Until recently, I was set on counting down my fifty favorite albums of this decade, as I did for the last one and the one before that. However, given that I’ve spent years writing extensively/exhaustively about favorite albums, including eleven from this past decade, I’m weary of saying much more on these long-players. So, in two weeks I will count down my fifty favorite tracks of the decade instead. I don’t buy into the death-of-the-album hysteria that began with digital downloads and seems to have swelled with online streaming, but I will argue that the technology often allows for a single or an album track to make a deeper, obviously more immediate impact than a thirty-to-seventy-minute-long collection of songs.
More about that in two weeks. I will never stop loving albums and ranking my favorites, but compared to the past two decades, nothing from the 2010s has hit me so powerfully as Automatic For The People, If You’re Feeling Sinister, Apartment Life, Since I Left You and Riot On An Empty Street did upon arrival. Of course, I first heard all those records in my 20s and it’s only natural that as I age, I should grow more critical and less susceptible towards the new, especially in how it relates to an already established artist’s body of work.
However, I still firmly believe in the possibility that my favorite album (or song) of all time might be something I haven’t yet heard. At the end of 2009, I knew nothing of Laura Marling, Nicole Atkins, Field Music, The Clientele or Future Islands, even though they all had records out. Then, there are the new talents that emerged and are represented below: Christine and The Queens, Natalie Prass, Michael Kiwanuka, Lana Del Rey, Haim—all of whom I suspect will continue releasing vital music in the next decade.
As for the list below, I struggled a bit with the order, for everything’s prone to change from month to year to day. Thus, I focused on albums I could see myself most wanting to listen to again and again, even after having already heard them dozens of times. Home Counties fulfills such criteria more strongly than anything else I could think of—I’m not sure if it’s even Saint Etienne’s best or second-best (or even fifth-best) album, but its breadth and scope effortlessly draws me in; as a reaction to Brexit, it’s also one of the more timely albums here, certainly up there with Running Out of Love, Record and My Finest Work Yet as something that one could’ve only conceived of in the past three-to-four years.
Some surprises here and there: Edge of the Sun not making 100 Albums but placing so high as it became one of my most-listened-to records ever; Random Access Memories‘ stature in my mind slipping somewhat, as its retro-isms still delight but no longer innovate; a handful of records from the first half of the decade showing up, despite not making my half-decade list in 2015 (most notably Tales of Us, Transference and The Voyager); only three artists (Saint Etienne, Tracey Thorn and Hot Chip) appearing more than once, as opposed to Sam Phillips, who had three slots in the ’00s list.
In any case, at the end of this particular decade, here’s how I’d rank my favorite albums from it:
- Saint Etienne, Home Counties
- Emm Gryner, Northern Gospel
- Calexico, Edge of the Sun
- Jens Lekman, I Know What Love Isn’t
- Destroyer, Kaputt
- Tracey Thorn, Record
- The Radio Dept., Running Out Of Love
- Roisin Murphy, Hairless Toys
- Andrew Bird, My Finest Work Yet
- Marina and the Diamonds, Froot
- Daft Punk, Random Access Memories
- Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
- Christine and The Queens, Christine and The Queens
- Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin’
- Nicole Atkins, Goodnight Rhonda Lee
- Natalie Prass, The Future and The Past
- Florence + The Machine, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
- Holy Ghost!, Work
- Hot Chip, One Life Stand
- Field Music, Open Here
- Tracey Thorn, Love and Its Opposite
- Goldfrapp, Tales Of Us
- The Clientele, Music For The Age Of Miracles
- Robert Forster, Inferno
- Michael Kiwanuka, Love & Hate
- David Bowie, Blackstar
- Saint Etienne, Words and Music By Saint Etienne
- Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid
- Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel…
- Robyn, Body Talk
- Imperial Teen, Now We Are Timeless
- Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
- Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell!
- Pet Shop Boys, Electric
- Belle and Sebastian, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance
- Jill Sobule, Dottie’s Charms
- Alison Moyet, Other
- Sam Phillips, World On Sticks
- Future Islands, Singles
- Spoon, Transference
- Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires Of The City
- The New Pornographers, Brill Bruisers
- Hot Chip, In Our Heads
- Fitz and The Tantrums, Pickin’ Up The Pieces
- Rufus Wainwright, Out Of The Game
- Tegan and Sara, Heartthrob
- Haim, Days Are Gone
- St. Vincent, St. Vincent
- FFS, FFS
- Jenny Lewis, The Voyager
Haunted Jukebox 