010. The War On Drugs – Lost In The Dream (Secretly Canadian) (2014)

Having started the decade as one of hundreds of solid but unremarkable indie groups with a promising debut under their belts, by 2014 The War On Drugs became one of its most surprising success stories. 2011’s Slave Ambient had been great, but this was something else. Lost In The Dream was sheer, old-fashioned magic that seemed to work in 2014, because so much of it seemed to be gloriously out of step: musically, it channelled the easy listening, drive-time rock of the ‘70s and ‘80s and the American alternative rock scene of the ‘80s and ‘90s. But deeper than that, the tracks’ winding, lengthy structures resonated with the album’s themes – yearning to recover lost time, exploring an idea to its fullest, taking the time to revel in the moment in a world characterised by the lack of it.

There was no artifice involved, just Adam Granduciel coming to terms with his inner demons and creating tender, wistful, daydreaming guitar epics that had the power to penetrate your dreams and waking moments. From the opening moments of ‘Under The Pressure’, those hi-hats that slowly come into focus, those simple, hammered piano notes and reverberating guitars, Lost In The Dream was retro heaven. The sweeping synth majesty of ‘Red Eyes’ was the album’s obvious pop fix, but the likes of ‘In Reverse’ and ‘Burning’ showed that Granduciel actually understood his influences, so inherently that he could make something truly special out of sounds that were so well-worn and familiar that they really shouldn’t have been memorable at all. And the public responded: spending almost nine months in the lower reaches of the UK Top 100, Lost In The Dream became the sleeper hit of the year, and swept the end of year critics’ lists with aplomb. (LISTEN)

009. Frank Ocean – Channel Orange (Def Jam) (2012)

Of all the albums in this list, Channel Orange is probably the most difficult to pigeonhole, sitting as it does between so many different genres. Frank Ocean, who experiences synaesthesia (seeing music as colours), named the album after the colour he perceived during the time he first fell in love, and throughout this breathtaking album’s almost cinematic scope he deals with issues such as unrequited love, consumerist excess and drugs. His style made use of surrealistic imagery combined with descriptive, pin-point accurate storytelling – this combination of the abstract and the personal is a really difficult balance to achieve, believe us – using real-life experiences as jumping-off points for flights of fantasy as he regrets and embellishes incidents from his personal life with an alternating mixture of vulnerability and braggadocio.

Right from the start, Ocean and his production team (which included the likes of Pharrell Williams and Tyler, The Creator) regarded Channel Orange as an ‘art project’, and it goes to show that something can be both commercially viable and artistically creative at the same time. Musically, it was a bizarre melange of psychedelia, pop-soul, jazz-funk and electro-funk that rewarded repeated listens, the 10-minute centrepiece ‘Pyramids’ being the most breathtaking of all. Channel Orange may have been something of an ‘artist’s album’, but its DNA has been detectable in all the best chart-bound pop since. (LISTEN)

008. St. Vincent – St. Vincent (Loma Vista / Republic) (2014)

The first ever recipient of a perfect ‘10’ score on this site, Annie Clark’s self-titled album saw her improve on her previous effort for a third consecutive time, also making her the first female act in 24 years to win the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. St. Vincent was not only a perfect statement of her art-house aesthetic, it also saw her venture further out into electronic territory. Her 2012 work with David Byrne had clearly had an influence, particularly in terms of the songs’ polyrhythmical arrangements that were more complex than ever before, yet they were still anchored in recognisable rock and pop structures and, crucially, boasted by far the catchiest collection of songs she had written. Paradoxically, this had the effect of making St. Vincent the most advanced and yet the simplest record Clark has ever made.

Right from the startling irregularity of ‘Rattlesnake’, which channels some of that Talking Heads influence, we knew we were in for something truly special. St. Vincent positively fizzed with invention and flair, yet it was supremely graceful and uncluttered. For every confounding moment of spiky, tricky brilliance like the brassy ‘Digital Witness’ or the rhythmical curveballs ‘Give Me Your Loves’ and ‘Birth In Reverse’, there were moments of slow-burning majesty like ‘Prince Johnny’, with its memorably absurd yet affecting imagery, or ‘I Prefer Your Love’. Although it had an iron will to experiment, it remembered not to talk down to its audience, with enough accessibility for anybody to enjoy the party. St. Vincent is the sound of a ferociously talented, forward-thinking artist at the peak of her power, and with three albums in this list, Clark has been one of the defining musical personalities of the indie scene in the ‘10s. (LISTEN)

007. Mitski – Be The Cowboy (Dead Oceans) (2018)

The emotional struggle of romance, loneliness, legacy and much more is embedded within the fabric of Be The Cowboy. Throughout its many narratives, Mitski not only packs an emotional gut-punch that select few musicians are capable of, but also provides us with some genuinely one-of-a-kind songs, both structurally and sonically.

Iggy Pop, in his gravel-y voice, named her the currently most advanced American songwriter, a praise most musicians would probably kill for. But the artist definitely earns her respect from the Pantheon of great music icons. Songs like ‘Washing Machine Heart’ combine oddball yet immediately relatable lyrics with a nearly annoying knack for melody, the main synthesizer coming in to compliment the vocals in a way that’s both non-cliché yet feels perfectly natural for the song. The same can be said of other songs such as ‘Geyser’, a furiously delivered love song to songwriting and musicianship, or ‘Why Didn’t You Stop Me?’ which features a brass section that comes in during the culmination of the track and can only be described as explosive and/or orgasmic.

The cowboy imagery and all the metaphors it encompasses has since been used and appropriated by other artists, as well as somehow spawning an entire discourse of its own online. However, Be The Cowboy might still be the most resonant, and genuine statement about the lonely wasteland prairie that is modern life and the kind of cowboy wandered we all have to be, or at least want to be, while traversing it. It is both completely classic and innovative. (EW) (LISTEN)

006. Beach House – Teen Dream (Bella Union / Sub Pop) (2010)

There was nothing that special about Beach House on the surface of things – American indie groups dealing in sugar-sweet, shoegaze-influenced guitar pop have never been in short supply anyway. But their third album Teen Dream, arriving at the very start of the decade, was arguably responsible for the explosion in the sub-genre that we’ve seen subsequently, but none of those followers have matched it. The core elements of its sound had been in place over their first two albums, only this time they eschewed those records’ lo-fi production for “sophistication”, as guitarist Alex Scally called it. Teen Dream’s ten songs positively rang with beauty, their simple constructions allowing the band to indulge themselves in the spaces within, the guitar lines and majestic sweeps of keyboard and organ echoing and (the album was recorded in an abandoned church). Victoria Legrand’s divine vocals were the second revelation, appearing in the mix like some kind of guardian angel offering you comfort in your time of need.

From the opening ‘Zebra’, the glistening production immediately signalled a different kind of drama at play where previously Beach House had been introspective navel-gazers. It was a subtle shift, but one that caused Scally and Legrand to be considered in a totally different light, as achievers rather than contenders. The melodies loom in and out of the thick, smouldering fog of the organ sounds on ‘Silver Soul’ and ‘Walk In The Park’, giving them a vivid waking-dream kind of quality. In other places they are more clearly presented, like on the slow riot of highlight ’10 Mile Stereo’, Legrand’s pained, almost wordless vocals seeming to communicate a vision of some stolen paradise. Her deeply humanistic lyrics are anxious pleas, admissions of weakness and regret in a world that beats down so many of us. Teen Dream is testament to the rapturous, restorative power of all the very best pop – just put the record on and let yourself be swept away. Utterly sublime. (LISTEN)

005. Frank Ocean – Blond (Boys Don’t Cry) (2016)

With an undeniable talent for crafting sophisticated melancholy through unforgettable compositions and state of the art production, Frank Ocean can easily be called one of the most sought after yet private musicians of our decade. His second album Blond, coming out after an ear-numbing silence of four years, finally transformed the unnerving hype following Channel Orange into something tangible. 

Blond’s introspective, dream-like organs and improvisational vocal lines sounded more than right, but were ever-so-slightly unsettling for the listeners, as the previously brightly coloured Channel Orange had more accessible song structures in the style of contemporary R&B. Nevertheless, Ocean is praised for his nuanced compositional ear for a reason, and his newest record became a favourite of many, whether was existing Ocean fans, or simply fans of smart, such unbelievably good production that casual listeners won’t necessarily notice the subtle ebb and flow of Blond that elevated it to something so special.

Originally titled BOYS DON’T CRY, Blond explored themes like black identity and masculinity in the age of Black Lives Matter, duality of self with undertones of bisexuality and loss of innocence, all the while appearing anything but try-hard. Blond’s brilliance lies in its perfect balance of atmosphere, excellent writing and stylistic individuality. Whilst the usage of organs, rap, R&B and allusions to gospel was nothing new in pop music, Ocean’s swerve into it seemed totally revelatory, demonstrating what a modern pop album can sound like when reimagined by one of our decade’s greatest. Balancing mainstream success and being held close to heart amongst more niche circles, Blond is bound to survive as one of those records that never fail to make you feel some type of special way. (AS) (LISTEN)

004. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (Island) (2011)

When modern rock stars ‘get political’, it almost always ends in one of two ways: crass, simplistic ‘stick it to the man’ sloganeering, or tediously earnest ‘big music’ stadium rock. Returning in 2011 to take every other songwriter in the world to school was 41 year old Polly Jean Harvey, somebody who had done so much to help define indie music in the ‘90s, making arguably the most bone-chilling musical statement in pop music history more than a decade after her commercial peak. A sensitively framed portrait of her homeland as a nation built on bloodshed and violence, she can credibly lay claim to have made the definitive ‘war album’ – as in ‘war movie’ or ‘war novel’. Let England Shake sounded like it could have been made at any point in the last century, with almost nothing in the music that you can identify as belonging to a specific age.

The reason why Let England Shake achieved its stated aim so spectacularly was atmosphere. The ethereal sounds of the autoharp were the primary instrument for which the album was arranged, giving the record the feeling of taking place in that halfway place between sleeping and waking. But unlike previous records, the sessions were improvisational and stripped down. But the music’s skeletal framework, with an economical approach to instrumentation and production, is only half the story. Polly Jean’s voice hangs wraithlike and judgmental over these bloody, scarred, deathly quiet landscapes and sends a jolt of empathy down your spine.

The senseless, machine-like death of World War I is the theme with which many of the songs are preoccupied, or at least start from (‘On Battleship Hill’ is the most explicit, a reference to the disastrously bloody Gallipoli landings in 1915). However, contemporary references are also scattered throughout, giving Let England Shake that timeless quality associated with true greatness in music, and without which this album wouldn’t have worked as effectively. “What if I take my problem to the United Nations?” goes the repeated, unresolved and deeply sarcastic kiss-off of ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’, as if to drive the message home: just the same as a hundred years ago, words of diplomatic nicety are empty, and nobody’s coming to help you.

Throughout, PJ alternated between an urgent, doom-prophesying Cassandra character and a war-weary poet writing her messages to future generations. With a witchy delivery, she resignedly wails “death was everywhere / in the air and in the sounds coming off the mounds of Bolton’s Ridge / death’s anchorage” on ‘All And Everyone’, yet she can also play the messenger warning of catastrophe without coming across with the wincing holier-than-thou attitude of so many musicians. “The West’s asleep, let England shake / weighted down with silent dead,” she croons in a deeply unsettling cadence on the title track, as if she’s the vessel through which some ancient deity is speaking. Some songs deal in stark, deeply poetic imagery, some with fictional characters that PJ conjured up as composites of real-life examples from the detailed research she did before the writing process. It’s a subtle state-of-the-nation address, full of the cold, creeping dread of a world going wrong, but PJ’s beautifully understated sense of drama means that the listener has space to envisage the subject matter by themselves, avoiding the need to resort to cheap sloganeering.

Even by her own extremely high standards, Let England Shake was a work of startling singularity, unlike anything she had produced before, showing political conviction where she had for a long time dealt with matters of the heart. All her previous records had showcased her ear for arrangement, and her earliest efforts spoke suggested a more callow, unrefined anger, but this was something else altogether. It trounced the competition at the 2011 Mercury Music Prize, making PJ the first artist ever to have won that trophy twice. But more importantly, it was an intrinsically human experience, reminding us of why music exists in the first place: to make us feel, to empathise with our fellow creatures, to cry for others, not just ourselves. (LISTEN)

003. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella) (2010)

At the end of the last noughties, Kanye West’s critical and commercial stock was at its lowest point. Ridiculed after high-profile PR disasters over Taylor Swift, the ‘Fishsticks’ takedown by ‘South Park’, and the commercial flop of 808s & Heartbreak, added to personal torment following the death of his mother and being dumped by his fiancée, he could quite easily have faded away altogether. It is the mark of personal greatness that he should come back from this at all; it’s proof that Kanye will come to be regarded as an all-time pop music great that he did it with an album as spectacularly ambitious and perfectly executed as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Opener ‘Dark Fantasy’ introduces the theme of hedonistic abandon fighting with sober self-improvement, West asking himself “the plan was to drink until the pain was over / but what’s worse, the pain or the hangover?” before reeling off a dazzling list of pop culture references from the last half-century supported by a cast of 11 guest vocalists including Elton John. And this was just the start: the rapid-fire drum’n’bass breaks and brass of ‘All Of The Lights’; the Aphex Twin piano sample of ‘Blame Game’; the sheer catharsis of the Bon Iver hook-up ‘Lost In The World’; the sing-along momentum of ‘Power’… all so startlingly different, so brilliantly arranged, and all part of the same musical patchwork.

Along with Drake and Kendrick Lamar, MBDTF signalled the start of a self-doubting, analytical trend within the hip-hop mainstream that finally took it away from the tired gangsta rap paradigm that had reigned for so long. Sure, Kanye still found the time for some outrageous boasts, but it was now a part of a dichotomy that involved a great deal of self-laceration and angst. However, there is also a sense of creeping unease bubbling under the record that rarely lets itself be explicitly known, to do with the souring of the American Dream in the face of rampant inequality and the African-American experience therein. It finally surfaces on the album’s short coda ‘Who Will Survive In America?’. Kanye achieves a delicate balancing act, conflating the personal with the political, the micro with the macro, and all with an unbelievably lavish package whose cut-up and stick-together aesthetic with diverse elements was beyond the grasp of almost every other artist operating in pop.

It’s rather striking that, in the 2010s when the album as a format was more under threat from extinction than ever, that such an incontestably great full-length should be made by somebody who had always been at the cutting edge of technology. It demands to be heard as a whole piece of work, the kaleidoscopic information overload of the digitally-defined ‘10s grafted on to a vinyl-length work, one that can’t be dissected and pulled apart for its best bits. As Pitchfork summarised so neatly, MBDTF is more like There’s A Riot Goin’ On than Thriller, an album whose greatness derives from the way that it’s documenting its time, taking the temperature of Western culture, soundtracking an accelerating, fracturing and insecure present, rather than focussing on making timeless music for the ages necessarily. Even those who had previously ridiculed him had to stand back and admire it. While Kanye went on to boldly challenge his audience with its follow-up Yeezus, this is likely to remain the point at which this most divisive of artists, for once, had the whole world in his hand. (LISTEN)

002. Tame Impala – Lonerism (Modular) (2012)

There’s no doubt that Tame Impala’s Lonerism should feature highly on the list of the greatest albums of the teens. 2010 debut Innerspeaker set the precedent for the Perth outfit’s psychedelic revivalism and, a Foo Fighters support slot and an NME single of the year later, they were indie pin-ups conquering hearts one wah-wah stomp at a time. At the heart of a gradually-shifting line-up sits Kevin Parker, nu-psych king, sun-bleached sonic experimentalist and effects pedal agitator. Taking influence from the aimless, druggy drift of late-sixties rock, Parker cleverly deconstructs the best of the era and re-dresses its skeleton with a chart bothering pop aesthetic, 21^st century production, and contemporary themes of disconnect, isolation and depression.

It may have been the anthemic swamp-stomp of ‘Elephant’ that aroused the mass market and topped best year rankings, but it’s the complex emotional needling of ‘Mind Mischief,’ ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ and ‘Nothing That Has Happened…’ that defines the record as a modern classic. Spaced out and drenched with the idle-minded insouciance that comes with living on the most isolated city on earth, Lonerism peers at life through a Lomographic lens and finds blurred lines, imperfection and, most importantly, optimism and redemption in infectious abundance. With another album release imminent, it’s possible that Tame Impala will be near the top of the 2020s decade list – if the first singles from The Slow Rush are anything to go by. (LISTEN)

001. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly (Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope) (2015)

Receiving the highest praise from academics, critics, hardcore hip-hop listeners as well as the hardest to access – the casual and normally unengaged mainstream listener – To Pimp A Butterfly’s release was a moment that froze pop culture. Although Kendrick Lamar was already a superstar through previous releases, the cultural impact of his third album shook up current musical landscapes more than any other release this decade. Reintroducing complex musicality and daring sonic shifts, mainly through an eclectic range of funk and jazz incorporation, Kendrick launched the bar into orbit in regards to what fans could now expect of artists, as well as proving that experimentalism could meld with hip-hop and still shift units.

Both a state-of-the-nation treatise on the current political and social problems endured by the African American populace, To Pimp A Butterfly saw the rapper tackle topics ranging from societal oppression to the perils of self-assured promotion from multiple personas and points of view, constantly engaging, challenging and motivating the listener. It was also a clever, literate celebration of black culture and excellence with influences from jazz, gospel and Motown; ‘Alright’ begins with the words of Sophia from Alice Walker’s novel ‘The Colour Purple’ when she says “All my life I had to fight”, a line Lamar repeats and adds on “but if God got us, then we gon’ be alright”. ‘Alright’ is just the very finest example of the anthemic and defiant protesting on the record; every song, whilst confronting the listeners, sticks in the head – a quality that’s arguably not been seen since the days of Richey Edwards when writing the Manics’ 1994 masterpiece The Holy Bible.

To Pimp A Butterfly was the work of a man who has something to say, and in saying it, Kendrick Lamar became the voice of a generation. But its success, reaching number one on both sides of the Atlantic and receiving 11 Grammy nominations and selling well over a million copies in the States, was so great that it generated fortune and attention for others. Kamasi Washington, who handled string arrangements and whose tenor sax was all over ‘u’, was thrust into the spotlight; co-producer and collaborator Thundercat also enjoyed a massively raised profile. But although they, along with a mini-galaxy of other musicians and producers, helped bring To Pimp A Butterfly to life, there was never the sense that Kendrick himself was anything less than in complete command of his artistic vision. The listener is sent on a journey of contemplation, on an album which fell into a lineage of greats like Tupac Shakur, Sam Cooke, Steve Wonder and Public Enemy.

After To Pimp A Butterfly, an album that’s inspired academic essays and now considered a touchstone for racial empowerment as well as consciousness in hip-hop, Kendrick Lamar was immediately in the conversation as one of the greatest of all time, a status that’s never easily agreed upon or even bestowed upon many. With all this considered, it’s hard to dispute that To Pimp A Butterfly should be named the best album of the 2010s. (EB, JT, DA) (LISTEN)