As Pitchfork reported, in the 2010s, as playlists swelled with unrelated tracks and algorithms shot listeners off in all directions, the full-length release started to feel on the verge of becoming an antique. But great artists will always want to create works that expand their visions, and this decade, they found new ways to push the LP forward. They pioneered the visual album, perfected the surprise drop, and stretched running times as long as they pleased, no longer beholden to physical media. So the form endures, and at the end of a turbulent decade, it is thriving.
I’m a huge music fan, so I thought the end of a decade was the perfect opportunity to reflect on the best album releases the past 10 years had to offer. Below are some of my favorite albums from the 2010s. If you haven’t heard any of these, I highly recommend checking them out (as well as reading through Pitchfork’s full recap of the 200 best albums of 2010 here). Happy listening J
Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City (2013)
Vampire Weekend’s third album is a remarkable progression from a band that was already functioning at a high level. The songs are more spontaneous and dynamic and, along with the more lived-in sonics, Modern Vampires finds the group taking a leap forward into emotional directness.
Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell (2015)
Named after Sufjan Stevens’ late mother and stepfather, Carrie & Lowell exists beyond the realm of typical singer-songwriter fare, with intimate silences and details that feel like a true tour through one man’s memories. Stevens blends his childhood and future, his fantasies and traumas, his loved ones and tormentors, into a record where unromantic confessions (“You checked your texts while I masturbated”) blend into the universal (“We’re all gonna die”). It makes his personal history feel almost allegorical, and even more powerful for it.
Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (2010)
Loosely inspired by the Houston-area childhood of band leader Win Butler and his brother Will, the album innately understood how urban sprawl could engender claustrophobia in the hearts of the young and strange, and that this experience may look different in the rearview mirror. It portrays the dread of suburbia as manifesting in power-tripping cops and “dead shopping malls rising like mountains beyond mountains,” but it also fondly remembers the way the world could feel patient and unpretentious. Best of all, the sound was vast and electric and opulent in ways that the backdrop could never be, capturing the narrators’ dreams and frustrations and pointing Arcade Fire toward their dance-rock future with the stunning “Sprawl II.”
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
From his bizarre friendship with Donald Trump to his declaration that slavery wasn’t real, the Kanye we have at the end of the decade is far different from the one we had at the start. 2010 marked the release of arguably his greatest album, which had a major impact on the industry, laying the groundwork for equally groundbreaking releases by Drake and Kendrick Lamar and propelling Bon Iver’s profile exponentially.
Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour (2018)
With Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves burst the country music bubble, welcoming a rainbow of humanity to join her rousing chorus of “when I say yee, you saw haw.” Her third record draws on pop and country sensibilities to document falling in love—and staying there—with remarkable clarity and a lingering sense of wonder.
Bon Iver: Bon Iver (2011)
With Bon Iver’s second, self-titled album, Justin Vernon leapt from his cabin in the woods into a world entirely of his own imagination. The sweeping compositions were a huge shift from his debut For Emma, Forever Ago’s spare folk, with arrangements that sounded like they bloomed directly from Vernon’s subconscious.
Taylor Swift: Red (2012)
Red is a portrait of a young woman eager to feel everything on her way to the top. Its songs are self-aware enough to be funny and guileless enough to be honest, capturing the temptation of risk-taking, the rush of memory and disappointment, and the transformative power of grown-up romantic love felt for the first time. Most importantly, it gave us the masterpiece “All Too Well,” arguably Taylor Swift’s greatest song to date.
The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (2014)
On Lost in the Dream, the War on Drugs’ third album and first masterpiece, highlights like “An Ocean Between the Waves” and “Red Eyes” pivot on simple pleasures: a slow build, a well-timed “woo!” But bandleader Adam Granduciel’s production is meticulously layered, occasionally fading into pure ambience and letting his dark textures tell the bigger story.
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (2011)
The making of Fleet Foxes’ second album was fraught, due in no small part to the success of their first. Robin Pecknold and co. wondered how to trust their instincts without leaning on formula, and fretted about the reception that awaited their new music. These worries form a backdrop for Helplessness Blues, the unmistakable work of uneasy hearts. Starting with the scene-setting intonation that opens the record (“So now I am older”), Pecknold’s melancholy tenor heralded a decade of discourse about millennial anxiety. He paints an indelible portrait of fading young-adulthood—diverging from the path set by parents, searching for place and purpose, falling out of relationships that have dried up.
