Top 88 Music Albums of 2021 by babyBlueSedan

My new year's resolution, besides stopping all the pollution, is to create a happy, positive 2021 year chart. Nice critiques only! Well, at least as far as I can without saying nice things about bad albums, because positivity without realism is worthless. But in a positive way!

Also putting more effort into nonsensical genres because what's more fun than that?!

May update: well so much for positivity - I feel like my rating has gotten even harsher. My optimistic side thinks it's because I've heard so much good music that it's harder for new things I hear to stand out, but my pessimistic side thinks it's because I'm too old and can no longer enjoy new music. I guess in both cases it just means I'm even pickier now.

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65/100
Emo nostalgia trip

I was aware of Origami Angel's debut back in 2019 but never listened to it. Since then I've gotten much more into the emo-pop / pop-punk side of emo and really enjoy both this and their debut. It's not revolutionizing the genre but the lyrics are great (and have a really good cadence / sense of rhyme). If everyone else can rave about these post punk albums scraping up old sounds I can do the same about emo.

EDIT: lowered to a 65 after my third listen because as fun as this is, I could really do without the faux metal bits. It makes this a bit too loud and feel less like the summer pop punk album it should sound like. Also the interludes between the tracks are a little weird / out of place? They feel like inside jokes or something.

Also, favorite tracks are the one about the narrator not carrying about finding God because he can't imagine religion making him feel better than his lover does, and the one about how he looks like a pterodactyl.

EDIT 2: Listened to their debut again and it is very very good. It doesn't have the two things that made me lower the rating of this one: the metal bits and the length. Tight 30 minutes with the same tight rhyming and lyrics, with a super climactic closer. If you don't like this one give the debut a listen.
[First added to this chart: 05/16/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
76
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Dreamo

I didn't give this a listen earlier in the year when it was getting all kinds of hype on RYM, and I couldn't really explain why. Probably because the kinds of albums that I hear about on RYM and nowhere else usually are ones I don't end up enjoying. I was also a bit skeptical that an album put together by a single person in their basement could sound as lush as people were saying, but let me tell you that all that hype is real. This sounds incredible, and if I hadn't known it wasn't a full band I never would have suspected otherwise*.

There are some great climaxes here but I think the length hurts it a bit, as do the fact that a lot of the songs play around with the same structure and ideas. By the end of my second listen I was kind of waiting for it to be over because I thought it had already wrung everything it could out of that sound, and on my third listen I checked out even earlier. If this was like 35 minutes and played with more than a single vibe I'd rate it much higher. Though it should also be said that I'm not a huge shoegaze / dream pop fan and music fans who dig the atmospheres those genres have would probably love this.

*On further listens there are some drums on this that sound clipped, but outside of THAT I wouldn't have noticed.
[First added to this chart: 06/13/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
800
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Revolution celebration

At this point I'm not sure we'll ever see Godspeed go in an entirely new direction so it's nice to hear them integrate their recent long track / short track structure with their earlier field recordings and a smaller reliance on crescendos. This is a really beautiful album, especially the second half of track 3. It has a kind of triumphant yet bittersweet air to it.

First listen I was kind of non-plussed but perked up near the end. Second listen was better, but my third listen was also a bit indifferent despite being in what is perhaps the perfect environment for hearing this album - a long walk on a cloudy, almost rainy day through a field that had just gone through a prescribed burn. The first track is fine but takes a bit too long to develop and then doesn't really do much. Third track is phenomenal, especially the very end. Last track is a beautiful comedown.

Opinion for now is that this is just under Asunder but above Luciferian Towers. I might revisit later in the year in the hope I like it more.
[First added to this chart: 04/13/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
737
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Protest jazz, part 2

When I first listened Your Queen is a Reptile I had basically given up on ever finding any jazz I liked. But a bit before that I listened to Pharoah Sanders's Karma and that opened the door for me finding the niche of jazz I enjoy. It is a fairly small niche - pretty much all afro-jazz and jazz-funk, with some strains of spiritual jazz also being acceptable - but it's enough to leave me excited for some new jazz albums. And I was really excited for Sons of Kemet to bring back their fiery sound and some more of that sweet sweet tuba.

So consider me a bit disappointed in this. The album starts off really well "Field Negus" is a great fiery track that recalls the opener of their last one, and the track after that has some crazy energy. So it's frustrating that the next few tracks - pretty much the entire middle of the album - feels so much lesser in comparison. As can be expected by the genres of jazz I listed as my favorite, I'm a sucker for a good groove. But while these tracks all find that groove, they do very little to break out of them and give the kind of accents / highlights that are necessary to elevate a groove to something that does more than just gets stuck in your head. I also think the vocals add very little to these tracks. "The Hustle" is pretty good but most of the other vocal tracks don't add much. The slam poetry style on the opener/closer of Your Queen is a Reptile worked wonders, and it's no surprise that the two best vocal tracks here are also the opener and closer, both from the same vocalist as the last album, Joshua Idehen. Those passionate vocals, unexpected in an otherwise instrumental album, do a lot more than the string of tracks with lesser vocal performances.

The end of the album does pick up quite a bit. "Let the Circle Be Unbroken" is an insane track and possibly the highlight - in the second half the saxophone sounds like it's suffocating and gasping for air. I would have loved to hear more exhilarating moments like this, or even more subdued moments that offered something new. Every track on Reptile had its own identity that made it stand out, which was something I had never really noted in a jazz album until then. This one is a lot more one note, with some of these tracks feeling like they're relying on the same rhythms. After Reptile it just feels like they're capable of much more.
[First added to this chart: 06/04/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
212
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Comments:
Buy album United States
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65/100
Energetic soul

Really like the lyrics and ideas here and how much it jumps between styles. But that's also a bit of a negative as well - the album never gets in a groove and just as you've gotten through a couple exhilarating tracks there's like a smooth soul one and it doesn't fit well. I wish this was a bit shorter and stuck more with the funky punky sounds. Also as much as I like the lyrics some of them are a bit boilerplate for the themes he covers, though the use of the album title is really well done.

Every time I hear "No Looking Back" I expect him to break into the theme song for Full House.
[First added to this chart: 04/13/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
548
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Married with children heartland rock

A Deeper Understanding didn't do much for me: I thought it was a bit too overblown and didn't have enough room to breathe. So I was pleased that this one felt a little more laid back and didn't seem to want to pack so many things into too little time. At the same time, the washed out sunset bliss of Lost in the Dream isn't anywhere to be found here: this sounds like a much more plain heartland rock throwback. Nice for a walk outside as the weather gets cold, and I quite like the title track and the closer, but I find the rest a bit indistinguishable.
[First added to this chart: 11/29/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
866
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Comforting dream electropop

I love how "outside" this sounds. It feels like the cover looks - laying outside and feeling a cool breeze blow around you as the leaves rustle. This is despite the fact that it's pretty much all synths, but they're a mix of natural and artificial sounds that makes this both beat heavy pop music and fresh, crisp sunshine music. The bangers here are the best songs, outside of "Blossom," which is a sweet acoustic song that somehow captures a fleeting, peaceful floating feeling better than Big Thief ever have. Unfortunately many of the songs meander for too long and don't play around with new ideas - a few more Blossoms and this could really be something special.
[First added to this chart: 06/13/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
456
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Indie pub

The Hold Steady's last album was really a collection of singles, and it felt like a revelation after over a decade of the band sounding tired. It's somewhat surprising then that this intentionally cohesive, story-driven album feels less vital.

First off, the lyrics here are pretty great. Craig Finn is always a detailed writer and this might be his most cohesive, fleshed out lyrically. The songs seem connected and his one liners are as clever as ever. Highlight is the "Happy Easter!" aside on "Spices." The flip side of this is that what made the storytelling on albums like Separation Sunday and Stay Positive great was how obtuse it was - the stories seemed disconnected but on subsequent listens you'd pick up on things that were connected. This is much more linear, and I think it suffers just a bit for it. But not too much.

Musically this isn't exactly a cosmic shift but it is a step back from the mostly upbeat Thrashing Through the Passion. It feels like a middle aged record by a rock band, which sounds like a dig but can be a compliment if the band feels like they're settling into an older, wiser comfort zone. I think the band is there, and yet this album really would have benefitted from more energy. So many of these songs sound like ballads and there are hardly any of the big pub rock moments that drew me to the band in the first place. One of the big reasons people like Trashing was that the band's keyboard player was back, but the keys feel much less vital here, almost driving some of these songs instead of providing those exhilarating extra touches.

My first listen to this was slightly disappointing because I was expecting something bigger, so I gave it another spin when I was in the headspace where a moderately paced rock album would sound good. And I was still a bit underwhelmed. So settling at a 65 for now, which is a bummer. The highlights are great - "Spices" is a classic, "Family Farm" is great (the first four songs are the best). But songs like the opener and closer feel like they're building up to and down from something big, and that something big just never happens.
[First added to this chart: 03/05/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
44
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Buy album United States
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65/100
Boy band rap

I swear that every Brockhampton lead single from now until the end of time will give me a huge wave of nostalgia for 2017. Though it's interesting that recently I listened to some of the Saturation cuts and they didn't hit me like they used to. Not sure if I'm outgrowing them or the sheen has just worn off. Anyway, for this album:

Firstly, this is easily their best since 2017. It's not the messiness of Iridescence, nor the mellowness of Ginger. It's exciting, poppy, and unpredictable.

Second, Pitchfork called this their most consistent album. That is definitely not true. This one starts off with a few hard hitting rap songs, with the opener being the most intense. Then after the posse cut Windows it shits on a dime to a song that legitimately sounds like a boy band song. From there on the album is super poppy, minus "Don't Shoot Up the Party" which feels very out of place. This isn't really a bad thing, but I do think it means the album has trouble finding it's groove.

Third, this still leaves me wanting. There are too many guests, and they largely don't fit in. There's too much singing, which I grew to enjoy on the Saturation albums but feels a little overdramatic here. The production is really great, especially on the first six tracks. The rapping has improved, notably for Dom and Joba. But overall, it feels like it's missing something - I think it's the hunger that was present on their first three.
[First added to this chart: 04/24/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
236
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Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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65/100
Boygeniuscore

Something about this one is just not clicking. It's really not all that different than Historian but somehow it also feels less inspired and like it's trying too hard. I think the vocals are my biggest problem - every song has this inflection where Dacus sounds like she's trying to say the most memorable, important thing we've every heard, and while a few of these songs have really poignant moments it makes the album feel a lot more overly serious than it needs to. Highlights are probably VBS and Thumbs.
[First added to this chart: 08/21/2021]
Year of Release:
2021
Appears in:
Rank Score:
335
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Comments:
Total albums: 88. Page 4 of 9

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Top 88 Music Albums of 2021 composition

Country Albums %


United States 55 63%
United Kingdom 14 16%
Australia 3 3%
Canada 3 3%
Sweden 2 2%
Pakistan 2 2%
Denmark 2 2%
Show all
Live? Albums %
No 87 99%
Yes 1 1%

Top 88 Music Albums of 2021 chart changes

Biggest climbers
Climber Up 3 from 6th to 3rd
Inpariquipê
by Kaatayra
Biggest fallers
Faller Down 1 from 3rd to 4th
Glow On
by Turnstile
Faller Down 1 from 4th to 5th
Seek Shelter
by Iceage
Faller Down 1 from 5th to 6th
Nafs At Peace
by جو بھی [Jaubi]

Top 88 Music Albums of 2021 ratings

Average Rating: 
89/100 (from 3 votes)
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02/09/2022 19:45 DJENNY  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 4,408100/100
  
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06/06/2021 13:24 travelful  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 20999/100
  
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05/18/2021 08:34 Purplepash  Ratings distributionRatings distribution 1,33188/100

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From 06/13/2021 16:13
Thanks for the rec! I've definitely been out of the hip hop loop the past few years, I hadn't even heard of Mach-Hommy until he showed up on one of billy woods's albums in 2019. I think I knew about the album he released a single copy of before hearing about the new one but then I saw he's got a huge discography and wasn't sure where to go next. It's hard for me to find the time lately to spend digesting new hip hop albums to the extent they deserve but I'll try to give it a chance when I can.
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From 06/06/2021 13:29
Glad you liked Mach-Hommy! He's one of the most underrated rappers currently, and its primarily his fault for making his music so inaccessible. His best album in my opinion is "Haitian Body Odor" (HBO) and thankfully it's on SoundCloud. Similar to "Pray For Haiti" it released under Griselda Records. It was his Griselda debut back in 2016 before him and Westside Gunn had a falling out due to creative differences. I think it's a top 10 hip-hop album of the last decade, maybe it would interest you.

Always love following your charts.
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