thread for tracking best music of the 2010s lists

:D that's cool! it'll def be in my list

oh, i do remember that Quietus list now. i did a quick look through it at the time and was totally dismayed, so decided to just stick with their end of year hoopla.

15. A Tribe Called Red - We Are the Halluci Nation (2016)

This album is fantastic and everyone should listen to it.

my opo Canadian album of the 10s is Mind Miniatures by Aquarian Foundation

interesting to see Born to Die on a number of these lists. Perhaps it's the latest addition to the "albums that were critically panned upon release but are now acclaimed" club? Or nah?

A Tribe Called Red are really great, I've taught their music in my indigenous lit/history classes. missed their show here last year because i was ill, but heard it was phenomenal from a friend who went.

https://rateyourmusic.com/feature/rate-your-music-100-top-albums-of-the-2010s/

I made two for Time.

SINGLES - https://time.com/5725150/best-songs-2010s-decade/
Adele, "Rolling In the Deep"
Dierks Bentley, "Drunk on a Plane"
Sky Ferreira, "Everything Is Embarrassing"
Hospitality, "I Miss Your Bones'
Luke James, "I Want You"
Khalid, "Young Dumb & Broke"
Lil Nas X, "Old Town Road"
Paramore, "Ain't It Fun"
Robyn, "Dancing On My Own"
Taylor Swift, "All Too Well"

ALBUMS - https://time.com/5725768/best-albums-2010s-decade/
Fiona Apple, THE IDLER WHEEL...
Beauty Pill, BEAUTY PILL DESCRIBES THINGS AS THEY ARE
Beyoncé, LEMONADE
Leonard Cohen, YOU WANT IT DARKER
Carly Rae Jepsen, E•MO•TION
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Miranda Lambert, THE WEIGHT OF THESE WINGS
Miguel, KALEIDOSCOPE DREAM
Ozuna, AURA
Solange, A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Not an ordered list, but AllMusic just put out a Decade in Review in which most of the albums featured have been upgraded to 5 Stars (with the exception of albums from 2018/2019). Some Interesting choices in there:
https://www.allmusic.com/decade-in-review

Miguel, KALEIDOSCOPE DREAM
Ozuna, AURA

Thank you, maura

Also I assume someone from here is responsible for WE ARE KING getting 5 Stars.

fuck that allmusic list is delightful in format and selection

Also I assume someone from here is responsible for WE ARE KING getting 5 Stars.

― MarkoP, Tuesday, November 19, 2019 7:06

good evening!

my favorite album of 2016

fuck that allmusic list is delightful in format and selection

― american bradass (BradNelson)

X2

Hell yes to Drunk on a Plane. Nice one, maura.

https://music.avclub.com/the-50-best-albums-of-the-2010s-1839776060

this one's very dull, the most interesting thing i can say about it is they confusingly put the absolute worst james blake album (overgrown) on it

Ugh James Blake. I get his fandom even less than Frank Ocean’s.

That said, I don’t hate this list. Sure 80% of it is comprised of the “consensus” picks we’ll continue to see everywhere but it somehow feels to me like a more varied list than similar ones in its ranking and selections.

Maybe I’m just happy to see Shabazz so high in here

i enjoy the presentation of the allmusic feature

obligatory left field / not pop / classical / improvised / noise music, etc. on Another Timbr--several *great* albums over the last ten years:

Horsky Park
Lost Daylight (Tilbury)
Ist gefallen in den Schnee
Chamber works 92-09 (Laurence Crane)
Two Pianos (Feldman)
Olivia Block (s/t)

as well as the just-released five disc Feldman box set.. AT are killing it

*Another Timbre

did this one get posted? unranked. https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2019/10/30/aquarium-drunkard-decade-2010-19/
i contributed! it's a pretty good selection.

I have no idea why AT has garnered so much avant-garde cred and not, say, Kairos or Wergo or Neos or Outhere's sadly dormant Aeon imprint, each of which has put out infinitely more interesting records in my estimation. Actually, I think I know why: AT is British and thus more in tune with the tastes of English-speaking listeners. (Just thinking out loud here – I enjoy AT's releases for the most part.)

Would love to hear some recommendations if you wouldn't mind sharing...

Sure! I'll try to come up with a solid list for the 2010s, I just need a bit of time. Until then, you can check the rolling 2019 classical for some more recent suggestions:

Rolling Classical 2019

Here you go, Lowell – five 2010s favourites per label:

Kairos

Agata Zubel - Not I
Alberto Posadas - Glossopoeia
Marino Formenti - Liszt Inspections
Tristan Murail - Portulan
Yann Robin - Vulcano; Art of Metal I, III

Wergo

Adriana Hölszky - Wie ein gläsernes Meer, mit Feuer gemischt
Heinz Holliger - Choral Utopia
Liza Lim - Tongue of the Invisible
Toshio Hosokawa - Silent Flowers
Wolfgang Rihm - 11. Streichquartett; Interscriptum; Grave

NEOS

Aaron Cassidy - The Crutch of Memory
Arturo Fuentes - Space Factory
Franck Bedrossian, Raphaël Cendo & Christoph Trebue Moore - Donaueschinger Musiktage 2009, Vol. 2
Horațiu Rădulescu - Complete Works for Piano
Philippe Manoury - Le temps, mode d’emploi

Aeon

Brian Ferneyhough - Complete Works for String Quartet & Trio
Jérôme Combier - Gone
Michael Jarrell - …mais les images restent…
Michaël Levinas - La Métamorphose; Je, tu, il
Richard Barrett - Music for Cello and Electronics

Other labels worth mentioning in the same breath: Stradivarius (Italy), Cyprès (Belgium), BIS (Sweden), Ondine (Finland), Col Legno (Austria), DaCapo (Denmark), Mode Records (USA), etc.

excellent.. thank you!!

Making notes.

Pomenitul, what do you think of Sono Luminus' releases of the last few years, all the Icelandic stuff they've been doing?

At times the stuff they release is a little too soundtracky or John Adams-y or neo-Romantic (in the bad sense) for my admittedly idiosyncratic ears, but most of it is really solid and I salute their commitment to Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir's music in particular, as she is one of my favourite living composers. I'm also glad they've got Jenny Lin and Matei Varga – superb pianists both.

Not an ordered list, but AllMusic just put out a Decade in Review in which most of the albums featured have been upgraded to 5 Stars (with the exception of albums from 2018/2019). Some Interesting choices in there:
https://www.allmusic.com/decade-in-review

― MarkoP, Tuesday, November 19, 2019 7:00 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wow the Adrian Younge album on this list is stunning, it's like The Belle Album on steroids.

I'm very pleased with the metal representation

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/list/8544710/best-k-pop-songs-2010s-top-100

this is a surprisingly quite good list! "good day" at #1 is a strange, boring pick though - it's a decent song and was one of iu's biggest hits but hardly represents what made kpop so exciting this decade

Some decent tokenistic picks in that Allmusic list, alongside the usual ubiquitous trash.

that kpop list *is* pretty good. a lot of my favorites in the top 30. “i am the best” should've been no. 1, maybe obvious but, like, is there anything better

i don't know if it'd be my personal #1 but as far as being both Important and Really Good goes it's the obvious pick yeah. certainly the defining song of the defining sound in kpop of its time. i have a few minor quibbles with some of the order and the song picks (like i'd go for "likey" as the best twice single of the decade over "tt") but they're really quite minor overall, it's a great list.

"tt" is one of my favorites of the decade! but i cld see "likey" as the representative pick-- to pull from a tsj blurb, "it’s a perfect balance of charming leap and trembling flail forward, doing its best to never sound as starved a record as it is"

(whereas "tt" does sound starved, "i'm like"s and fake-"oh well" sighs and the overcompensating glide of the second verse and the trying-to-be-rousing claps hitting all that point of like, keeping forward momentum to not trip all over yourself)

(*all hitting)

(which ig is more a matter of difference in degree btwn the two songs than anything, so personal preference... anyway!)

Work in progress from tiny mixtapes. Celebrating the end of the decade through lists, essays, and mixes.

https://www.tinymixtapes.com/series/tmt-decade-2010-2019

cheers, always good reads on tmt

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-2010s-ranked-913997/

Rolling Stone list is pretty predictable but seeing Pistol Annies all the way up at #9 (albeit for their second-best album) was a nice surprise. cool to see J Balvin, Bad Bunny, and Rosalia placing as well.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2019-in-review/the-best-music-of-2019-and-the-best-music-of-the-decade

end of year and decade from Amanda Petrusich, accompanied by an essay that I wish was much longer. very intrigued to see her singling out a largely forgotten Beck album as a decade high-water mark.

very intrigued to see her singling out a largely forgotten Beck album as a decade high-water mark.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Tuesday, December 3, 2019 9:18 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it won the grammy for album of the year

*lj voice* god what a dull list

I’ll admit that at the start of 2019 I was feeling down about popular music and the increasingly gutless way we consume it. One of the early promises of the Internet—that it might democratize criticism in a generative and exciting way—hadn’t quite actualized for me. It felt, instead, like there were fewer places to read about music than ever, and nearly all of those places—self-implication alert!—were covering the same handful of artists, in almost the exact same way.

like, it's weird to read this and then read her lists

can we have a thread for bad-faith descriptions of poptimism in decade-end coverage?

ig i'm missing sfj now?