Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s
by FlorianJones

Anything with a write-up was in my top 50 at the end of the decade, in December of 2019.

As of today (June 14, 2022), 6 of those original top 50 have dropped into 51-100. None of them have dropped off the list entirely.
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Top Tracks: Ivy, Solo, Nights

While not technically at the top of this list, Blonde is the album I’m likely to look back on the most nostalgically in future decades. In large part that’s because Frank knows nostalgia better than anyone. Frank sings about it, sure. His debut mixtape had nostalgia in the title, and on Blonde’s standout track Ivy, he croons wistfully of a past relationship. But the topic is just the tip of the iceberg. Frank’s ability to evoke the feeling of nostalgia is where he really shines. Maybe it’s the haziness of the instrumentals, enveloping the listener in the cloud of a half-forgotten memory, or it could be the sweet moments of clarity afforded by his incomparable vocals. Whatever it is that makes the music tick, this man could make someone nostalgic for a couple hours ago. Maybe he doesn’t know any other way. While not quite a child star, Ocean did have to grow up fast. All the Odd Future guys did. The media doesn’t tend to shine the kindest spotlight on the young. As such, Frank had an almost immediate nostalgia for days not long gone. Nowhere is that felt more deeply than on Futura Free – a soothing collage of some of the first interviews these guys ever gave. They were just kids, unable to focus, unable to take anything seriously. You can feel the longing for that simplicity. At a time where many of Frank’s peers were tackling big, nation encompassing struggles, he opted to go more personal than ever before.

Almost by default, audiences were quick to tag Blonde as R&B. While that was Frank’s starting point, the genre hardly applies anymore. On the aforementioned Ivy, Frank’s voice glides over the top of two interweaving guitar lines of ephemeral dream pop. No other instruments are present. How often do we hear R&B completely forego percussion? For that matter, how often do we hear a voice like Frank’s in dream pop? On Solo, the only accompaniment to Frank’s (in this case rap inflected singing) is the calm swell of an organ and an occasional whistle. All of Blonde makes similar choices with most songs foregoing the expected in favor of stripping back for a minimalist approach like no other. Every choice is beautifully considered. Blonde’s back half plays out more as a medley than as distinct songs, and it’s exactly what the album needs. I couldn’t begin to consider better sequencing here. Such attention to the whole is captivating. One of the album’s greatest moments comes part way into Nights, when the song slowly collapses, then in an instant, builds back up as something entirely new. This beat switch happens exactly thirty minutes into a sixty-minute album. Frank considered everything.
[First added to this chart: 06/22/2017]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
12,838
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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Top Tracks: Jesus Alone, Rings of Saturn, Distant Sky

Death has often found itself at the center of Nick Cave’s work. As far as I can tell, there’s never been much rhyme or reason to this repeated motif (beyond a presumably innate fascination with death) that is, until Skeleton Tree. In July of 2015, Cave’s fifteen-year-old son Arthur stumbled off a cliff to his death. While these eight songs were written before this tragedy, several ad-libs and overdubs were recorded in the aftermath, and there’s no denying the shadow Arthur’s passing casts over the proceedings. Many of Nick Cave’s dreariest works are notable for savage and unruly characters rendered through guttural howls. Here his vocals spill listlessly over the music. He is consumed by grief. Both musically and lyrically, Skeleton Tree is awash with an unsettling sorrow, but not entirely without redemption. The penultimate Distant Sky is a much needed spot of warmth. The harrowing duet seems to frame the characters as a husband and wife pushing forward in search of peace, leading to the closing line “Soon the children will be rising, will be rising. This is not for our eyes.” The lyric is ambiguous, but Cave’s female accompaniment lends it an air of hopeful confidence.
[First added to this chart: 06/22/2017]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
4,450
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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Top Tracks: Fill In The Blank, Vincent, Just What I Needed / Not Just What I Needed

If there’s any justice in this world, Teens of Denial will go down in history as a generation defining album. Will Toledo writes about what he knows, and what he knows is life as a twenty-something undergraduate student with little hope for a career and an almost complete inability to properly traverse the obstacles of adult life. Environments are dying, economies are collapsing, he’s paying a bunch of extra taxes to government programs that probably won’t exist anymore when he’s old enough to benefit from them, but his biggest concern is that he can’t cook dinner for himself. Well it turns out no one else really knows how to manage adulthood at twenty-four either. None of us know how to make dinner for ourselves. None of us know how to hold a job. None of us know how to steer the ship. None of us know how to properly clear a Cars sample, preventing a multi-thousand-dollar loss for our record label. We’ll figure it out eventually – maybe. In the meantime, we can find some solace in Will’s riff-laden guitar rock, knowing we aren’t the only ones struggling.
[First added to this chart: 07/03/2016]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
7,138
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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Top Tracks: Desert Island Disk, Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief, True Love Waits

Just over two decades into the most acclaimed career in modern rock, Radiohead created what is undoubtedly the most beautiful album of their career with A Moon Shaped Pool. From the strings of the opening Burn The Witch and the melodic piano of Daydreaming to the choral arrangements of Decks Dark and the flamenco tinged guitar of Desert Island Disk, it’s clear that they are drawing on some of the symphonic influences band member Johnny Greenwood has picked up in his previous decade of scoring films for the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson and Lynne Ramsey. Beyond instrumental beauty, there is also lyrical vulnerability, most directly evident on closing track True Love Waits. The loving ballad, first performed over twenty years earlier, finds a new life here. Sung in the wake of Thom Yorke’s separation from his longtime partner (for whom the song was likely originally written) it carries a melancholy air with it. Never before has Radiohead – a band typically preoccupied with technological alienation – sounded so human. Only a few years removed from its release, revisitation already has the inviting warmth of a hug from a forgotten friend.
[First added to this chart: 07/03/2016]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
15,180
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Top rated album (87/100 - 2163 votes)  87 (2,163 votes)
Comments:
33. (27) Down 6
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Top Tracks: Weary, Cranes in the Sky, Junie

It’s not uncommon for gifted artists to find themselves stuck in someone else’s shadow, and it’s likely more common if the artist is a minority in any way. That’s one of the defining subjects of FKA Twigs’ recent Magdalene, and while it wouldn’t be surprising if Solange had similar experiences to Twigs, Solange is also an extreme edge case. Solange Knowles is, of course, the younger sister of Beyoncé Knowles, and that is not an insignificant shadow to live under. I’m not saying that being the sibling of someone already established in the industry is all bad. I’m sure the position comes with some enviable insider connections, but it also comes with expectations. It comes with a whole slew of them, and that can be crippling to someone who doesn’t have the right level of confidence in what they’re doing. I don’t invoke Beyoncé to say that Solange’s A Seat at the Table has anything to do with her sister, or to draw comparison between the two women. No. My point is that, given her circumstances, for Solange to put herself out there required confidence, and confidence is precisely what A Seat at the Table is all about. Solange isn’t subtle about it either. Subtlety can be great, but you must consider the context. Confidence, pride, and self-care aren’t subjects to be subtle about, they’re subjects to be loudly proclaimed – to be shouted from the rooftops. Naturally, this only works if you have the music to back it up, and Solange absolutely does. A Seat at the Table is rich and inviting music. It’s all the best of old school and modern R&B blended together to create a record that feels simultaneously fresh and lived in. Solange doesn’t need to prove herself anymore. Her seat at the table has been earned.
[First added to this chart: 06/22/2017]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,869
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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Top Tracks: Tis A Pity She Was A Whore, Sue (Or in a Season of Crime), I Can’t Give Everything Away

There is a perfect narrative surrounding Blackstar. Here is a man, adored by millions, who knew he was dying, but hid it from the world. The writing was on the wall. His last pair of music videos weren’t exactly subtle about the inevitability of his death, but I suppose none of us wanted to see it. Knowing of his own imminent demise, he crafted for his fans a love letter of the highest order: one final album. The album released on his birthday, and he passed two days later. It’s a story worth writing about, and many people did, but to write about Blackstar based solely upon release circumstances is to do the music a great disservice.

Blackstar wouldn’t stand up if it weren’t for the quality of the music. It’s not uncommon for musicians to have a bit of a late career renaissance, but not like this. Blackstar isn’t just the best music Bowie had made in over thirty-five years, It’s the best in that time period by a wide margin, to the point that it rivals many of his seventies albums. What’s more, is that unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, at the age of sixty-eight Bowie was still willing to reinvent himself. Perhaps more than any other musician, David Bowie was known for his chameleonic career, but that doesn’t make it any less thrilling to see someone go to the grave still rife with the spirit of experimentation. Blackstar is a beautiful jazz laden sprawl. Tracks ‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore and Sue are vibrant bursts of spastic energy with equally emphatic singing from Bowie himself. Girl Loves Me is a great showcase of range featuring one of the most eccentric vocal performances of Bowie’s career coupled with a more subdued and typical late career chorus. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the closing track I Can’t Give Everything Away. It’s not merely Blackstar’s closer, but a swan song for Bowie’s career. Bowie gave everything he could to the world. He couldn’t give everything away, but working right up to the week he died, he sure tried.
[First added to this chart: 07/03/2016]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
12,339
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Top rated album (86/100 - 1663 votes)  86 (1,663 votes)
Comments:
40. (47) Up 7
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Top Tracks: Because I’m Me, The Noisy Eater, Live A Lifetime Love

There was no precedent for what an Avalanches album would sound like in 2016. When they put out their debut album Since I Left You back in 2000 the music landscape was an entirely different world. That album is said to contain somewhere between three-thousand to four-thousand distinct samples, a number that just sixteen years later would be an unapproachable nightmare to navigate the minefield of sample clearance laws for. So, while we knew what the Avalanches used to sound like, they would certainly sound different upon the arrival of their hotly anticipated follow-up. And yet, the shift in copyright law seemingly had very little effect on the resultant Wildflower. They still managed to clear some totally bonkers samples (The Sound of Music and The Beatles immediately come to mind) and according to the band, the sample count may be higher here than it was on Since I Left You. No, the largest difference it turns out, is the plentiful array of features. Since I Left You always felt small – not sonically, where it was larger than life, but deep in its very nature. That album was the dedicated work of a small collective of creatives, detached from the rest of the industry in the best possible way, like a time capsule from an alternate reality. Wildflower in contrast, is a community affair. It’s a wild and boisterous shipload of collaborators with The Avalanches at the helm. It inevitably doesn’t have that same otherworldly quality about it, but that’s a good thing. With Since I Left You being the single most unimpeachable classic of the plunderphonics genre it would’ve been an egregious error to attempt recreating its every trait. Wildflower needed to be different to stand up on its own merit, and that’s exactly what it does. Wildflower is an all new Avalanches classic.
[First added to this chart: 12/16/2016]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,406
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
59. New entry
PC Music, Vol. 2 
Compilation
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Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
34
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album United States
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[First added to this chart: 06/22/2017]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
3,430
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
73. (99) Up 26
Buy album United States
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[First added to this chart: 06/22/2017]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
70
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 13. Page 1 of 2
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s composition

Year Albums %


2010 11 11%
2011 6 6%
2012 7 7%
2013 5 5%
2014 9 9%
2015 15 15%
2016 13 13%
2017 12 12%
2018 7 7%
2019 15 15%
Country Albums %


United States 66 66%
Canada 13 13%
United Kingdom 12 12%
Australia 6 6%
Mixed Nationality 2 2%
Norway 1 1%
Compilation? Albums %
No 98 98%
Yes 2 2%
Soundtrack? Albums %
No 99 99%
Yes 1 1%

Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s chart changes

Biggest climbers
Climber Up 41 from 52nd to 11th
Black Up
by Shabazz Palaces
Climber Up 34 from 82nd to 48th
Reflections
by Hannah Diamond
Climber Up 26 from 99th to 73rd
Moth
by Chairlift
Biggest fallers
Faller Down 35 from 26th to 61st
Pom Pom
by Ariel Pink
Faller Down 28 from 21st to 49th
The Age Of Adz
by Sufjan Stevens
Faller Down 24 from 48th to 72nd
Benji
by Sun Kil Moon
TitleSourceTypePublishedCountry
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010sjdizzle1234562010s decade chart2025
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s AvalancheGrips2010s decade chart2022
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s Mattdup2792010s decade chart2020
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010sLosWochos2010s decade chart2020
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s Chicken4Sale2010s decade chart2020
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010sTheNowhereGuy2010s decade chart2020
The 200 Best Albums of the 2010sPitchfork2010s decade chart2019United States
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010siamthewalrus2010s decade chart2024Unknown
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010sbenfitzuk2010s decade chart2020Unknown
Pitchfork 200 Best Albums of the 2010s (1-100)WayneMCCustom chart2019

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TitleSourceTypePublishedCountry
Top 50 Music Albums of the 2020s FlorianJones2020s decade chart2022
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s FlorianJones2010s decade chart2022
Top 80 Music Albums of the 2000s FlorianJones2000s decade chart2017
Top 26 Music Albums of the 1990s FlorianJones1990s decade chart2020
Top 30 Music Albums of the 1980s FlorianJones1980s decade chart2020
FlorianJones has created 4 other 2010s decade charts - click here to explore them all.

Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s ratings

Average Rating: 
87/100 (from 6 votes)
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02/17/2018 15:30 Davy   44187/100
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06/28/2017 17:14 weston   8087/100
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02/20/2017 19:20 Seab   2,00593/100
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06/01/2015 22:53 Applerill   97475/100
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85/100
From 06/28/2017 17:15 | #193348
Nice! I agree 2015 was the strongest year so are. And I like the stuff you've thrown at the end.
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From 04/02/2015 20:04 | #138629
Excellent Chart!
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