thread for tracking best music of the 2010s lists

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?

lol i have seen someone specifically bemoaning the lack of that beck album on any lists though, the internet's a big place

sorry you guys aren't going to gaslight me into think anyone still gives a shit about Morning Phase.

obviously amanda petrusich does

it's just part of the in-house style guide

I like to kid about being totally out of the musical loop but these lists reveal that I've very successfully (if not entirely intentionally) avoided contemporary music for basically an entire decade. Almost everything I'm at all familiar with is from 2010. Yikes.</old>

her 2019 list has 75 dollar bill on it, which is cool

xp you ain't young lunch

petrusich lists making the risible error of treating the 2010s like the 1960s and the readership like idiots. brad's already got this one though thankfully

Quietus is always the one where i learn the most:
https://thequietus.com/articles/27504-quietus-albums-of-the-year-2019-norman-records

whoops, thought this was best of 2019

i actually back the quietus to do a decent decade list tbf, there won't be as much scope for boring wibbly ambient-experimental bollocks as in their eoy lists

I wouldn't be surprised if tQ doesn't join in w/ a eod list.

Also, it is my very unscientific opinion that the percentage of "boring wibbly ambient-experimental bollocks" has gone down steadily over the last years?

Lovely to see Bad Debt get a mention, albeit it's the very essence of a minor record, swamped by the very notion of what's around it and the notion of a decade list of this size.

agreed ^ that is a VERY strange record on that list

did this one get posted? unranked. https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2019/10/30/aquarium-drunkard-decade-2010-19/
this is a great resource

https://www.billboard.com/100-songs-that-defined-the-2010s

wow music is terrible

― 💠 (crüt), Monday, November 18, 2019 6:48 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think that's a pretty good list in terms of not trying to make critical judgments but just presenting the songs that made a big splash.

Yeah, I like that BB list — it’s a nice mix of personal faves (including unexpectedly recent tracks like Rosalía’s “Malamente”); stuff that’s not my bag but was “important”; and then a few LOL / 🤔 picks like Rebecca Black / “Friday” and Weezer / “Africa.”

Like, including “Let It Go” and “My Shot” (among some of those other picks) seems genuinely smart.

https://www.normanrecords.com/features/albums-of-the-decade

I think it's very weird of that Billboard list to include The Weeknd and NOT have the song be "Can't Feel My Face"

https://www.factmag.com/2019/12/10/the-best-tracks-of-2019/

I guess this is the best place to ask, so when does our EOY poll nomination thread go up?

November 2029