The 50 best albums of the 2010s

Robyn doesn't play by anyone's rules. After the Swedish pop starlet began her career as a cookie-cutter dance diva, she took things into her own hands by setting up her own record label and putting out 2005's incredible self-titled effort: a pop album that was as emotional as it was danceable. When 2010 hit, Robyn put out a series of mini-albums over the summer and fall that made up the "Body Talk" project, culminating in the November full-length that mashed her favorite songs from all three mini-albums together. The end result is a journey through deep club beats, heartwrenching lyrics and melodies that came to define the decade that followed. Come for wide-eyed honesty in songs like "Call Your Girlfriend" and "Dancing On My Own"; stay for bangers like "U Should Know Better [ft. Snoop Dogg]" and "Stars 4-Ever."

Steven Ellison's third effort under his Flying Lotus moniker incidentally ended up being the record that put him on the map, due large in part to his blatant and outright disregard for genre. With most tracks clocking in under three minutes, Ellison explores fully formed melodic concepts at a near breakneck pace, from furiously fretted acid jazz one minute to J Dilla-styled beat chops the next (to say nothing of the pitch-perfect paranoia he achieves on his collaboration with Radiohead's Thom Yorke). Alienating upon first listen, subtle shades of emotion emerge with each new play, your ears finding new sonic corners previously unexplored. "Cosmogramma" burns with the intensity of 10 cities.

The last few OutKast albums rarely showed Big Boi and André 3000 working together, which is why "Sir Luscious Left Foot" ended up being less of an album and more of a pronouncement: That the lyrical miracle that is Big Boi didn't really need his eccentric partner in crime to shine - maybe that's why he wrote "Shine Blockas." Through a staggering 14 tracks, Antwan André Patton takes the listener through a cavalcade of sounds and moods, pushing his collaborators far outside their comfort zone. Did the past-his-prime Scott Storch really produce the trunk-rattlin' club stomper of a lead single "Shutterbugg"? Is that Lil' Jon giving us moody club catharsis on the Jamie Foxx feature "Hustle Blood"? Is "The Train, Pt 2" one of the most emotional songs we've gotten from Big Boi ever? Big Boi bodied his debut solo album so hard we're still feeling its after-effects nearly a decade later.

Seemingly bursting out of nowhere, Janelle Monáe came out the gate serving classic sci-fi futurism, contemporary soul aesthetics and all of it mixed with her dynamite sense of pop melody and electric live performances. Seen in androgynous suits (so as to sell her concepts, not sex), she hustled her way through daring, funky songs like "Tight Rope," "Dance or Die" and even psychedelic ballads like "Mushrooms & Roses" and orchestral closer "BabopbyeYa." Daring and danceable in equal measure, Monáe would go on to have legitimate hits, multiple Grammy nominations and even become a bona fide film actress, but for many, "The ArchAndroid" will always be her calling card and masterpiece.

Before he truly became Kardashian Kanye (or even Jesus Kanye), there was the Indulgent Kanye, and on "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," he indulged better than anyone else. Armies of guest vocalists, surprise Chris Rock appearances, clever prog-rock samples and Nicki Minaj dropping arguably the best rap verse for the entire decade that followed, "Fantasy" didn't deliver radio hits so much as it delivered a full-bore experience. Kanye, per always, gave us lines that were at times corny, at times funny, at times visceral and at times inspirational, all of it adding up to nothing short of hip-hop decadence. The closing Gil Scott-Heron sample ties everything up with poignancy, and despite the numerous controversies and successes that followed, this may very well go down as the best Kanye West album of all time.

Dan Bejar's Destroyer outfit finally gave in to its best lounge-pop instincts on its ninth album "Kaputt," and it remains an absolute trip from start to finish. Drawn-out, Bowie-like vocals, the downright thick grooves of "Suicide Demo For Kara Walker" and a lyrical sense of abstraction that's accentuated with the nearly limitless pools of saxophones Bejar brings in, Destroyer has constructed the kind of album that's a joy to groove to but filled with lyrics that sometimes border on the nightmarish. The songs were so intricate they became catchy, so much so that they got sampled by rappers years later. "Kaputt" is a dynamic, deliberate, powerful work that showed Bejar at the peak of his powers nearly 10 albums into his career.

While Adele's 2009 debut album, "19," showcased a talent to watch, it was "21" that shot her into the stratosphere, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time in short order. At times brash, at times soulful and often very vulnerable, "21" was a rare pop album that spoke to every demographic, whether it be through the fiery opening salvo of "Rolling in the Deep" or the jaunty "Rumour Has It" or even the carefully articulated cover of The Cure's "Lovesong." There was something for everyone on "21," but if we're being honest it was closing ballad "Someone Like You" that would become the most parodied, most considered and most beloved of all of Adele's songs, and its universal message still speaks volumes today, anchored by Adele's legendary, one-of-a-kind voice.

Initially considered a mixtape (before being rounded it up as part of the "Trilogy" rerelease in 2012), "House of Balloons" came out shrouded in mystery and ended up intriguing everyone whose ears it touched. Photos of The Weeknd didn't exist at the time, but the answer to the question of "Who made this?" was far less interesting than the answer to "What is this?" Less concerned with starting the party than dissecting the messy emotional aftermath, Abel Tesfaye's introduction to the world was nothing short of striking: gritty, brutal and at times unflinching. Sexual in tone but far removed from the concept of "sexy," The Weeknd's grimy beats and foul mouth took modern R&B to dark new places, and we couldn't help but get wrapped up in the debauchery. "You bring the drugs, baby / I could bring my pain," he extols on "Wicked Games" and with that line alone, "House of Balloons" concept comes into focus: He's someone who seeks to numb himself so he can't feel anything. The album's striking centerpiece is "Glass Table Girls," which follows a beat-switch from a Siouxsie and the Banshees sample into something sinister, seemingly subconscious and endlessly quotable. "Read skies 'cos time don't exist," is an incredible lyric and only set Tesfaye up to become a semi-accidental stadium pop star in the years that followed.

Merrill Garbus' first full-length under her spellcheck-breaking tUnE-yArDs moniker was recorded using audio editing freeware and sounded about as grimy as you'd expect given that cheap setup. Perhaps that's why "w h o k i l l" arrived with such a gut-punch impact, with Garbus' wild vocal range and staccato horn sections accentuating these spiky, intensely memorable indie-rock numbers. Sometimes manic, often downright catchy, tUnE-yArDs' sophomore effort relied heavily on the percussive elements to drive the album's melodies, and perhaps that's why the record stands out from so many guitar- and synth-driven efforts that came out around the time. Even at the Village Voice's critic consensus poll known as Pazz & Jop, "w h o k i l l" ended up winning best album honors over a litany of contenders, fully announcing Garbus as a new voice in rock that was a force to be reckoned with. (What's that about? What's that about?)

When it comes to someone as witty and acerbic as John Darnielle, his muse will take him pretty much any damn where it wants, like on the band's literally biblical 2009 record "The Life of the World to Come." Yet with "Transcendental Youth," buoyant and sometimes downright boppy melodies mask the sadness that rests in the lyric sheets, and sometimes Darnielle's revelations can border on painful. "Some things you do just to see / How bad they make you feel," he pleads on the otherwise-peppy "Cry for Judas," concluding that "I am just a broken machine / And I do things that I don't really mean." Ouch. While Darnielle's confessions are always disarming, his sense of melody remains stronger than ever (the downright loungey title track makes for a striking closer). All in all, in a decade full of great albums from The Mountain Goats, this may very well be their signature masterwork.

Loved among critics, the wise-beyond-his-years Will Stratton has been perfecting his own blend of hushed, poetic folk songs in relative obscurity since his 2007 debut "What the Night Said." Yet "Post-Empire," his fourth full-length proper, was an artistic breakthrough, as his new love of string arrangements helped in creating an album as sweeping as it was immediate. The furiously strummed "When You Let Your Hair Down to Your Shoulder" is accentuated by sawing violins that give the upbeat number a wash of cinematic grandeur, while the Leo Kottke-esque "If You Wait Long Enough" feels like him covering a song of one of his great folk idols were it not for the fact that it is a pure wandering-soul original. For the uninitiated, Stratton's discography is filled with gems, but "Post-Empire" is an outright, largely undiscovered masterpiece that's simply in need of a larger audience.

After fans rallied behind a Free Fiona campaign to force Sony/Epic Records to release an album they thought was being held up by the labels, Fiona Apple got to work and delivered 2005's "Extraordinary Machine," her first new album in six years. It was acclaimed despite her switching producers partway through the recording process, but seven years later, she put out a self-produced record called "The Idler Wheel..." that saw her get even more raw and gritty than ever before. For all its fussy production choices, "Wheel" has elbowed its way to become one of her all-time most beloved records. From the simmering fire of "Hot Knife" to the Tin Pan Alley shuffle of the gritty outsider anthem "Periphery," Apple's ever-acidic lines about love and isolation felt even sharper this time out, as if she discovered a weirdness to her music only previously hinted at and decided to build songs around it that were melodically satisfying even if they shifted around constantly. A sidewinder of an album that's still revealing its mysteries to us years later.

One gets the sense that Australian-Belgian artist Gotye doesn't like talking to the press much but especially so after he became an international superstar. His 2011 song "Somebody That I Used to Know" did a slow-crawl to become a worldwide, Grammy-winning sensation, but its popularity almost overshadowed the fact that the rest of his third full-length album, "Making Mirrors," was nothing short of a pop songsmith tour-de-force. Ranging from Beck-styled alternative rock numbers (the all-too-brief "Easy Way Out") to Motown rave-ups (the stellar "I Feel Better") to AM radio feel-good stomps ("Save Me"), Gotye showed his intense love for artists in every genre by making a song in...just about every genre he could think of. "Making Mirrors" holds up astoundingly well, which is a good thing because since its release, Gotye has all but sworn off making new music, instead focusing on setting up record labels, supporting other musicians and raising a family.

Critically divisive when it first landed, "The Terror" did what no Flaming Lips album had done before, which was bring singer-songwriter Wayne Coyne's trademark existential ponderings straight to the forefront of the band's sound, introducing us to a soundscape that was deliberately bleak and mournful — a far cry from the acid-trip weirdness that they made their name on. Despite one gimme-gimme pop single tacked on at the end ("Sun Blows Up Today"), the rest of the album has vast swaths and valleys of dry synth sounds, painted in a way that was both bleak and weirdly accessible. The journeyman tale that is the expansive "You Lust" (featuring a perfectly pitched cameo by Phantogram) shows the band willing to stretch its music to its very breaking point even as, thematically, their hearts are clearly already broken. Finding beauty in their own pain, "The Terror" is a stunning creature to behold.

While Lorde's 2017 sophomore effort, "Melodrama," is regarded as a contemporary pop classic by many, it was her 2013 debut album that introduced her to the world and, amazingly, retains so much apathetic power all these years later. "I'm kind of over gettin' told to throw my hands up in the air," she opines during "Team," and a generation of fans felt exactly what she meant. Whether it be deconstructing stereotypical bling-bling imagery on her monster smash "Royals" or citing visions of clean teeth across multiple songs, there's something otherworldly about Lorde's lyrics, all culminating in the lo-fi dance party that is "Ribs," a beautifully sweet tale of fumbled confessions as a party winds down. As true fans know, Lorde is so much more than her singles, and "Pure Heroine" proved to be a hell of an announcement.

As the heavy toms shake the core of opening song, "Dream House," you'd be forgiven for thinking that Deafheaven's sophomore album is just another effort from another band that loves metal and screamo vocals just like all the rest. Yet as the nine-minute serpentine track unwinds, listeners find layers, emotion and genuine gravity within the band's mystic lyrics and deft melodicism. On "Sunbather," Deafheaven's unquestioned breakthrough, these San Francisco rockers sound fired up and vulnerable in equal measures, the only cure for their ills being to make make an endless pile of hardcore black metal anthems. Soaring and tortured, "Sunbather" still packs a headbanging wallop.

"I'm King Push / This king push" the legendary Pusha T raps on the opening song of his how-is-it-possible-this-is-his debut album, and no matter how long we had to wait, dear goodness was worth the wait. Pushing himself to new lyrical innovations, "My Name is My Name" has the ex-Clipse member going as hard as he can over peak-era Kanye West productions that are as interesting as they are sly. While the beats are quirky and the guest stars are many, Pusha T remains the unquestioned star of the show, sometimes packing so many great thoughts into the span of a single couplet (like on "Nosetalgia," where he raps "N***a, this is timeless, simply 'cos it's honest / Pure as the fumes that be f****n' with my sinus"). While his brief-but-impactful "Daytona" from 2018 and subsequent Drake beefing helped make him a solo superstar, the wit and power on display on his debut feels like lightning in a bottle, as Push takes his leisurely time to pepper his album with so many good lines it's almost unfair. No wonder he calls himself king. 

Hyped to hell and back by the U.K. music press, the Arctic Monkeys had sensational critical and commercial success in Europe but were relegated to cult band status in the U.S. — but all of that changed with "AM", the band's fifth full-length. Produced once again by Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford, Alex Turner leans hard into his stoner-rock desert instincts, resulting in a litany of legendary songs like "Do I Wanna Know?" and the lovable "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" The singles became go-to cover songs the second they dropped, but the Vegas-rock stomp of "Knee Socks" and the sparse John Cooper Clarke cover that closes the album highlights just how much the band has matured in its brief tenure. The reward for all that hard work? Their breakthrough American record and a classic whose status has only grown since release.

To position themselves as the future of dance music, all that the Howard brothers who make up Disclosure had to do was simply look into the past. Reviving classic house sounds in an era full of hard EDM bass drops, their clean, effective dance songs stood out in the best way possible, offering a degree of melodic sophistication to a scene that had become increasingly bro-driven. While "Latch" was the unquestioned breakthrough smash that helped launch Sam Smith, it was their collaborations with the upper crust of British dance music that helped launch the band itself into several year-end critics lists, with AlunaGeorge, Jessie Ware and Friendly Fires' Ed Macfarlane all popping in to deliver genre-defining work. This — plus the sweet, comedown-ready mid-tempo closer "Help Me Lose My Mind" with London Grammar —all adds up to a record that very much helped rewire the public consciousness into realizing that you can have truly great contemporary dance music without succumbing to trends of the time.

Released over a decade and a half after his last album, D'Angelo's "Black Messiah" dropped less than two weeks before Christmas 2014 and forced numerous critics to rethink their Albums of the Year list, with many placing the raw, deeply funky "Black Messiah" squarely at the top. From the throwback jazz of "Betray My Heart" to the enveloping throwback soul of "Till It's Done (Tutu)," nearly every song on "Black Messiah" sounds like it has existed for at least 30 years, hitting a vein of classic pop songwriting that struck many as eerily familiar even if the songs were brand new. Although there's an all-star cast behind him, D'Angelo is still the driving force here, playing close to a dozen instruments and writing and producing everything we hear. It's an emotional tour de force, at times aggressive (the poignant "1000 Deaths") and at times romantic (closer "Another Life"). D'Angelo covers a wide array of moods in what has been universally hailed as not only his masterpiece but also one of the best neo-soul albums ever made.

When iamamiwhoami debuted with a litany of cryptic, high-quality music videos in early 2010, people saw the artist name and began asking who was behind all of this. Was it a new project from Gaga? Nine Inch Nails? The project's mastermind ended up being Swedish folk-pop singer Jonna Lee, who just wanted a change of pace from the same old strummy coffeehouse gigs, reinventing herself as a progressive-synth weirdo in the most glorious of fashions. Yet even once the mystery was solved, she kept putting out great, compelling music, with 2014's "blue" being the most accessible record of them all. Marrying oceanic visuals to lush waves of synthpop melodies, Lee was unafraid to show off a sense of optimism and free-spiritedness that carried over in stellar tracks like the sweeping "Chasing Kites" and the downright poppy "Tap Your Glass." One of the biggest cult artists working today, "blue" is not only her easiest album to get into, but it's also one of her best.

The chemistry between rapper-producer El-P and the great Killer Mike is nothing short of incredible. Starting out with El-P as producer to Killer Mike's own great 2012 album "R.A.P. Music," the friends eventually became a duo and Run the Jewels has been going strong ever since. Each of their albums has managed to take bold thematic stances, but the angry passion behind "Run the Jewels 2" pushes it to the front of the pack. Backed by El-P's always-interesting productions, Killer Mike goes right into the heart of police brutality here, serving as both passionate storyteller and outspoken advocate. "I apologize if it seems like I got out of line, sir / 'cos I respect the badge and the gun," he raps on the devastating "Early," "And I pray today ain't the day that you drag me away / Right in front of my beautiful son." Focused and utterly impactful, "Run the Jewels 2" is a landmark record for a group that would soon be in the discussion of the greatest hip-hop duos of all time.

Against Me! was never short of uncompromising, using Tom Gabel's wry lyricism to point out the hypocrisies of the modern era while the band bashed away in a melodic fashion that was unusually sharp for a contemporary punk group. Yet after 2010's heralded "White Crosses" album, Gabel came out as a transgender woman. Since the punk community is all about being your authentic self, Gabel's transition into Laura Jane Grace was embraced, and the group's sixth album, "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," spoke openly frankly about Grace's journey. NOFX's Fat Mike shows up to play bass on a couple of songs, but guitarist James Bowman and drummer Atom Willard step up their games and help in offering a record of passion, fury and love. Even "Drinking with the Jocks," which clocks in at less than two minutes, offers genuine insight into Grace's journey amid speaker-breaking walls of feedback. "I'm drinking with the jocks / I'm laughing at the faggots," Grace screams, before admitting "All my life / Wishing I was one of them." It may go down as the headiest album you will ever mosh to, and that's a hell of an accomplishment in and of itself.

While Richard D. James' "Analord" series had kept hardcore fans appetites whetted between the release of Aphex Twin's divisive 2001 double-album "Drukqs," but for 2014's long-awaited "Syro," few could have predicted that the world's predominant experimental electronic grimdark artist would come back all this time later with a record that was so...accessible. Yet "Syro" rides a funkiness and a freeness that fans haven't experienced since, well, his debut. While not every song is designed to be pleasing to the ear, "Syro" has James adhering to structure in a fascinating, compelling way and one that makes you want to know whether "Syro" can be qualified as "danceable" or not. To be honest, we still don't know the answer, but we do know that "Syro" is a late-period stunner of a record that we weren't expecting from James and one we've revisited too many times to count.

At one time, Ryan DeRobertis recorded under the moniker Saint Pepsi, and in 2013, he put out "Hit Vibes" — a landmark album in the emerging vaporwave movement. However, a cease-and-desist from Pepsi led him to record under the name Skylar Spence for more pop-song oriented fare that he himself sang. The end result? One of the most thrilling dance-pop records of the decade, where colorful synths, clever guitars and undeniable beats merge together in a disco fantasia. From the stellar lead single "Can't You See" to surprising ballads like "Fall Harder" and "Affairs," there are few albums that radiate such carefree pop goodness as "Prom King" does. When your debut album sounds like your own greatest hits package, you know you're doing something right.

It's been said before and it'll be said again: Whoever thought that a mostly rapped, racially blind Broadway musical about the life of the first-ever Secretary of the Treasury of the United States would become a pop culture sensation? Even composer Lin-Manuel Miranda probably wasn't expecting "Hamilton" to take off as it did, but once he realized it had turned into an unstoppable juggernaut, he used it to make mixtape albums, "Hamildrops" of new and rare songs, and much more. Yet at the end of the day, Miranda's deep love of Hamilton's life story is what carries spectators through this intensely well-edited tale, bolstered by his near-encyclopedic knowledge of Broadway and pop song history, turning cabinet meetings into rap battles and giving King George a spry Beatles-esque fluff number just for the hell of it. Musical motifs reappear in later songs, the interplay between performers helps sell the story, and even with this ballsy concept, Miranda also knows when to slow things down to let an affecting ballad like "Burn" stand on its own. Whether you've seen a stage production or simply let the soundtrack worm its way into your brain, you should look around at how lucky you are to be alive right now.

While "Call Me Maybe" turned her into a pop star, it was her album "E·MO·TION" that turned her into an artist. Perhaps knowing she'll never recapture the chart-topping success of her big hit ever again, "E·MO·TION" is an act of love and pure pop craftsmanship. From the opening saxophone on "Run Away With Me" to staccato melodic patterns of the title track, Jepsen has absolutely thrown herself into this record, and tracks like "When I Needed You" and "Boy Problems" have turned into generational anthems. Every track she touches sounds like the biggest hit you've never heard, but even with that, you still don't hear Jepsen on the radio much these days. But maybe she's realized she doesn't need radio anymore. So long as she keeps releasing unstoppable bop-machines like "E·MO·TION," she will always have a devout, cult audience. Guess that's what happens when you write the definitive pop record of the decade.

After alienating some fans with his electro-paranoia flight that was 2010's "The Age of Adz," many were surprised to see Sufjan Stevens strip his sound down and bare his soul in the way he does on "Carrie & Lowell." Following the passing of his mother and dissecting the difficult relationship he had with her since she abandoned him as a child, "Carrie & Lowell" by large eschews percussion in favor of acoustic guitar, piano and a few synths for textures. It's a focused, confessional record and one that asks difficult questions of how to behave in times of deep grief, resulting in powerfully affecting songs like "John My Beloved," "Should Have Known Better" and the dramatic "All of Me Wants All of You." By removing his electronics fascination almost entirely, Stevens had no conceptual artifice to hide behind, instead confronting himself and drilling into his emotions one guitar strum at a time. The result is both heartbreaking and deeply cathartic.

As beloved as her breakthrough third album, "Visions," was, it was clear that electronic producer Grimes wasn't pleased with how she was being perceived in the press. She wanted to try something new, and after her 2014 single, "Go," was largely rejected by her fan base, she scrapped the album she had been recording to start anew, and the inventive, colorful result was "Art Angels," her best album to date. Some tracks sound like contemporary updates to The B-52's sound, while others ride thick rock bass lines to dance-pop ecstasy. Her thumping collaboration with Janelle Monáe is a career highlight, and the sheer amount of styles and genre-specific layering (catch that Alice Deejay-styled synth in the chorus to "Realiti") make for compelling listen — and relisten. (And relisten.)

In truth, Kendrick Lamar has put out so many decade-defining records that it's hard to pick just one. If pressed, however, "To Pimp a Butterfly" is hands down his most ambitious full-length, a heady album that is difficult and confrontational at times but was nonetheless hailed as a classic the second it dropped. With a tight jazz backing (and the great Thundercat on bass), Lamar writes protest anthems, digs deep into his own cultural ineffectiveness as an entertainer (as on the searing "The Blacker the Berry"), and even bum-rushes his own lead single, interrupting the album version of his easy feel-good hit "i" with his own song-halting protest. Tracks like "King Kunta" still bump hard, but by the time we get to an imagined conversation with the real Tupac Shakur by the end (done through clever audio manipulation), we as listeners have gone on an epic journey that challenges and rewards in equal measure, articulating the pains and frustrations of the modern black experience. One of the boldest and best rap albums ever made.

The electro-swing movement has been going strong for a while now, and Caravan Palace were very much a part of that genre, but the Parisian pop group grew out of those strict genre trappings more and more with each new release, getting more comfortable in their own skin and developing their own sound. On "<|°_°|>" (which often gets referred to as "Robot Face"), the multi-instrumentalist collective get looser, funkier and poppier than ever before, with songs like "Lone Digger" and "Mighty" whipping zoot suit crowds into an outright frenzy. Lead vocalist Zoé Colotis has come into her own as both a singer and rapper, dropping fun bars during "Wonderland" as swinging horn sections sway right along with her. It's a party-starter of a record and one of the best feel-good albums to come out of this anxious decade.

Nick Cave has never been afraid to push his artistry to the limits of any given genre exercise, but with "Skeleton Tree," he took some big, emotional swings. Recorded just as he got the news that his son died after falling from a cliff, Cave processes grief with some pained, pointed performances, all set over minimalist, ambient constructions handled by the ever-reliable Bad Seeds. Pianos plaintively walk along with Cave's half-spoken lyrics, the pain held in his voice, constricted and uncomfortable. Songs like "Magneto" have a heavy emotional pull to them, and even when he approaches something closer to a traditional song format with tracks like "I Need You," Cave's emotional gravity is nothing short of inescapable. Brutal, honest, and cathartic, "Skeleton Tree" is a visceral, vital listen.

While The 1975's debut album was a pleasant pop trip endorsed by One Direction, frontman Matt Healy and the band were striving for something more, which is why for their sophomore effort, the leaned heavy into '80s plastic funk and pop tropes (note Adam Hann's especially spikey guitar playing on "She's American"), ultimately coming out with a record that was unbelievably indulgent and endlessly replayable. Many songs ended with or segued into extended instrumental passages, Healy's lyrics were so precious they became endearing ("I'm the Greek economy of cashing intellectual checks"), and at the end of the day, the '80s sax solos helped drive home what a weird, wild, and wonderful record this is. With instant classic songs like the funky "UGH!", the pop spectacle that is "The Sound" and the choir-backed secular dilemma that is "If I Believe You" showed that The 1975 wasn't just a pop group: It was also a band that, against all odds, needed to be taken seriously. Now make no mistake: We're paying attention to its every move.

David Bowie knew he was dying, which is why "Blackstar," his 25th album, was going to be his last. He knew of his liver cancer diagnosis and intended this album to be his own elegy; a true and proper goodbye gift to his fans. This heady, paranoid, jazz-driven record makes no bones about its message ("Dollar Days" closes with an echoed vocal from Bowie declaring "I'm dying too"), but he goes about it in such a striking way, with the feverish, 10-minute title track setting the tone for the bracing full-length that follows. With only seven songs, Bowie still covers a lot of ground, but perhaps no moment strikes as powerfully as the lush, horn-driven "Lazarus," where he opens with saying "Look up here, I'm in heaven / I've got scars that can't be seen." Now we've seen what he's been through and could not be more appreciative of his beautiful going-away gift. 

The "debut" of "Blonde," Ocean's second studio record proper, was shrouded in delays and a lot of mystery, with the long-awaited release ultimately being a fakeout, wherein he gave the label a visual album titled "Endless" and the next day dropped the self-released full-length known as "Blonde,"  which quickly became a generational touchstone for many. Spare, hushed, and minimal, "Blonde" was nearly free of percussion as Ocean ruminated on life, love, and the very nature of existence. Drug-use? Consumerism? Gospel choirs? An all-timer verse from André 3000? "Blonde" had it all, but really, its brash, deliberately experimental nature gave listeners a deep dive into Ocean's psyche, and years later, we're still swimming in it, looking for and still finding so much meaning.

While 2013's surprise-released eponymous visual album shook critics and fans to their core, "Lemonade" upped Beyoncé's gambit considerably, eschewing a handful of music videos in favor of a film that was more thematically cohesive, one that was abrasive, liberating, vulnerable, and pointed — sometimes all at once. While the macro theme was that Queen Bey was confronting husband Jay-Z over his philandering, Beyoncé found more forceful moments of both levity and anger within that theme, expanding her musical vocabulary in the process. "Hold Up" made for surprisingly playful (and gleefully vindictive) pop, while "Don't Hurt Yourself" (with Jack White) and "Freedom" (with Kendrick Lamar) allowed Bey to unleash her vocal fury. Instantly iconic the second dropped, memes started appearing about "Becky with the good hair," parodies of Beyoncé's baseball bat smashing antics popped up all around, and even the Dixie Chicks started incorporating the acoustic country number "Daddy Lessons" into their live set almost immediately. Infamously robbed at the Grammys, "Lemonade" remains a unifying pop document of unique power that shows how as time marches on, Beyoncé only gets better.

Endlessly creative, Jens Lekman's nostalgia-pop fantasias only get stranger with time, and on his fourth studio album proper, his sound explodes like a rainbow, traversing a litany of styles and moods throughout "Life Will See You Now." From the steel-drum party-starter that is "What's That Perfume That You Wear?" to the incredible use of Jackie Stoudemire and Al Stewart's "Dancing" on the hilarious "How We Met, The Long Version," Lekman's lived-in knowledge of pop music history comes into play brilliantly here, his quirky lyrics never overwhelming the productions in question. From the carefree mid-tempo jam "Evening Prayer" to the almost-ballad that is "Postcard #17," Lekman sounds invigorated here, fully in his quirk-pop element and with a clear idea of where he wants to take his sound next.

While Beyoncé's "Lemonade" turned into an immediate cultural phenomenon, the scorched earth left behind made everyone wonder what Jay-Z would have to say in response. With "4:44," the king of braggadocio took on a tone and posture we hadn't ever seen before: someone who was apologetic, humbled and vulnerable. With a streamlined production style where he worked with the great No I.D. and no one else, the sample-driven record tackles issues political, personal and global. Still with flashes of genuine humor ("There's no such thing as an ugly billionaire -- I'm cute!"), "4:44" has a casual calm to it, and tracks like the accepting "Smile" and the disillusioned "Moonlight" show that even as he nears 50, Jay-Z is still discovering new aspects of his artistry, and it's a thrill to watch.

When The Carolina Chocolate Drops made waves with the arrival of their 2010 effort "Genuine Negro Jig," they spoke as a commentary of contemporary Americana, where a lot of its history was whitewashed and its African-American roots were in need of revival. It was a striking moment, and now, vocalist, fiddler, and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens confronts the ghosts of folk past explicitly on "Freedom Highway", her second solo album proper, and her first that is full of originals. While she includes her renditions of Mississippi John Hurt and Roebuck Staples classics here, it is those original compositions that prove most striking, especially with "Come Love Come," written from the perspective of a plantation slave growing up a few years at a time, all set to a sparse, sinister folk atmosphere. It's a powerful, empathetic number from an artist whose artistic aims have never been clearer, and "Freedom Highway" may very well go down as the best Americana album this decade produced.

Annie Clark has always been an indie-rock darling, her wild guitar skills accentuating her mannered, structured albums that were unafraid to go into weird spaces. Yet after a brief flirtation with a major label on her eponymous fourth record from 2014, it was "Masseduction" that sent her right into the big leagues, with songs like the sly "Los Ageless" and the cheeky "Pills" suddenly landing her in regular rock radio rotation. Yet with a production assist from the ever-reliable Jack Antonoff, there's a degree of accessibility with "Masseduction" that her other albums were lacking, and it didn't feel like she had to compromise her vision one bit to get there. Her gorgeous song "Slow Disco" would go under constant revision after the album came out, but tracks like the plaintive "Happy Birthday, Johnny" and even the bittersweet "New York" showed that even with all the neon-light guitars and digital drums, Clark was a great songwriter first and foremost, and with "Masseduction," she has delivered her finest set of songs to date.

Initially dismissed as a fun, trashy pop-star with a hell of a knack for killer hooks, Kesha's career took a dark turn following her allegations of abuse at the hands of reigning hitmaker Dr. Luke. Lawsuits back and forth between the two had left both ruined, and many worried that, still being signed to his label in an iron-clad contract, we'd never hear from Kesha again. However, once he was outed from the imprint he founded, Kesha reintroduced herself to the world with "Rainbow," an utterly dramatic, humorous, and all-around incredible pop album. From the wry acoustic opener "Bastards" to hitting an emotional (and literal) high-note on the lead ballad "Praying," "Rainbow" works because Kesha is still willing to play with genre and have fun while doing so, netting us classics like the sugar-grunge mall-punk of "Let 'Em Talk" and the anthemic Dap-Kings-assisted "Woman." By the time she covers a song that her mom wrote for Dolly Parton in the '80s — and actually brings Parton in to sing it again -— it feels like Kesha has come full circle on her emotional journey and is ready to start all over again.

Fela Kuti's legendary band Egypt '80 has been around in 1979, but after Fela's passing in 1997, it was his youngest son, Seun, who ended up taking over as bandleader for the Afrobeat collective, and since then he hasn't missed a beat. While 2014's "A Long Way to the Beginning" was strikingly political, "Black Times" takes on a lighter touch that feels more carefree but similarly unafraid, commenting on everything from Muhammadu Buhari's first year in office as Nigeria's president to making impassioned pleas for listeners to smoke "the good weed." As always, Egypt 80 remains tight as ever, moving from traditional funk keyboards one second to sampling the sound of buffalo stampedes the next, all making for some of the tightest, funkiest grooves we've ever heard and cementing Egypt 80 as one of the greatest Afro-pop groups alive today.

Saba is one of the breakout stars from Chicago's contemporary rap scene, and he's been aided by vital assists from his friend Chance the Rapper, but the 2017 murder of his cousin and close collaborator Walter E. Long (often referred to as "John Walt") left him shattered and broken. "Care for Me" follows Saba as he picks up the pieces of his grief: sometimes angry, sometimes remorseful but astoundingly considered, this is a tough, powerful record that pulls no punches. Across 10 expertly composed songs, Saba recounts stories and celebrates Walt's life, culminating with the penultimate epic "Prom / King," where Walt sets him up on a blind date that initially goes well but soon takes a threatening turn. The anger that enters Saba's voice in the last two minutes is palpable, and Saba apparently was going to make "Prom / King" the album's final song before realizing it'd make for a depressing closer. Instead, he has "Heaven All Around Me" as the album's outro number, and it's a lovely number that injects "Care for Me" with a hint of optimism, showing there's light on the other side of crushing, life-altering grief. While a difficult listen at times, no one can deny the power of this beautiful, stunning record — one of the best rap albums of the decade.

While George FitzGerald's 2015 debut album, "Fading Love," announced the former London record store worker as a talent to watch, his sophomore effort "All That Must Be" declared him as a dance music titan. Locking into fixed, emotional loops with only the occasional vocal assist, FitzGerald has an absolute mastery of the mid-tempo groove, finding a song's emotional core and riding it out to its logical end without once overstaying his welcome. Opener "Two Moons Under" builds to a cathartic release just as his moody collaboration with Bonobo "Outgrown" feels like the perfect song to have soundtrack a drive through the night with the sunroof down and the stars overhead. Best of all, however, is "Roll Back," a minimalist ballad that has Lil Silva's simple voice ask "Is it cold when you're dreaming?" It's hard to say, but we feel nothing but warmth when we listen to this immaculately well-crafted slice of yearning electronica.

Kacey Musgraves started out putting her albums on the manufacture-your-own-record website CDBaby in the early 2000s, but following the release of her 2013 true-and-proper studio album, "Same Trailer Different Park," she started amassing a following through great singles like "Follow Your Arrow" and the playful "Biscuits." Yet for "Golden Hour" she officially became "Spacey Kacey," tripping out her sound and embracing everything from indie-folk to head-on disco to create a record that opened her up to an audience far outside of her country fan base. From the autobiographical opener "Slow Burn" to the new torch song standard that is "Rainbow," Musgraves covers just as many emotional peaks as she does musical ones, resulting in the rare country crossover record that was so beloved, it even ended up winning the all-genre Album of the Year Grammy — something a country record hasn't done since Taylor Swift's "Fearless" in 2010. Here's to you, Spacey Kacey.

Pop music history is full of out and proud gay artists, but even with that in mind, very few have made albums commenting on the contemporary gay experience. Even actor and YouTube star Troye Sivan's first album, 2015's "Blue Neighborhood" cloaked its themes in metaphor and simile. With his sophomore set "Bloom," however, he went straight to the heart of the matter and gave the world a pop album that was so specific in its descriptions it ended up hitting universal themes. Opener "Seventeen" notes how many young gay men may have sexual experiences before hitting the U.S. age of consent, while the title track speaks to the specific experience of sexual bottoming and makes it sound as inviting as possible. From the strobe-light dance of the thrilling club track "My! My! My!" to the sweet missives of "Plum," "Bloom" shows Sivan completely stepping up his game as a songwriter, becoming more open and honest about his life while simultaneously giving gay men the world over a brand new set of anthems that have been long, long overdue.

Born with a rich Colombian heritage in her blood, Kali Uchis has been seen around the music world since 2014, appearing on records with Snoop Dogg, Tyler the Creator, Major Lazer, and Gorillaz — but all before she had recorded a debut album. "Isolation" finally arrived in 2018 and it is nothing short of a soul-pop powerhouse. Mixing in bossa nova with contemporary pop trends, Uchis' songs and performances feel lived in. From the sultry island slink of the Spanish-sung "Nuestro Planeta" to the funky and empowering breakup anthem "Dead to Me", Uchis shows off many sides to her personality on her debut effort, and it's clear that her artistic persona is already fully developed. "Isolation" has it all: goofy electro-pop numbers (the Damon Albarn-assisted "In My Dreams"), throwback funk ballads (the lovely "After the Storm", complete with legendary Tyler guest verse), and biting neo-soul grooves (the sharp "Teeth in My Neck"). She may not have had a radio hit, but fans quickly rallied behind one of the sharpest pop debuts in recent memory.

It's funny, isn't it? In 2019, the year when Lizzo was working on the glow-up to end all glow-ups, it's her older songs that begin gaining traction. While January of 2019 ushered in '80s-indebted up-tempo number "Juice," a well-placed sync in a Netflix film allowed her older hits "Truth Hurts" and "Good as Hell" to start climbing the charts. We're all for it, but let's not overlook the fact that "Cuz I Love You," her third full-length proper, was an absolute sensation. The Missy Elliott feature "Tempo" may have been earmarked as a single, but it was album tracks like the empowering "Soulmate" and the vocal showcase that is "Jerome" that endeared her to fans. Who knows: Maybe in two years' time, all these album tracks will turn into chart-toppers on their own.

Angel Olsen's songwriting style — poetic but immediate, pointedly obscure — has made her nothing short of an indie-rock sensation. Although she's been releasing acclaimed albums since 2012, it was the decade-closing "All Mirrors" that was heralded as a classic the second it came out. Working with both powerful orchestrations and cheap keyboards, Olsen's songwriting has only become that much more mature, her songs shifting and changing in unexpected and delightful places. The sweeping opener "Lark" was an instant highlight, but it was gritty drum machine numbers like the low-key "New Love Cassette" (with devotional lines like "Gonna be your breath when you're out of life") that offered moments of emotion and catharsis (after all, who doesn't love a surprise cello break?). By the time her voice gets swallowed up in waves of sound on "What It Is," it's clear that Olsen is operating on a whole different level than her peers, and it's those same peers that will be citing "All Mirrors" as an influence years down the line.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Ariana Grande is the generational pop star of the moment, and although 2018's "Sweetener" gave her lots of radio hits, it was "thank u, next" —released a mere six months after her last record, which is almost unheard of for a star of her stature — that really gave fans what they wanted. While still processing the tragic passing of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller, Grande uses this new album to deliver a stripped-down pop record that is as disaffected as it is vulnerable, confident in its dismissal of standard pop song subject matter. "NASA" turns the scientific agencies acronym into a crowd chant to tell a beau that she needs space, while the brilliant "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" might be in running for best song title ever. When she admits in "bad idea" that "Imma call you over here to numb the pain," it's obvious that for all its glossy consumerist messages, there's a beating heart in the middle of "thank u, next", and for all of the legendary singles she's given us, it's wonderful to finally hear her deliver her first truly great album.