s son Arthur, the material on that record was actually mostly written beforehand. Ghosteen, however, was the first to be written entirely after the fact, and while the topic of death and grief are ever-present on the record, it’s actually a far more transcendent and uplifting album than one might have expected. Despite the album’s runtime clocking in at over an hour, Ghosteen never manages to overstay its welcome, with Nick’s unmistakably sinister, chilling vocal performances demanding the listener’s attention at every turn. He dramatically describes spiritual, heavenly scenes of beauty (as seen on the album’s incredible cover art), and also tragically sings lyrics of mourning. Ghosteen is never more tragic than on the breathtaking 14-minute closer "Hollywood," where he recalls the Buddhist story of Kisa Gotami, a mother faced with the death of her baby, while dipping into a heart-stopping falsetto. The entire album is drenched in atmosphere from beginning to end, and there’s nothing really close to a conventional song structure to be found on Ghosteen, yet it remains compelling from start to finish. Experiencing Ghosteen, which was divided into two halves, feels like a slow, gradual rise to a rewarding non-spatiotemporal location beyond words. Perhaps that’s in line with Nick’s official description of the album before its release, where he described the record as “a migrating spirit.” At its best moments, the album feels like a continuous transition towards a place other than what we know, as well as being a reminder of how powerful music can be. [J.N.]

49. David Bowie - Blackstar (Columbia/RCA/ISO, 2016)

When David Bowie first shared the video for his single “Lazarus” in early 2016, one day before dropping his highly-anticipated album Blackstar, the visuals were striking: it showed Bowie rising from a hospital bed, desperately reaching towards the sky, shouting lyrics like “Look up here, I'm in heaven,” and “Oh, I’ll be free, ain’t that just like me?” It was already a heavily impactful, haunting experience at the time, but it became even more unsettling several days later, when Bowie passed away from liver cancer, a secret he had held onto until his death: or so we thought. As an entire body of work, Blackstar is Bowie’s grand, final goodbye, filled with numerous allusions to death, spirituality, and self-eulogy. It’s a wondrously complex, intricately-detailed, and even at times baffling, final statement from a person known for pushing the musical and cultural envelope for decades, which was highly-influenced by Bowie’s then-recent love for Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-influenced masterwork To Pimp a Butterfly, among many other non-rock influences. Sonically, the record is among the wildest and most experimental music of Bowie's entire career, with highlights like “Tis A Pity She Was a Whore” and “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)” diving into the worlds of heady experimental rock and jazz. The album often bounces between occult imagery and threatening descriptions of impending death, especially on the ten-minute track which opens the record, and more foreboding, personal moments that showcase Bowie grappling with his inevitable passing. The latter is most apparent on the record’s climactic closing track, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” where Bowie clearly details his mental state, coming to terms with death itself. He hauntingly sings, “I know something's very wrong/The pulse returns the prodigal sons/The blackout hearts, the flowered news/With skull designs upon my shoes.” It’s almost disturbing to hear Bowie describe his eventual fate, and subsequent global mourning, with such clarity and poetic beauty, but to listen to moments like these with pure unsettlement would be doing the record an injustice. Blackstar, at its core, is a record made by a man finding peace, and by recognizing that fact, the listener is able to not simply just miss what’s gone, but instead appreciate what’s left behind. Bowie might have passed on, but he couldn’t leave us forever before providing us with one of the most daring albums of his career. It’s not just an album that cemented his legacy as an artist never willing to compromise with challenges, but it also ultimately served to comfort his millions of fans who might have needed it most. [J.N.]

48. Noname - Room 25 (self-released, 2018)

Noname combines rap, spoken word, and live-band jazz on one of the most creative hip hop albums of the decade. To Pimp A Butterfly may have opened the doors for jazz-rap's comeback this decade, but Noname isn't following in Kendrick or anyone else's footsteps on Room 25. Her roots in poetry are obvious from listening to these songs, and her experience with slam poetry and spoken-word puts her in a different lane than most of her peers. But make no mistake, Noname is a rapper; Room 25's got the bars and the punchlines to go up against any of the more "traditional" rap albums released this decade. It's also got the glistening keys and the dizzying basslines to go up against any of the best jazz albums. It's hard not to mention that, as I write this, Noname is publicly talking about quitting rap. It'd be a bummer to see such a talented artist call it a day at a career peak like the one Noname has been on, but even if she does, Room 25 will live on as a true gem. [A.S.]

47. Earl Sweatshirt - I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside (Tan Cressida/Columbia, 2015)

Of all the hip hop groups and collectives that emerged this decade, there are perhaps none that have had more influence, cultural dominance, and growth than Odd Future. And within Odd Future, perhaps no (technically former) member had a more unique and thrilling rise than Earl. Once the teenager whose mother caused him to be absent for the group's instant rise to fame, Earl is now the avant-rap wizard who intentionally works more with abstract underground artists than with the now-famous rappers he once called peers. And the major turning point was 2015's I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside. Less experimental than his two latest works but much more unconventional than everything before it, I Don't Like Shit made it clear that Earl wasn't interested in following the path to stardom and instead he opened the doors for a career where his fans would embrace his most unexpected creative decisions. It's a dark, personal, introverted album, and it's got some of the best bars and punchlines of his career. His two more recent albums saw Earl experimenting with the very idea of what a "bar" could even be, but I Don't Like Shit is still rooted in some time-honored hip hop traditions. It occupies a middle ground between the Earl who wants to rap his ass off and the Earl who wants to make sonic achievements in music, and that remains a very appealing place for Earl to be. [A.S.]

46. White Lung - Deep Fantasy (Domino, 2014)

The thing about The Shape of Punk to Come is that it wasn't the shape of punk to come. Punk got a lot more popular in its wake, but none of it really sounded like that album. Back in 2014, when White Lung released their third album and Domino debut Deep Fantasy, I wondered if maybe this would be the shape of punk to come. Well, it turned out this wasn't either. It sounded like the future of punk in 2014, and it still sounds like the future of punk in 2019, because nobody's had the guts to try and copy it. Deep Fantasy did everything that its excellent 2012 predecessor Sorry did but with better production and even nastier songs. Sorry was nasty as all hell, but when "Drown with the Monster" opens Deep Fantasy with its low, thundering power chord riff, you know you're in for a different beast entirely. As on Sorry, the White Lung of Deep Fantasy figured out how to apply gigantic hooks and face-melting fretwork to the tried-and-true formula of short-fast-and-loud punk, managing to defy the genre and strictly adhere to it all at once. The songs on Deep Fantasy are just as intense as Sorry, but the production really helps bring out the best in them and it's no surprise that this album -- which is ever so slightly easier on the ears -- helped gain White Lung a bigger fanbase. And like the great hardcore and punk bands of the past, White Lung used their platform to amplify necessary messages in direct opposition to the status quo. A few years before the #MeToo and #BelieveWomen hashtags went viral, White Lung captured the essence of both on Deep Fantasy highlight "I Believe You," a takedown of rape culture that could've been an anthem for the #MeToo movement if it had been released a few years later. Deep Fantasy is a pre-Trump album that only became (sadly) more relevant in the Trump era, and the absolute finest example of real-deal punk music released this decade. It might never be the future of punk, but it still sounds better than whatever punk became in its wake. [A.S.]

45. Tyler the Creator - IGOR (Columbia, 2019)

When Tyler, the Creator started this decade off as a member of the rowdy skate-rap crew Odd Future and the brains behind the dark, shock-rap mixtape Bastard, who would've thought he'd end it with the gorgeous, lovelorn, experimental soul song cycle IGOR? It's hard to pick a top Tyler album, especially when Bastard and Goblin are definitely his most influential, and maybe it's recency bias to pick IGOR, but IGOR deserves it just because he took such a gigantic leap and stuck the landing. It's full of huge guests like Solange, Kanye West, and Santigold, but no one -- not even Tyler -- really ever takes the spotlight. Everyone's voices swirl into one big melting pot of sounds along with Tyler's inventive production, and the whole thing almost acts more as a mood piece than a rap album. That said, further listens reveal storylines and lyrical depth and traces of the unique personality that Tyler won the world over with a decade ago. It sounds absolutely nothing like his breakthrough works, yet it's unmistakably the work of no other artist, and that's no small feat. [A.S.]

44. Camp Cope - How to Socialise & Make Friends (Run For Cover, 2018)

From the moment you hear Georgia Maq sing, you know it's something special. Between her unflinching lyricism and the unique quality of her voice, she's the kind of artist whose work sucks you in immediately and lingers around in your brain long after the record has finished playing. And with Camp Cope, Georgia has applied that voice and her guitar to Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich's spidery basslines and Sarah Thompson's sturdy drumming to create one of the most singular, powerful punk bands of a generation. Their self-titled 2016 debut is great, and its even better 2018 followup How to Socialise & Make Friends shows a band who are still clearly on the upward swing. Whether Georgia is battling sexism on the #MeToo-era anthems "The Opener" and "The Face of God," or mourning the death of her father on the stunning acoustic album closer "I've Got You," she leaves the listener hanging on her every word. [A.S.]

43. Slowdive – Slowdive (Dead Oceans, 2017)

Slowdive were never as influential as My Bloody Valentine or as well known as Ride, but they arguably pulled off the best shoegaze comeback of the decade. First they wowed crowds with their reunion tour, and followed that with a new album that was not only good for a band who hadn’t made one in two decades, but was one of the best albums of 2017 and in the running for Slowdive’s career-best. It’s also modern and relevant while being clearly made by the same band who gave us Souvlaki 24 years before. [B.P.]

42. Low – Double Negative (Sub Pop, 2018)

May all great groups be this wonderfully innovative in their 25th year. With help from Bon Iver/Sylvan Esso collaborator BJ Bunton, Low recast their distinctive sound -- with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s distinctive voices still at the center -- in fractured electronics. Songs are ripped apart, elements reused throughout the record, and Double Negative travels across sonic extremes (beautiful ambience, bitcrushed noise) to deliver its message of hope through the darkest of times. With it, Low found themselves at a new high. [B.P.]

41. Julia Holter - Ekstasis (RVNG, 2012)

From 2011's minor breakthrough Tragedy through 2018's Aviary, experimental pop artist Julia Holter remained on a steady rise and her music gradually transitioned from tucked-away electronic gems to heavily-arranged live-band pieces that were bursting at the seams. No matter how big or small her music sounded, though, it was always meticulously crafted, gorgeous sounding, and highly cerebral. Each album she's done since Tragedy has been worthy in its own way, but there's something about 2012's Ekstasis that made us pick this one for our list. Maybe it's because it's the first time she really found her footing for the length of an entire album, and there's always something extra special about a first like that. Maybe it's because, even as a more lo-fi, more introverted album than its followups, it manages to be just as ambitious and majestic. Whatever the case, Ekstasis remains one of the decade's finest examples of experimental pop. [A.S.]

40. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope, 2017)

After releasing two of the decade's most breathtaking, fleshed-out, intricately arranged hip hop masterpieces, Kendrick Lamar went back to the basics and made the stripped-back, hard-hitting DAMN., an album that largely sounded more like 1995 than 2017. For a lesser artist, this would be an obvious setback, a suggestion that they were out of ideas or unable to reach the ambitious heights of their previous work. For Kendrick Lamar, it's still one of the very best albums of an entire decade. DAMN. isn't a sign of Kendrick slowing down; it actually escalated him to new heights, thanks to some of the most immediate songs he ever wrote, including his first No. 1 single, "HUMBLE." DAMN. could seem like an easy move for Kendrick, but it was actually a risky one. At the height of mumble rap, he proved he was talented enough to still dominate the rap world with the old school mentality of DAMN. And though the songs on DAMN. are his most simple songs since the pre-good kid, m.A.A.d city days, he approached them with the larger-than-life charisma he started to develop in GKMC's aftermath. And he snuck in stuff that the pre-GKMC Kendrick could have never pulled off, like the nearly-eight-minute, three-part suite "FEAR." that would've fit on either of DAMN.'s two direct predecessors, or the jaw-dropping album closer "DUCKWORTH.," where Kendrick told the origin story of a lifetime. [A.S.]

39. Arctic Monkeys - AM (Domino, 2013)

Arctic Monkeys’ fifth album AM marked a significant turning point for the band: not only did it bring the band a second wave of international success with a new generation of fans, the record also ushered in a completely new sound that distinguished itself from its predecessors. For the majority of the album, the band incorporated a groove-heavy aesthetic that had just as much in common with golden-age hip hop as Black Sabbath. The band cited Dr. Dre as an influence, and his neck-snapping beats can be heard all over AM, like on “One For The Road” and “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”, with Alex Turner’s seductive croon not sounding an inch out of place. Elsewhere on the album, the band also flexed their skills at writing quieter ballads, with highlights “Mad Sounds” and the perhaps-ironically-titled “No. 1 Party Anthem” now seen as clear precursors to the lounge-pop sounds explored on their next release, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. Arctic Monkeys’ knack for writing killer hooks is not lost on AM either; from the harmonized chorus on “Knee Socks” to the roaring refrain on “R U Mine?”, AM isn’t just one of the band’s most daring releases, it’s also one of their catchiest. It’s a record that’s seductive, tongue-in-cheek, and above all else, tons of fun. [J.N.]

38. M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (Mute, 2011)

Anthony Gonzalez always swings for the fences, and when it came to following up 2008’s Saturdays = Youth, he expanded his nostalgic pop sound in every direction with this sprawling double album that seems to run on pure emotion. It’s the best kind of bombast, with layers of synthesizers, guitars, booming drums and “whoa oh” vocals building tidal waves of sound that crash over you. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming may have inspired the formation of a hundred mediocre millennial whoop acts, but that doesn’t dilute this album’s enduring impact. [B.P.]

37. Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (Dull Tools, 2012)

Though they released American Specialties in 2011 (originally just as a tape), it was their second album, Light Up Gold, that announced Parquet Courts a major force and DIY indie rock flag-flyers. The album’s killer one-two punch opening salvo of “Master of My Craft” and “Borrowed Time,” was also the band in a nutshell: ultra-hooky, highly quotable (“Socrates died in the fucking gutter!”) arty punk that could be both snarky and sentimental, and bristled with high-tension energy. Written by Texas transplants Andrew Savage and Austin Brown and energized by their new home, Light Up Gold is also a classic New York record, telling tales of “billionaire buses on my unlit streets” and being stoned and starving in Ridgewood, Queens. Parquet Courts have continued to make good on Light Up Gold’s promise but it’s this first impression that sticks with you. [B.P.]

36. Grimes - Visions (4AD, 2012)

Before poptimism took off on a mass scale, Grimes was the living embodiment of poptimism. She sung the praises of Mariah Carey, Tool, and Paramore right alongside Burial, Butthole Surfers, and Elliott Smith, and though no one would bat an eye at that now, she was met by anger, confusion, and accusations of trolling at the time. She was absolutely not trolling, and anyone who heard her breakthrough album and 4AD debut Visions should've known that. Grimes emerged out of a world of experimental and electronic music, and while those roots shined brightly on Visions, so did her love of world-dominating music. She was still a small, underground artist at heart, but avant-pop gems like "Genesis" and "Oblivion" quickly went on to compete with actual pop music. Grimes seemed destined to change the pop landscape forever, and she did it, though almost none of her followers were as tasteful or as remarkable as Grimes was on Visions. Art that intentionally looks towards the future like this can often, perhaps ironically, end up sounding dated more quickly than music that initially seemed less innovative. But all these years later, well after the noticeable impact of Grimes' music settled in, Visions still manages to sound ahead of its time. [A.S.]

35. Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride (Columbia, 2019)

On the surface, Father of the Bride is perhaps the most feel-good rock album of 2019 -- at least for people who think music that sounds like Paul Simon and the Grateful Dead is "feel-good" -- but further listens reveal much more than what immediately meets the eye. At the forefront, these are perfect pop songs. When you dig a little deeper, you'll find contemplative, sometimes depressing lyricism, and a knack for layering, arrangements, and production that's damn near genius. FOTB casually defies genre, incorporating elements of country music and jam bands while also enlisting the help of hip hop artists like Drake/Kendrick Lamar producer DJ Dahi and The Internet's Steve Lacy. It not only never sounds awkward, it sounds unmistakably like the work of Vampire Weekend, who have spent their entire career crafting a sound that remains unique even when they're wearing their influences on their sleeves. It's hard to say if Father of the Bride is currently Vampire Weekend's best album (I understand why a lot of people will give that title to its darker predecessor Modern Vampires of the City), but it's the most accessible, the most consistently rewarding, and the most refined. It felt like a classic I'd known all my life by the second or third listen, and countless listens later, that hasn't changed one bit. [A.S.]

34. Kvelertak - Nattesferd (Roadrunner, 2016)

It was obvious that Kvelertak were onto something from the start. Their 2010 debut remains one of the finest debuts in heavy music this decade; it basically put some of the most iconic classic rock, metal, and punk bands in a blender (Metallica, Sabbath, Ramones, Motorhead, Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc), added a dose of extremity via black metal and hardcore, and turned it into something that was full of familiar thrills yet sounded entirely fresh. For a band who never stopped wearing their influences on their sleeves, Kvelertak have been increasingly unique, and most importantly of all, they've consistently been fun. The thing that all those aforementioned classic bands have in common, is that you can throw them on at a party or blast them in the car or see them live, and they'll always be a fucking blast. Kvelertak offer up the same pure adrenaline rush that those bands do, and they do it while crafting innovative songs that genuinely add to the heavy music canon, not just imitate it. Kvelertak pretty much laid out their vision in full on their debut album, and they sharpened their tools more and more each time, which is one reason why Nattesferd is their best thus far. A second reason is this: those comparisons to classic bands always come to mind when I listen to Kvelertak and Meir, but by album three, Kvelertak had become so distinct that the only band I could think about while listening to Kvelertak is Kvelertak (save for the blatant Van Halen homage, "1985," Nattesferd's one misstep). And the third reason is, put simply, Nattesferd just has the best songs Kvelertak ever wrote. Vocalist Erlend Hjelvik was a huge part of Kvelertak's appeal, and I cautiously await the band's next album now that he left the band, but they're a band where the guitars hook me first and the rest is all secondary, and the riffs on Nattesferd rival Page and Iommi and Hetfield and any of the other godlike axe-slingers who paved the way for Kvelertak. Take the entire intro of the title track, or the mid-section of "Berserkr" -- these are riffs and arrangements that combine pure badassery, earworm melo