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.
- Chart updated: 06/14/2022 23:15
- (Created: 11/26/2014 05:57).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
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Top Tracks: Biscuit Town, Dum Surfer, The Ooz
It’s become something of a theme in my musings on music that if an album defies my preconceived notions of genre, I’m likely to love it. It has been long thought that no one ever does anything new. We build on what exists. We twist things in new ways. But something entirely new: It doesn’t happen. It seems the best artists of the decade took that as a challenge. You may say the same of past decades, and it’s true, the story of roughly the last century of popular music has been one of forward momentum. We tear down the past as we push into the future, but this decade was different. In July of 2011 Spotify launched in the United States.
To be clear, Spotify is a blight on the music industry in a lot of ways. Endless skippability has led to reduced attention spans, musicians are drastically underpaid, and in an attempt to game billboard’s streaming calculations, several of the decade’s biggest stars joined in an arms race to see who could make the most bloated unsightly Frankenstein of an album all in the name of popularity. Yet, Spotify and its competitors also created a new economy where everything rests on an equal playing field of accessibility. In previous decades, artists lived and died by how hard their label pushed their music because to be known, your music had to be in as many places as possible. Now everyone’s music is in everyone else’s pocket. I can play the new Taylor Swift song just as easily as I can play a half century old Miles Davis album. With this one innovation, everyone has the immediate capacity for musical omnivourity. Looking back, this is the decade where genre designations collapsed. Enter Archie Marshall.
Generally speaking, The Ooz might be described as a rock album. But more specifically it exists in all the spaces between. Recycling the past and looking to the future, it’s an album with neither time nor genre. Standout single Dum Surfer finds Marshall dueting with himself. Simultaneously showcasing the voice of a nineties britpop frontman, and the growling snarl of the town drunk on karaoke night. Subsequent tracks showcase similar versatility, from the listless balladry of Slush Puppy, to the bossa nova beat of Logos. Whatever musical coin you flip, you’ll find The Ooz on both sides of it. Look to tracks Bermondsey Bosom (right) and Bermondsey Bosom (Left), each one resting in the center of their respective sides of the album. They exist as two sides of one coin – identical songs, altered only by the gender of the vocalist, and the language in which they speak. The lyrics to the song mirror the idea that even minor shifts can create a world of difference with the repeated “parasite, paradise, parasito, paraiso.” It’s equal parts progressive and regressive. It’s a decidedly odd album for a decidedly odd decade. [First added to this chart: 09/24/2018]
It’s become something of a theme in my musings on music that if an album defies my preconceived notions of genre, I’m likely to love it. It has been long thought that no one ever does anything new. We build on what exists. We twist things in new ways. But something entirely new: It doesn’t happen. It seems the best artists of the decade took that as a challenge. You may say the same of past decades, and it’s true, the story of roughly the last century of popular music has been one of forward momentum. We tear down the past as we push into the future, but this decade was different. In July of 2011 Spotify launched in the United States.
To be clear, Spotify is a blight on the music industry in a lot of ways. Endless skippability has led to reduced attention spans, musicians are drastically underpaid, and in an attempt to game billboard’s streaming calculations, several of the decade’s biggest stars joined in an arms race to see who could make the most bloated unsightly Frankenstein of an album all in the name of popularity. Yet, Spotify and its competitors also created a new economy where everything rests on an equal playing field of accessibility. In previous decades, artists lived and died by how hard their label pushed their music because to be known, your music had to be in as many places as possible. Now everyone’s music is in everyone else’s pocket. I can play the new Taylor Swift song just as easily as I can play a half century old Miles Davis album. With this one innovation, everyone has the immediate capacity for musical omnivourity. Looking back, this is the decade where genre designations collapsed. Enter Archie Marshall.
Generally speaking, The Ooz might be described as a rock album. But more specifically it exists in all the spaces between. Recycling the past and looking to the future, it’s an album with neither time nor genre. Standout single Dum Surfer finds Marshall dueting with himself. Simultaneously showcasing the voice of a nineties britpop frontman, and the growling snarl of the town drunk on karaoke night. Subsequent tracks showcase similar versatility, from the listless balladry of Slush Puppy, to the bossa nova beat of Logos. Whatever musical coin you flip, you’ll find The Ooz on both sides of it. Look to tracks Bermondsey Bosom (right) and Bermondsey Bosom (Left), each one resting in the center of their respective sides of the album. They exist as two sides of one coin – identical songs, altered only by the gender of the vocalist, and the language in which they speak. The lyrics to the song mirror the idea that even minor shifts can create a world of difference with the repeated “parasite, paradise, parasito, paraiso.” It’s equal parts progressive and regressive. It’s a decidedly odd album for a decidedly odd decade. [First added to this chart: 09/24/2018]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,230
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
11
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Top Tracks: Seaweed, Ravens, Swims
I still don’t have any need to talk about this album. Phil Elverum experienced a trauma that many people will likely never comprehend. In the wake of that trauma, he wrote. Prior to releasing A Crow Looked At Me, Phil admitted that he doesn’t consider this album music. Maybe he doesn’t even consider it art, but he felt compelled to make it. There’s a tremendous generosity to his actions. Not many people would open up to the public about such things. Phil did, and his work speaks for itself more than any writer ever could. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
I still don’t have any need to talk about this album. Phil Elverum experienced a trauma that many people will likely never comprehend. In the wake of that trauma, he wrote. Prior to releasing A Crow Looked At Me, Phil admitted that he doesn’t consider this album music. Maybe he doesn’t even consider it art, but he felt compelled to make it. There’s a tremendous generosity to his actions. Not many people would open up to the public about such things. Phil did, and his work speaks for itself more than any writer ever could. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
3,388
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Top Tracks: Black Origami, Nyakinyua Rise, Never Created Never Destroyed
Jlin isn’t the first musician to approach the sublime through repetition, particularly in electronic music, where repetition is embedded in the DNA of the genre. Repeated structures yield bizarre effects. They pull things out of the music we would have never otherwise heard. Like a musical take on semantic satiation, we might begin to wonder if we’re even hearing the same thing. As an inverse to that effect, many musicians work in permutations. They work over an extended period of time to slowly sift through variations on the core structure. A song can start and end in dramatically different places with the listener hardly realizing change occurred. On Black Origami, Jlin adopts the latter approach, but rather than gradual fluid progression, she’s racing through the permutations. Not a single possibility is left out on the table. Everything about Black Origami moves at breakneck pace. Structures repeat, but they fall in and out of the mix spontaneously. That spontaneity provides a crucial contrast to how meticulous it all sounds, but as both unrelentingly frantic and precision rendered as Black Origami is, it doesn’t lose the naturalistic human touch that marks the best of Chicago’s footwork scene. Naturally, as with anything footwork, you’re not going to be able to sit still while you listen. Jlin demands that you get movin’. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
Jlin isn’t the first musician to approach the sublime through repetition, particularly in electronic music, where repetition is embedded in the DNA of the genre. Repeated structures yield bizarre effects. They pull things out of the music we would have never otherwise heard. Like a musical take on semantic satiation, we might begin to wonder if we’re even hearing the same thing. As an inverse to that effect, many musicians work in permutations. They work over an extended period of time to slowly sift through variations on the core structure. A song can start and end in dramatically different places with the listener hardly realizing change occurred. On Black Origami, Jlin adopts the latter approach, but rather than gradual fluid progression, she’s racing through the permutations. Not a single possibility is left out on the table. Everything about Black Origami moves at breakneck pace. Structures repeat, but they fall in and out of the mix spontaneously. That spontaneity provides a crucial contrast to how meticulous it all sounds, but as both unrelentingly frantic and precision rendered as Black Origami is, it doesn’t lose the naturalistic human touch that marks the best of Chicago’s footwork scene. Naturally, as with anything footwork, you’re not going to be able to sit still while you listen. Jlin demands that you get movin’. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
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Top Tracks: Brick, Sportstar, Powerful Man
In an ocean of vaguely folksy white dude rock, what sets Rocket apart is noise. Alex G has a love for noise. That much is clear on Brick, one of the album’s centerpiece tracks, that is indisputably a piece of noise rock, but also, a bit of an outlier. Brick isn’t so much an outlier as it is the only track that drives headfirst into the noise. Most of the tracks on Rocket engage in a discourse with cacophony to some degree. The couple of tracks preceding Brick are sequenced perfectly, each track just a little more unhinged than the previous, transitioning smoothly from order to chaos. Then, at the center of Rocket, right after we’ve been eased into anarchy, we receive a jarring cut. Brick’s wall of crunchy feedback drops out and gives way to the sonically bright and shimmering Sportstar, an unabashed pop song, and the only one on the album. This dichotomy is the backbone of what makes Rocket’s eclecticism work. There’s a constant struggle at play between aggression and beauty that keeps the listener engaged from start to finish. And if you don’t have time for a full-length project, I direct you to late album cut Powerful Man. Starting as a bright little folk song, it gradually strips back to a violin solo that collapses in on itself with each repeating phrase. It’s a small, self-contained example of what Rocket can do when taken as a whole. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
In an ocean of vaguely folksy white dude rock, what sets Rocket apart is noise. Alex G has a love for noise. That much is clear on Brick, one of the album’s centerpiece tracks, that is indisputably a piece of noise rock, but also, a bit of an outlier. Brick isn’t so much an outlier as it is the only track that drives headfirst into the noise. Most of the tracks on Rocket engage in a discourse with cacophony to some degree. The couple of tracks preceding Brick are sequenced perfectly, each track just a little more unhinged than the previous, transitioning smoothly from order to chaos. Then, at the center of Rocket, right after we’ve been eased into anarchy, we receive a jarring cut. Brick’s wall of crunchy feedback drops out and gives way to the sonically bright and shimmering Sportstar, an unabashed pop song, and the only one on the album. This dichotomy is the backbone of what makes Rocket’s eclecticism work. There’s a constant struggle at play between aggression and beauty that keeps the listener engaged from start to finish. And if you don’t have time for a full-length project, I direct you to late album cut Powerful Man. Starting as a bright little folk song, it gradually strips back to a violin solo that collapses in on itself with each repeating phrase. It’s a small, self-contained example of what Rocket can do when taken as a whole. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
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Top Tracks: Slip Away, Die 4 You, Alan
In the few years since No Shape’s release, Perfume Genius has become the go to soundtracking choice for coming of age cinema. When I first started to notice the trend, it seemed to be a humorous coincidence, but honestly speaking, there’s nothing coincidental about it. It’s a very fitting placement for these songs. From an aesthetic perspective, the music of No Shape is sweepingly cinematic. Album opener Otherside begins as a quiet ode, delivered with an almost religious fervor, but the chorus cascades in like a landslide, pummeling the listener with waves of luscious orchestration. That dynamic punchiness is a quality perfectly suited for film. This does not however, explain the consistent genre Perfume Genius has been typecast into soundtracking.
Mike Hadreas (the genius behind the perfume) writes music about self-acceptance. Artists work with what they know, and as a queer man born in 1981, searching for acceptance has been an integral part of his life. With No Shape, Hadreas has done something remarkable; he has reduced his very specific struggles down to their universal core. We can see this exemplified by looking at some of the scenes his music has featured in. Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart each set their emotional climaxes against the backdrop of a pool party. These scenes (soundtracked by songs from No Shape of course) represent the moment where the protagonist becomes comfortable living in their own skin, perhaps for the first time in their lives. There isn’t an immediate line to be drawn between the plights of the teenage girls in these films and the plights of a thirty-five year old queer man, but Hadreas bridges that gap because no matter how you twist it, everyone’s life is part of the human experience. No Shape is music that brings out the empathy in all of us. [First added to this chart: 04/26/2020]
In the few years since No Shape’s release, Perfume Genius has become the go to soundtracking choice for coming of age cinema. When I first started to notice the trend, it seemed to be a humorous coincidence, but honestly speaking, there’s nothing coincidental about it. It’s a very fitting placement for these songs. From an aesthetic perspective, the music of No Shape is sweepingly cinematic. Album opener Otherside begins as a quiet ode, delivered with an almost religious fervor, but the chorus cascades in like a landslide, pummeling the listener with waves of luscious orchestration. That dynamic punchiness is a quality perfectly suited for film. This does not however, explain the consistent genre Perfume Genius has been typecast into soundtracking.
Mike Hadreas (the genius behind the perfume) writes music about self-acceptance. Artists work with what they know, and as a queer man born in 1981, searching for acceptance has been an integral part of his life. With No Shape, Hadreas has done something remarkable; he has reduced his very specific struggles down to their universal core. We can see this exemplified by looking at some of the scenes his music has featured in. Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart each set their emotional climaxes against the backdrop of a pool party. These scenes (soundtracked by songs from No Shape of course) represent the moment where the protagonist becomes comfortable living in their own skin, perhaps for the first time in their lives. There isn’t an immediate line to be drawn between the plights of the teenage girls in these films and the plights of a thirty-five year old queer man, but Hadreas bridges that gap because no matter how you twist it, everyone’s life is part of the human experience. No Shape is music that brings out the empathy in all of us. [First added to this chart: 04/26/2020]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,536
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Top Tracks: I’m All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar, If You Need To Keep Time On Me, I Should See Memphis
When Fleet Foxes came crashing onto the scene with their self-titled debut during the folk revival boom of the late aughts, they wrote big baroque folk with classic hooks. Their music had an immediacy to it. Nine years later, frontman Robin Pecknold was far less concerned about that immediacy. After a mere two albums propelled Fleet Foxes into the upper echelons of indie rock popularity, the band went silent. Pecknold had other ideas, and other things to do. He spent time attending Columbia, not out of obligation to a career or a degree, but out of an innate desire to learn and progress. Following six years in the interim, Crack Up was ready, and Fleet Foxes no longer sounded as they once did.
Mirroring Robin’s own personal ethos, Crack Up is completely uninterested in getting anywhere quickly. The urgency has been replaced, and on Crack Up more than ever before, Pecknold seems captivated by liminal states. He’s not particularly interested in point A or point B, but the gap that bridges the two. That’s not to say the album is without its spectacular points. Some of the album’s most impactful segments, like the melody that goes along with the line “I was a child in the ivy then, I never knew you, you knew me” are parts I would call the points Pecknold is bridging, but he’s not lingering on those points for very long. As is the case with that moment, some of Robin’s best melodies here get repeated only once or twice, but the album is all the better for that fact. There’s a constant sense of yearning that comes with the territory. Each individual moment tends to find itself cut ever so slightly short to make way for what comes next. The audience wants just a sliver more every time. It’s a strategy that yields an album significantly greater than the sum of its parts – parts that are only loosely defined by the accompanying tracklist. The track titles are a dead giveaway of the album’s amorphous structure. The first track masquerades as three with the title I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar while the subsequent two conjoin with the titles Cassius, – and – Naiads, Cassadies. After having a couple years to live with this album, I still don’t consider it in terms of songs, because they don’t have the distinctive separations that Helplessness Blues or Fleet Foxes did. Here, everything moves in waves (making the album art quite suitable), crashing in and drawing out – like the tides, Crack Up takes time to leave an impact, but give it the opportunity and it will get there. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
When Fleet Foxes came crashing onto the scene with their self-titled debut during the folk revival boom of the late aughts, they wrote big baroque folk with classic hooks. Their music had an immediacy to it. Nine years later, frontman Robin Pecknold was far less concerned about that immediacy. After a mere two albums propelled Fleet Foxes into the upper echelons of indie rock popularity, the band went silent. Pecknold had other ideas, and other things to do. He spent time attending Columbia, not out of obligation to a career or a degree, but out of an innate desire to learn and progress. Following six years in the interim, Crack Up was ready, and Fleet Foxes no longer sounded as they once did.
Mirroring Robin’s own personal ethos, Crack Up is completely uninterested in getting anywhere quickly. The urgency has been replaced, and on Crack Up more than ever before, Pecknold seems captivated by liminal states. He’s not particularly interested in point A or point B, but the gap that bridges the two. That’s not to say the album is without its spectacular points. Some of the album’s most impactful segments, like the melody that goes along with the line “I was a child in the ivy then, I never knew you, you knew me” are parts I would call the points Pecknold is bridging, but he’s not lingering on those points for very long. As is the case with that moment, some of Robin’s best melodies here get repeated only once or twice, but the album is all the better for that fact. There’s a constant sense of yearning that comes with the territory. Each individual moment tends to find itself cut ever so slightly short to make way for what comes next. The audience wants just a sliver more every time. It’s a strategy that yields an album significantly greater than the sum of its parts – parts that are only loosely defined by the accompanying tracklist. The track titles are a dead giveaway of the album’s amorphous structure. The first track masquerades as three with the title I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar while the subsequent two conjoin with the titles Cassius, – and – Naiads, Cassadies. After having a couple years to live with this album, I still don’t consider it in terms of songs, because they don’t have the distinctive separations that Helplessness Blues or Fleet Foxes did. Here, everything moves in waves (making the album art quite suitable), crashing in and drawing out – like the tides, Crack Up takes time to leave an impact, but give it the opportunity and it will get there. [First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,815
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Top Tracks: Here Is The Thing, The Chuckler, Don’t Go To Anacita
When Protomartyr’s Joe Casey performs, he staggers around the stage in a suit coat: mic in one hand and beer in the other. He spits and sneers his lines into the mic as though he’s writing them on the spot. His demeanor is that of a disillusioned smalltime businessman getting unconscionably drunk on a weeknight. Protomartyr’s music is thunderous, frequently eschewing the playful riffs of their contemporaries in favor of something more robust and muscular. It’s all very masculine in a traditional don’t give a shit punk fashion. The thing is, Casey really does give a shit, and Relatives in Descent’s second single, Male Plague, makes it clear how hesitant he is to oversell the band’s masculinity. Sonic masculinity is fine, but the moment it becomes something ideological, Casey knows to step back. Almost simply by nature of title, Male Plague is the most overt political indictment on Relatives In Descent, but the entire album is political.
Each song orbits around a central premise, but Casey’s writing creates branches of interwoven tangents. Up The Tower recounts an imagined tale of violent revolution, defenestrating the fascists from their ruling positions. On My Children, Casey laments not the future of our literal children, but figurative ones. He frames thoughts, actions, and overall legacy as the child we’ll leave behind. Pessimistically speaking, the human legacy is the Anthropocene era – the “clouds of poison in the sky and poison in the dirt” that The Chuckler’s narrator nihilistically laughs about breathing in. Album opener A Private Understanding and follow up Here Is The Thing both make reference to the Flint water crisis, another horrific human legacy, this time one that hits very close to home for the Detroit based band. Those same two tracks also decry the age of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. “Dread 2017 18, air horn age, age of horn blowing.” Reporting outlets have realized in the pursuit of profit, that saying something provocative is better than saying something truthful. That thought is carried through, and given deeper inspection on Caitriona, in which Casey questions scenarios where truth seems unattainable. On album closer Half Sister, he doubts whether anyone will accept the truth when they find it, pointing to moments where people historically have not. It could take hours to break down every line and reference scattered throughout Relatives In Descent. Protomartyr have written what may very well be America’s defining political punk record of the decade. [First added to this chart: 09/24/2018]
When Protomartyr’s Joe Casey performs, he staggers around the stage in a suit coat: mic in one hand and beer in the other. He spits and sneers his lines into the mic as though he’s writing them on the spot. His demeanor is that of a disillusioned smalltime businessman getting unconscionably drunk on a weeknight. Protomartyr’s music is thunderous, frequently eschewing the playful riffs of their contemporaries in favor of something more robust and muscular. It’s all very masculine in a traditional don’t give a shit punk fashion. The thing is, Casey really does give a shit, and Relatives in Descent’s second single, Male Plague, makes it clear how hesitant he is to oversell the band’s masculinity. Sonic masculinity is fine, but the moment it becomes something ideological, Casey knows to step back. Almost simply by nature of title, Male Plague is the most overt political indictment on Relatives In Descent, but the entire album is political.
Each song orbits around a central premise, but Casey’s writing creates branches of interwoven tangents. Up The Tower recounts an imagined tale of violent revolution, defenestrating the fascists from their ruling positions. On My Children, Casey laments not the future of our literal children, but figurative ones. He frames thoughts, actions, and overall legacy as the child we’ll leave behind. Pessimistically speaking, the human legacy is the Anthropocene era – the “clouds of poison in the sky and poison in the dirt” that The Chuckler’s narrator nihilistically laughs about breathing in. Album opener A Private Understanding and follow up Here Is The Thing both make reference to the Flint water crisis, another horrific human legacy, this time one that hits very close to home for the Detroit based band. Those same two tracks also decry the age of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. “Dread 2017 18, air horn age, age of horn blowing.” Reporting outlets have realized in the pursuit of profit, that saying something provocative is better than saying something truthful. That thought is carried through, and given deeper inspection on Caitriona, in which Casey questions scenarios where truth seems unattainable. On album closer Half Sister, he doubts whether anyone will accept the truth when they find it, pointing to moments where people historically have not. It could take hours to break down every line and reference scattered throughout Relatives In Descent. Protomartyr have written what may very well be America’s defining political punk record of the decade. [First added to this chart: 09/24/2018]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
736
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Top Tracks: Where This Flower Blooms, Who Dat Boy, November
“Bitch, Fuck.” isn’t exactly the most elegant start to an album. Prior to 2017 though, elegant is just about the last word anyone would use to describe Tyler Okonma. As the face of the LA horde of young creatives known formally as Odd Future, Tyler was a provocateur. He built his name on hard hitting production, inflammatory lyrics, irreverent interviews, and surreal music videos. Throughout the first half of this decade, if Tyler wasn’t actively attempting some sort of provocation you would’ve thought something was wrong with the guy. The major shift started with 2015’s Cherry Bomb, a nice step forward, that in retrospect feels a bit like a test run – the build up to something bigger. On Flower Boy, Tyler was evidently interested in making something prettier than anything he had made before.
Opener Foreword quickly expands from that peculiar introduction as hazy swaths of synth wash over guest singer Rex Orange County. By the time the following track rolls in, Tyler’s production is as lush as ever, and longtime friend / frequent collaborator Frank Ocean sounds more at home here than he has on any of his prior Tyler features. Now, Tyler’s still himself, and he still spices up the album’s flow, going hard on tracks like Who Dat Boy or I Ain’t Got Time – a trend he continues on 2019’s similarly melodic Igor with tracks New Magic Wand and What’s Good – but despite the sonic edge, Tyler’s still maintaining lyrical vulnerability. It was certainly a bit of a shock when two days before Flower Boy’s release, I Ain’t Got Time dropped as a single with lines suggesting that Tyler (a guy often accused of homophobia by the ill-informed) may not be as straight as we once thought. It was refreshing just how nonchalant about it he appeared to be, but considering his reputation as a prankster, a surprising chunk of his fanbase didn’t even believe it at first. I suppose it’s easy to write off a coming out line as humorous as “Next line will have ‘em like ‘Whoa’. I’ve been kissin’ white boys since 2004.” Once the full album was out, deep cuts like Garden Shed delved further into the topic, reaffirming Flower Boy as a coming out statement. However, framing Flower Boy in an LGBT light is only part of the story. Tyler is reconciling with his past throughout Flower Boy, and anyone who’s been living under a spotlight since their late teens might find it easy to look back with regret. On November, a late album highlight, his laments include being so preoccupied with making “classics” that he loses track of everything else and being remembered mostly for his headline making tweets. Tyler has always been an interesting figure in this regard. He has insecurities. He cares quite sincerely about the quality of his art. He’s also loud. He’s known for speaking before he thinks. He’s spent a lot of time trying to hide how much he cares because vulnerability isn’t exactly easy for men in their early twenties. Flower Boy is all of that coming crashing down. It’s fragmented, conflicted, and complicated – an ultimately beautiful, enticing, and thoughtful self-portrait. [First added to this chart: 04/26/2020]
“Bitch, Fuck.” isn’t exactly the most elegant start to an album. Prior to 2017 though, elegant is just about the last word anyone would use to describe Tyler Okonma. As the face of the LA horde of young creatives known formally as Odd Future, Tyler was a provocateur. He built his name on hard hitting production, inflammatory lyrics, irreverent interviews, and surreal music videos. Throughout the first half of this decade, if Tyler wasn’t actively attempting some sort of provocation you would’ve thought something was wrong with the guy. The major shift started with 2015’s Cherry Bomb, a nice step forward, that in retrospect feels a bit like a test run – the build up to something bigger. On Flower Boy, Tyler was evidently interested in making something prettier than anything he had made before.
Opener Foreword quickly expands from that peculiar introduction as hazy swaths of synth wash over guest singer Rex Orange County. By the time the following track rolls in, Tyler’s production is as lush as ever, and longtime friend / frequent collaborator Frank Ocean sounds more at home here than he has on any of his prior Tyler features. Now, Tyler’s still himself, and he still spices up the album’s flow, going hard on tracks like Who Dat Boy or I Ain’t Got Time – a trend he continues on 2019’s similarly melodic Igor with tracks New Magic Wand and What’s Good – but despite the sonic edge, Tyler’s still maintaining lyrical vulnerability. It was certainly a bit of a shock when two days before Flower Boy’s release, I Ain’t Got Time dropped as a single with lines suggesting that Tyler (a guy often accused of homophobia by the ill-informed) may not be as straight as we once thought. It was refreshing just how nonchalant about it he appeared to be, but considering his reputation as a prankster, a surprising chunk of his fanbase didn’t even believe it at first. I suppose it’s easy to write off a coming out line as humorous as “Next line will have ‘em like ‘Whoa’. I’ve been kissin’ white boys since 2004.” Once the full album was out, deep cuts like Garden Shed delved further into the topic, reaffirming Flower Boy as a coming out statement. However, framing Flower Boy in an LGBT light is only part of the story. Tyler is reconciling with his past throughout Flower Boy, and anyone who’s been living under a spotlight since their late teens might find it easy to look back with regret. On November, a late album highlight, his laments include being so preoccupied with making “classics” that he loses track of everything else and being remembered mostly for his headline making tweets. Tyler has always been an interesting figure in this regard. He has insecurities. He cares quite sincerely about the quality of his art. He’s also loud. He’s known for speaking before he thinks. He’s spent a lot of time trying to hide how much he cares because vulnerability isn’t exactly easy for men in their early twenties. Flower Boy is all of that coming crashing down. It’s fragmented, conflicted, and complicated – an ultimately beautiful, enticing, and thoughtful self-portrait. [First added to this chart: 04/26/2020]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
5,008
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
[First added to this chart: 04/26/2020]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,406
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Buy album
- #Sponsored
[First added to this chart: 10/24/2017]
Year of Release:
2017
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2,115
Rank in 2017:
Rank in 2010s:
Overall Rank:
Average Rating:
Comments:
Total albums: 12. 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% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Kendrick Lamar | 4 | 4% | |
| Frank Ocean | 3 | 3% | |
| Tame Impala | 3 | 3% | |
| Ought | 2 | 2% | |
| Fleet Foxes | 2 | 2% | |
| Spoon | 2 | 2% | |
| LCD Soundsystem | 2 | 2% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s chart changes
| Biggest climbers |
|---|
| Up 41 from 52nd to 11th Black Up by Shabazz Palaces |
| Up 34 from 82nd to 48th Reflections by Hannah Diamond |
| Up 26 from 99th to 73rd Moth by Chairlift |
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 35 from 26th to 61st Pom Pom by Ariel Pink |
| Down 28 from 21st to 49th The Age Of Adz by Sufjan Stevens |
| Down 24 from 48th to 72nd Benji by Sun Kil Moon |
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FlorianJones (2020)Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s ratings
87/100 (from 6 votes)
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
N.B. The average rating for this chart will not be reliable as it has been rated very few times.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this chart. | Show all 6 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 95/100  | 02/17/2018 15:30 |  Davy | | 87/100 |
| 85/100 | 06/28/2017 17:14 | weston | | 87/100 |
| 100/100 | 02/20/2017 19:20 | Seab | | 93/100 |
| 70/100 | 06/01/2015 22:53 |  Applerill | | 75/100 |
| 95/100 | 04/15/2015 13:21 |  andy_hunter | | 88/100 |
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s comments
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85/100
From weston 06/28/2017 17:15
Nice! I agree 2015 was the strongest year so are. And I like the stuff you've thrown at the end.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
SaulCortes1992 04/02/2015 20:04
SaulCortes1992 04/02/2015 20:04
Excellent Chart!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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