Best Albums of the 2020s (so far)

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121.

Women In Music Pt. III 

 Haim

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"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

- Brad1770 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2020

Appears in:

221 charts

Rank Score:

628

Rank in 2020:

31

Rank in 2020s:

121

Overall Rank:

2,505

Average Rating:

 75 (200 votes)

Comments:

16

122.

Cowboy Carter 

 Beyoncé

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"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

- HoldenM | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +4 votes (5 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2024

Appears in:

160 charts

Rank Score:

619

Rank in 2024:

19

Rank in 2020s:

122

Overall Rank:

2,533

Average Rating:

 69 (145 votes)

Comments:

17

123.

Guts 

 Olivia Rodrigo

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"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

- jbentley3997 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2023

Appears in:

191 charts

Rank Score:

617

Rank in 2023:

14

Rank in 2020s:

123

Overall Rank:

2,542

Average Rating:

 73 (152 votes)

Comments:

8

124.

The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We 

 Mitski

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"A real interesting switch up in mood and sound from last year’s ‘Laurel Hell’ and dare I say it punches just as much as an overall piece of work…"  Reply

- jbentley3997 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2023

Appears in:

205 charts

Rank Score:

614

Rank in 2023:

15

Rank in 2020s:

124

Overall Rank:

2,558

Average Rating:

 76 (152 votes)

Comments:

4

125.

No Name 

 Jack White

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"Easily his best since the White Stripes ended, and maybe his best since Elephant."  Reply

- PartridgeAHA | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2024

Appears in:

173 charts

Rank Score:

612

Rank in 2024:

20

Rank in 2020s:

125

Overall Rank:

2,565

Average Rating:

 77 (154 votes)

Comments:

7

126.

Ultra Mono 

 Idles

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"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

- johnner | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +7 votes (7 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2020

Appears in:

194 charts

Rank Score:

606

Rank in 2020:

32

Rank in 2020s:

126

Overall Rank:

2,589

Average Rating:

 75 (214 votes)

Comments:

10

127.

Preacher's Daughter 

 Ethel Cain

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"This wants to be something more than it is. It's steeped in aesthetic suggestion of something dark, something sinister, something lying beneath the surface under the white lace. Alas and alack if there's in fact some deeper truth or horror or horror-truth hidden under there, Cain hasn't the faint...""This wants to be something more than it is. It's steeped in aesthetic suggestion of something dark, something sinister, something lying beneath the surface under the white lace. Alas and alack if there's in fact some deeper truth or horror or horror-truth hidden under there, Cain hasn't the faintest idea what it is. Strangers has a nice build and payoff, but almost everything else on the album is just cringe overproduced sanitised radio-pop. That is except for the triptych of songs beginning with Ptolemaea. Those three suggest something *is* actually happening deeper within this album at a narrative/thematic level. However, once you emerge from the piano instrumental Televangelism – waiting for something to hit – you just get Sun Bleached Flies, which is a garbage song that just pretends you went on some odd detour off the road and into the dark forest – "but don't worry, you're back on the 5 lane mega-freeway and the FM radio is crisp again, let's forget what just happened!" In reality the "weird songs" were just placed where they are because that's where you put the "weird songs" in an album nowadays. It's the pop formula tolerating a bit of contained experimentation, because the thought of that sells now. I hated American Teenager."  [+]  Reply

- Arthurknight | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +4 votes (5 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2022

Appears in:

119 charts

Rank Score:

603

Rank in 2022:

23

Rank in 2020s:

127

Overall Rank:

2,607

Average Rating:

 74 (95 votes)

Comments:

9

128.

No​ ​Title As Of 13 February 2024 28​,​340 Dead 

 Godspeed You! Black Emperor

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"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

- radio-head | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (7 helpful | 2 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2024

Appears in:

124 charts

Rank Score:

603

Rank in 2024:

21

Rank in 2020s:

128

Overall Rank:

2,608

Average Rating:

 77 (104 votes)

Comments:

6

129.

After The Magic 

 파란노을 [Parannoul]

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"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

- Arthurknight | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (3 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2023

Appears in:

160 charts

Rank Score:

592

Rank in 2023:

16

Rank in 2020s:

129

Overall Rank:

2,641

Average Rating:

 76 (197 votes)

Comments:

15

130.

American Head 

 The Flaming Lips

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"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

- sheabuttered | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2020

Appears in:

185 charts

Rank Score:

590

Rank in 2020:

33

Rank in 2020s:

130

Overall Rank:

2,649

Average Rating:

 76 (183 votes)

Comments:

17

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Total albums: 1,000. Page 13 of 100

Best Albums of the 2020s (so far) composition

Top 1,000 Top 500 Top 250 Top 100

Year	Albums	%
2020	197	20%
2021	200	20%
2022	194	19%
2023	169	17%
2024	143	14%
2025	97	10%
2026	2	0%

Artist	Albums	%
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard	12	1%
Taylor Swift	7	1%
Charli XCX	4	0%
Bad Bunny	4	0%
Nas	4	0%
Black Country, New Road	4	0%
파란노을 [Parannoul]	4	0%
Show all

Country	Albums	%
	516	51%
	234	23%
	45	4%
	39	4%
	29	3%
	19	2%
	15	1%
Show all

Compilation?	Albums	%
No	995	99%
Yes	7	1%

Live?	Albums	%
No	988	99%
Yes	14	1%

Soundtrack?	Albums	%
No	999	100%
Yes	3	0%