Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at steve.hyden@uproxx.com.

With the end-of-the-decade parade wrapping up, there’s only one way to look now: forward! It seems in hindsight that the major artists of each decade were somewhat predictable at the beginning of each decade (i.e. Radiohead in the 2000s, Beyonce or Kanye in the 2010s) with some exceptions (Frank Ocean in the 2010s). All that being said, which artist or bands do you feel are most primed to take the decade for the 2020s? — Bryant from Lexington, KY

For the sake of conversation, I’m going to accept your premise that the artist or band who comes to dominate a particular decade tends to be obvious from the start. I’m not sure that’s totally true, though it is a fact that several of the most important artists of the 2010s — including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Adele — were either already dominant or clearly ascending at the end of the aughts. Though, as you mentioned, Frank Ocean, along with Lana Del Rey, unquestionably were the decade’s top indie stars, and nobody saw them coming back in 2009.

In these sorts of conversations, it’s always good to bet on youth, which is why the artist who came immediately to mind is Billie Eilish. When it comes to streaming numbers, the 17-year-old already is absurdly popular, and her debut 2019 album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, will surely go down as one of the year’s flagship releases. Because she’s so young and famous, I would expect her pop-star ride to carry on well into the 2020s, and for her insinuating goth-pop to continue inspiring legions of imitators.

Here’s another educated guess: I would expect that non-American, non-English speaking pop acts will keep on making big in-roads into the American market in the next decade. Which means that an already monster-sized group like BTS seems well-positioned to be a defining act of the ’20s — or it might be one or two members who break away from the group and establish their own thriving solo careers, like Harry Styles or Camila Cabello.

When it comes to indie-rock, I would put my money on Big Thief, who of course have been on a hellacious tear in the past three years without (in my view) maxing out their potential. I really think they could put out their Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in the early 2020s, which would cinch their burgeoning rep as one of the greats. Can’t wait to find out!

I’ve been watching HBO’s Watchmen and I’m really enjoying its soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I heard their score for The Social Network before I listened to any Nine Inch Nails albums in full, so The Downward Spiral and The Fragile have always sounded “cinematic” to me. Were these albums seen that way in the ’90s? Pitchfork famously panned The Fragile when it was released but changed its opinion drastically when reviewing its reissue. Does Reznor’s acclaimed soundtrack work present a different context for today’s listeners to appreciate an album like The Fragile? — Drew from Cincinnati