A list of the best albums that came out in the 2010s, ranked by the author.
It can be a little challenging and also somewhat fun to talk about music while trying to evaluate the best of the best within a given time period.
Specifically, the challenge is mostly to do with music being perhaps more subjective than other forms of entertainment. Like, it’s easier to find people disagreeing about the quality of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band than it is finding people who seriously have a bone to pick with The Shawshank Redemption (if you’re talking all-time great and well-loved movies) or The Sopranos (if you’re talking about the best TV shows of all time).
What follows is a good deal narrower than a conversation about ‘all-timers,’ because the focus here is on the 2010s, and specifically the best albums that came out in that decade. Some of these great 2010s albums already feel like classics, and are very well-known, while a few others might be a little less expected, or by artists who aren’t necessarily mainstream.
Speaking of artists, there’s a limit of one album per artist, just because that keeps things interesting when you’re only doing a top 10. 10 ‘Skeleton Tree’ (2016) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds While it might’ve felt like a bold claim to say, in 2016, that Skeleton Tree was the best Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, now a decade’s passed, and it feels like slightly less of a hot take. The 1990s might’ve been the most consistent of decades for Cave and his band, but the 2010s was also great, albeit a decade that was a good deal mellower and somber in comparison; less rock and rawness, for lack of a better description.
Skeleton Tree feels intentionally fragile, and it’s a heavy-going album with its sound and lyrics, though plenty of the songs also have fairly enigmatic lyrical content. There is a haziness in the first half that does give way to more of a release in the second half, when things get a little less ambiguous, though that second half might well also be more devastating.
It’s not an immediately gripping album, nor a great starting point if you’re completely new to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but once you let it grow on you, there’s not much else album-wise from the past decade or so that’s quite as moving. 9 ‘Bloom’ (2012) Beach House The music on Bloom is pretty immediate, considering it’s also generally fairly mellow, but the album is still a difficult one to sum up. Beach House is a unique-sounding band, so that can be said about most of their albums.
They pretty consistently release albums every two to three years, generally, with eight having come out since 2006, and though a couple are right up there among the best of the century so far, Bloom is the best of the best. It comes down to it being the most consistent Beach House album.
The music here sounds dreamy, ethereal, and oddly moving/bittersweet, with those qualities found on other albums of the band’s, sure, but all to an even greater extent on Bloom. Sorry for there not really being a more poetic way to put it, but that’s just the nature of some music.
It really is sometimes like dancing about architecture. 8 ‘This Is Happening’ (2010) LCD Soundsystem For a while, This Is Happening was the final statement LCD Soundsystem made as a band, at least studio album-wise. There were four studio albums released between 2005 and 2010 (if you count 45:33), and then a big live album called The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live at Madison Square Garden, which was a recording of the band’s purportedly last-ever show in 2011.
LCD Soundsystem came back not long after, though, and American Dream (2017) was a pretty great ‘comeback’ album, and certainly the most underrated entry in LCD Soundsystem’s discography. But it can’t quite touch the greatness of This Is Happening, which really is a showcase of the band at their best, with the whole thing being so well sequenced and paced.
It does help, regarding the pacing, that the three best songs on the album are spaced out so well, with one being the opening track (‘Dance Yourself Clean’), one being at the album’s center (‘I Can Change’), and then the third being the closing track (‘Home’). 7 ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ (2015) Kendrick Lamar Aside from the stuff that really blew up during that whole Drake beef, Kendrick Lamar is probably more recognized for his albums than his individual songs, though that’s not to say that To Pimp a Butterfly is without some standout tracks.
‘King Kunta,’ ‘The Blacker the Berry,’ and ‘Alright’ were all understandably chosen to be released as singles, and they all do indeed work on their own. To Pimp a Butterfly is broader and even more ambitious than Lamar’s 2012 album, Good Kid, M.A.A. D City. But as part of an overall album that spans 16 tracks and close to 80 minutes all up, those songs (and the other 13) are arguably even stronger.
To Pimp a Butterfly is broader and even more ambitious than Lamar’s 2012 album, Good Kid, M.A.A. D City. But as part of an overall album that spans 16 tracks and close to 80 minutes all up, those songs (and the other 13) are arguably even stronger
2010S Best Albums Music Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Beach House LCD Soundsystem Kendrick Lamar Skeleton Tree Bloom This Is Happening To Pimp A Butterfly
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