Listed below are the best albums of the 2020s (so far) as calculated from their overall rankings in over 59,000 greatest album charts. (Chart last updated: 4 hours ago).
"I've put off listening to 'Guts' for a while, purely just because of how much an album like this inevitably gets overhyped by the media, and by friends raving on about how I should listen to it. Once the dust has settled, I like to try and form my own opinion... and it's pretty much as I expected...""I've put off listening to 'Guts' for a while, purely just because of how much an album like this inevitably gets overhyped by the media, and by friends raving on about how I should listen to it. Once the dust has settled, I like to try and form my own opinion... and it's pretty much as I expected - an above average pop album held together by Rodrigo's beautiful voice, for the most part strong songwriting and Dan Nigro's immaculate production. Admittedly I'm probably not the target market, but I can still appreciate a project like this :-)"[+]Reply
"The Quietus don’t like IDLES, so eager were the noise-drone-loving-blur-hating online UK equivalent of Pitchfork that they published their review of the new record a month early. They hated it. The most exciting band in the UK and they were found with their pants round their ankles. It seems the ...""The Quietus don’t like IDLES, so eager were the noise-drone-loving-blur-hating online UK equivalent of Pitchfork that they published their review of the new record a month early. They hated it. The most exciting band in the UK and they were found with their pants round their ankles. It seems the august journal have decided that what the kids need are badly recorded rip offs of Metal Machine Music. What’s that? Fun?! Don’t be so vulgar.
The record is of course fine, although not quite as as good as Joy but it does include 12 reasons why 2020 won’t quite be remembered why rock’n’roll curled up & died. Fuck ‘em."[+]Reply
"It’s a golden era for women in music 2018 saw incredible albums from Mitski and Boygenius feat Phoebe Bridgers 2019 was even better with Lana Del Rey , Uboa , Big Theif and Sharon Van Etten smashing it out of the park And in 2020 we’ve already had Fiona Apple , Waxahatche, Phoebe Bridgers and Bea...""It’s a golden era for women in music
2018 saw incredible albums from Mitski and Boygenius feat Phoebe Bridgers
2019 was even better with Lana Del Rey , Uboa , Big Theif and Sharon Van Etten smashing it out of the park
And in 2020 we’ve already had Fiona Apple , Waxahatche, Phoebe Bridgers and Beach Bunny soar high and you can now add sisters Alana , Este and Danielle HAIM with ‘WIM 3’ to the honour roll
After the somewhat disappointing ‘Something to Tell You’ in 2017 the girls have righted the ship with a superb collection of wonderful harmony’s spiced with mature lyrics showing another side we haven’t seen before. Highlights include “Up From a Dream”, lead single “The Steps” ( a real grower), the largely acoustic “Man From The Magazine” and my personal favourite track “Hallelujah” strangely listed as a Bonus Track (??) and is a love letter to the 3 sisters and the lyric “3 Roads One Life”
Clearly and completely one of 2020’s very best album releases "[+]Reply
"If there exists a person who simultaneously has heard the term "5th Wave of Emo" and thinks it's not arrived, they surely do now. "Dream-pop" never went out of style per se, but it has become an increasingly amorphous definition. A term coined by one of Shoegaze's few POC artists has come to cove...""If there exists a person who simultaneously has heard the term "5th Wave of Emo" and thinks it's not arrived, they surely do now.
"Dream-pop" never went out of style per se, but it has become an increasingly amorphous definition. A term coined by one of Shoegaze's few POC artists has come to cover a wide and stale range of sounds including
fascistic hypnogogic pop, vaporwave's most populist work and Mac DeMarco inspired college-dorm cover bands. This sterile take on dream-pop was not limited to the periphery though as the worst clichés of 2010s Indie were the out-of-the-box Logic 10 digitally applied hall reverb and an emergent market (or hellscape) of boutique "dreamy" pedals hundreds of dollars a pop.
Perhaps in part a rejection of the above garbage, the last few years has seen a surprising resurgence of interest in niche 90s shoegaze outfits. Bands like Lush, Here, Blueshift Signal, Swallow, Cranes, Moose (I could go on endlessly), are all finding new listeners off the back of vinyl re-releases and Spotify algorithmic encouragement. Shoegaze has not seen this much interest since the late 00s forums days.
Amidst this revivalist moment, Parannoul blew up online with the album To See the Next Part of the Dream – the first fresh sounding act in years (Ironically he did so off the back of YouTube more so than any other platform, the once quintessential place to find bland dream-pop played over French-New Wave films). Despite its crunchiness and repetitiveness, To See the Next Part of the Dream is mesmerising and innovative; an imminently self-justifying work of art.
However, rather than part of the mostly white, mostly industry backed wave of DIIV copies calling themselves "shoegaze", Parannoul always felt to me closer to the emo-adjacent hyper-pop influenced noisepop artists active on bandcamp like Weatherday, Gammagirl and be your own virtual pet!. These artists are independent, faceless/monikered, queer and, while embodying many of the self-deprecating hallmarks of emo, are far more animated and jubilant-sounding than any emo we've heard before. I don't entirely love the idea of calling this "post-emo", but it deserves to be named.
After the Magic is all you need to hear to be convinced that this bloc of artists constitute not just the vanguard of emo today, but are a wholly new movement in-and-of themselves. Polaris is maybe the best single song Parannoul has put out (as hard as that is to decide). Insomnia is a revelatory re-working of Downfall of the Neon Youth, lowering the skittish frenetic free-drumming of the first version in the mix and making everything else softer and gentler; Insomniacs dream too. Arrival is maybe the biggest sounding song on the project, finding a way to become immense while still sounding graceful. the penultimate Blossom also deserves special recognition as a truly textbook representation of Parannoul's ability to make anew the anthemic emo bops of the 00s.
I think a false dichotomy has emerged between this record and Parannoul's breakout sophmore release: the first is open and honest about the depressive horror of our capitalist realist present and this new record hides in dreams ("It's more mellow"). The problem is To See the Next Part of the Dream was never especially depressive, it just came out during a global pandemic. Go back and listen to it now and you'll see the exuberant and exultant turn was always where this new generation were going, and good for them. Go transcend!"[+]Reply
"Another masterclass in mood, tension, orchestration and drama from the great Canadian band - and a fantastic title for the victims of genocide in Gaza. Free Palestine."Reply
"Like a lot of great recent albums from Radiohead (A Moon Shaped Pool) and Bon Iver (i,i), American Head combines a number of elements from some of the bands best works. Yoshimi and At War With the Mystics are probably the most identifiable, with a side of Soft Bulletin. This is the album I was ho...""Like a lot of great recent albums from Radiohead (A Moon Shaped Pool) and Bon Iver (i,i), American Head combines a number of elements from some of the bands best works. Yoshimi and At War With the Mystics are probably the most identifiable, with a side of Soft Bulletin. This is the album I was hoping for after King’s Mouth trended back in this direction. Definitely a Top 5 Lips album, may end up higher after a few more listens. "[+]Reply
"An emotional album. Definitely Grohl’s most ambitious album lyrically. Unfortunately, musically it is very bland and uninteresting. Not much to grab on to melodically. Still has some powerful moments attached to grief and loss."Reply
"What a wonderful surprise! This was very enjoyable. Other comments have noted similarities to Pink Floyd and Tame Impala, but I think there is influence from The Weeknd and Kid Cudi here too. Even though his sound has been elevated with these new sonic pallets, he still sounds like the same artis...""What a wonderful surprise! This was very enjoyable. Other comments have noted similarities to Pink Floyd and Tame Impala, but I think there is influence from The Weeknd and Kid Cudi here too. Even though his sound has been elevated with these new sonic pallets, he still sounds like the same artist who released the Lil Boat mixtape back in 2016, which was a project that I liked and thought was good. Don't miss this one. Recommended for fans of hip-hop, modern R&B, and psychedelic pop. "[+]Reply
"Beyonce's follow-up to Renaissance has been characterized as Queen Bey's "country album." Not outside the realm of possibility as she's flirted with it on early records--not to mention she's from Texas; Beynoce is for sure familiar with country. Though she typically dabbles in contemporary trends...""Beyonce's follow-up to Renaissance has been characterized as Queen Bey's "country album." Not outside the realm of possibility as she's flirted with it on early records--not to mention she's from Texas; Beynoce is for sure familiar with country. Though she typically dabbles in contemporary trends, and pushes boundaries from time to time, it is still surprising that arguably the biggest R&B artist of the 21st century is pivoting to something so stylistically and aesthetically removed from her typical sound.
Yet, Cowboy Carter delivers just fine as a country album. To label it as any one genre would,, however, do a disservice to how sprawling and strange this record is. At a touch under 80 minutes, Cowboy Carter is an odyssey through the history of contemporary music so unusual and daring that I can't fathom how anyone could have anticipated something like this. Though it rests in twangy melodies and rustic textures, Cowboy Carter is practically a plunderphonics record as it weaves in and out of songs. And while Beyonce has borrowed phrases from other artists on occasion, it's never been to this degree. Cowboy Carter is a postmodern treatise from one of the biggest music stars on the planet. The nods to other songs aren't simply covers or samples; they're often re-contextualized variations. Think Nostalgia, ULTRA on a grander scale.
Cowboy Carter isn't just putting a personal, even original twist on familiar classics. Like Renaissance, this record is steeped in self-love and familial pride, bursting with affection and grace for just about everything in its path. More so than anything she's made, Cowboy Carter is Beynoce's most cinematic work, one that transports and tours through her own legacy. What it lacks in the pop immediacy of her earlier work, it makes up for by being a thrilling holistic experience, and greater than the sum of its parts."[+]Reply