Book Record Albums Are Cool Again
100 Fiona Apple tree
The Idler Cycle Is Wiser Than the Commuter of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve Yous More than Than Ropes Volition Ever Do (2012)
7 years later on her previous anthology, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun audio that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Heed to the anthology.
99 Rihanna
Anti- (2016)
The offset album album from an artist whose records had previously propped up killer singles with passable fillers turned her disaffection and disappointment into generational anthems. Listen to the album.
98 Rokia Traoré
Tchamantché (2008)
The Malian guitarist set a new career criterion with this intimate set up, calculation classical western harp and African ngoni to her subtle, bluesy electric guitar. Listen to the album.
97 Róisín Murphy
Crimson Blue (2005)
Trip-hop duo Moloko was dead, and White potato teamed up with Matthew Herbert for this eclectic, saucy – and still underrated – pop record that predictable the arrival of Lady Gaga by 3 years. Listen to the album.
96 Missy Elliott
Miss E … So Addictive (2001)
Drawing from house, psychedelia and fifty-fifty Bollywood soundtracks, Missy's tertiary – the one responsible for Get Ur Freak On – forced pop to catch up with her yet again. Mind to the album.
95 Charli XCX
Pop 2 (2017)
XCX stopped waiting effectually for mainstream credence and showed the normies what they were missing with this bracingly eclectic, guest-laden mixtape. Listen to the album.
94 Peaches
The Teaches of Peaches (2000)
Merrill Nisker grafted sweaty, human filth on to the clean automobile shock of electroclash on her hilarious, titillating debut as Peaches. Listen to the anthology.
93 Low
Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)
Filled with burdensome, funereal dirges and a vocal about wanting to encase a newborn baby in metallic to prevent its growth, the Duluth group'south 5th album was withal inexplicably beautiful. Heed to the anthology.
92 Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part 1 (fourth World War) (2008)
Role state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's encephalon. Mind to the album.
91 Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté
In the Heart of the Moon (2005)
Ii Malian greats met for this soothing, spontaneous record of guitar and kora that is equally subtly textured every bit it is generous. Listen to the anthology.
90 Katy B
On a Mission (2011)
No dispensable vocalizer or featured creative person, the charismatic, club-savvy south Londoner gave dubstep its first real star. Listen to the album.
89 Taylor Swift
1989 (2014)
Swift'southward first "officially documented pop album" saw her milkshake off any remaining country trappings to become a gleaming synthpop behemoth. Listen to the album.
88 Armada Foxes
Fleet Foxes (2008)
The Seattle grouping's debut heralded a generation's postal service-recession retreat into rural comforts, conjuring a pastoral idyll from the best of west declension folk and British traditionalism. Listen to the album.
87 Justin Timberlake
Justified (2002)
The finest boyband breakout since Robbie Williams's Life Thru a Lens, and that's not damning with faint praise: Timberlake's Neptunes/Timbaland-helmed debut was slick, sexy and most importantly, convincing. Listen to the album.
86 Elliott Smith
Effigy 8 (2000)
Smith's final album followed his brief adoption by Hollywood, and added a cinematic grandeur to his work – but, thankfully, it didn't swamp his haunted songwriting. Listen to the album.
85 Chromatics
Kill for Love (2012)
The album that ushered in the moody, neon-lit synthpop that would define the rest of the decade, Ruth Radelet playing Nico to Johnny Jewel's Velvet Hole-and-corner-worthy cool. Listen to the album.
84 Konono No one
Congotronics (2004)
Twenty-five years later forming, the Congolese group made their name with this rhythmic explosion of likembes (pollex pianos) put through junkyard amplification. Listen to the album.
83 Nick Cavern and the Bad Seeds
Skeleton Tree (2016)
Written before the death of one of Cave's teenage sons – not after information technology, as was often assumed – Skeleton Tree still cast Cave's recurring themes in unsettlingly anaesthetised new light. Listen to the anthology.
82 Yo La Tengo
And Then Zero Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000)
The album that every hushed, autumnal indie record aspires to be, a cocoon of disaffection. Listen to the album.
81 Madvillain
Madvillainy (2004)
Madlib and MF Doom combined for an album that rattled with enough innovation and enough bars to prop up x records. Heed to the album.
80 Lady Gaga
The Fame (2008)
The provocative pop debut that made pastiche into an fine art grade and revelled in the artifice and ambition of fame. Mind to the album.
79 Kanye Due west
Late Registration (2005)
W justified his arrogance by setting information technology aslope precipitous political commentary (at a time when few of his peers were speaking upwards) and fiercely arresting product. Mind to the album.
78 Drake
Take Care (2011)
Despite an outstanding lineup of guests and producers, all eyes were on Drake's journey into and out of heartbreak, variously biting, angry and doe-eyed. Listen to the anthology.
77 The Bug
London Zoo (2008)
Kevin Martin's discordant and seductive second, voicing his discontent via an assortment of guest MCs. Listen to the album.
76 Wild Beasts
Two Dancers (2009)
Wild Beasts were a sad casualty of the last decade, only Ii Dancers found the Cumbrian lads at their prime, bringing Chaucerian ribaldry to football terrace hooks. Heed to the album.
75 MIA
Kala (2007)
A multicultural celebration, a political statement and a center finger up to misogynists. Listen to the album.
74 Salif Keita
Moffou (2002)
The Malian creative person fabricated his best album at the age of 53, his playing and duets with female singers conveying a sense of spontaneity that belied his deep craft. Mind to the anthology.
73 Clipse
Hell Hath No Fury (2007)
A biting subversion of the era'south cocaine rap, evident in the despairing lyrics and magnetically ruined textures. Listen to the anthology.
72 Lily Allen
Alright, Still (2006)
The voice of a generation: pissed, pissed off and funny, Allen's debut brought a welcome reality check to a sheeny era of pop. Listen to the album.
71 John Grant
Queen of Denmark (2010)
Midlake backed the onetime Czars frontman on this remarkable return to grade following a period of heartbreak, addiction and depression. Listen to the album.
70 Lana Del Rey
Born to Die (2012)
Idea shaky at the fourth dimension, her controversial debut – the one responsible for Video Games – has since acquired cult status. Listen to the album.
69 Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend (2008)
Unmarried A-Punk masked a hugely diverse album: a strange still winning mix of flutes, strings and Afrobeat. Listen to the album.
68 The National
Boxer (2007)
The moment they made the transition from white-collar worriers to rarefied indie giants: the elegiac Boxer is equally much of a New York totem as Is This It or Interpol's debut. Listen to the album.
67 Eminem
The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
Eminem'due south third album has dated horribly with its homophobia and gleeful suggestion of violence against women, merely in other parts of the album the incisiveness with which he unspools his misanthropic take on life remains transgressively vital. Heed to the anthology.
66 Alicia Keys
Songs in A Minor (2001)
Pristine neo-soul played by an old soul in a xix-twelvemonth-old's body. On her debut, Keys was a traditionalist steeped in pedigree, but not then schooled that it stifled her vulnerability. Heed to the album.
65 Fundamental Scream
XTRMNTR (2000)
Loaded, only only in the sense that XTRMNTR suggested heavy artillery locked and gear up to fire: few good times here. Listen to the album.
64 Kelis
Tasty (2003)
Lascivious, soulful and compellingly weird, Kelis was ahead of her time – though it'due south yet thrilling to remember that the extremely unsubtle Milkshake was a No 2 hit. Listen to the album.
63 Jay-Z
The Blackness Album (2003)
Supposedly Jay-Z'due south final anthology before a retirement that never arrived, The Black Anthology was the apotheosis of the rapper'southward self-mythologising, establishing him as an old-school classicist and innovator. Listen to the album.
62 The Knife
Silent Shout (2006)
Gothic and annoying in equal parts, the Swedish brother-sister duo'south 3rd album offered ceaseless electronic invention at a time when their synth-minded peers were content to till their way through music history'southward trash. Mind to the anthology.
61 Kanye W
The Higher Dropout (2004)
Infectious ego, unknockable confidence and hysterical commentary: a relic from lighter days that did not foresee West'south boggling evolution. Listen to the album.
60 Jens Lekman
Nighttime Falls Over Kortedala (2007)
Matching Jonathan Richman for wry, detail-heavy storytelling and Sufjan Stevens for orchestral whimsy, Lekman elevated romantic mishaps in his Gothenburg dwelling house town to cinematic proportions. Listen to the album.
59 Janelle Monáe
The ArchAndroid (2010)
A bracing introduction to an uncontainable ambition: Monáe's intergalactic debut proper straddled James Brown funk, pastoral whimsy and indie quirk, and later albums proved this was barely a fraction of her talents. Mind to the album.
58 J Dilla
Donuts (2006)
This masterpiece in turning samples and meticulous tinkering into an era-defining production statement was released the week of the rapper'due south expiry. Mind to the album.
57 Amy Winehouse
Frank (2003)
Winehouse at her most innocent – if y'all could e'er call her that, given the cheekiness of songs similar Fuck Me Pumps. Listen to the album.
56 Cannibal Ox
The Common cold Vein (2001)
Mixing spooky realism with devastating metaphor, Vordul Mega and Vast Aire painted a grim, dystopian vision of their native New York City. Listen to the album.
55 St Vincent
Strange Mercy (2011)
Sex, sedition and Marilyn Monroe reveries fuelled Annie Clark's tertiary anthology, which slipped serrated blades through the barbiturate wooze. Listen to the album.
54 The War on Drugs
Lost in the Dream (2014)
The Springsteen comparisons were fair: non since the Dominate had music sounded so proficient driving along an empty highway. Listen to the album.
53 St Vincent
St Vincent (2014)
Whether shaking your ass to Digital Witness or drifting off with Prince Johnny, you lot did so under a abiding cloudburst of ideas. Listen to the album.
52 NERD
In Search of… (2001)
Pharrell at his horniest always – Truth or Dare hints at an orgy before Tape You records the sounds of 1 – just Bobby James is one of his loveliest ballads. Heed to the anthology.
51 The Microphones
The Glow Pt 2 (2001)
Overlapping acoustic guitars blend like plumes of smoke, and inspired snatches of melody flit by – but bursts of dissonance and baloney herald danger deep in the woods. Listen to the album.
l Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights (2002)
Theirs was the New York of Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy: fraught with rain and danger, free energy crackling like the wires of a vandalised phone box. Like their peers the Strokes, the quartet made rhythm guitar the lead and foregrounded the bass, only bandage them in sombre black suits rather than artfully distressed denim. Their carol NYC became an unofficial civic anthem, synthesising the mix of sorrow and tenacity that defined the metropolis in the wake of 9/eleven. Listen to the anthology.
49 D'Angelo
Black Messiah (2014)
Subsequently D'Angelo's years in the wilderness, struggling with addiction and indirection, many thought he was finished. He not only came back, but did then with one of the most incendiary soul records in decades. The funk deepened – the mode Prayer smears its on-trounce is amazing – forth with his social censor on The Charade, though the bedroom door still beckoned constantly. Listen to the album.
48 The White Stripes
Elephant (2003)
It'due south now incommunicable to imagine a world without 7 Nation Army, chanted from football terraces to political rallies. The band's biggest hitting set the template for Elephant: brooding moods, measured out in eighths by Meg White, would tip over into cathartic squalls of blues rock. Jack White's much-lampooned fetish for analogue production is legitimate – you tin almost feel the breeze from the amps on your face up as the riffs strut out – and he squeezed more than tone out of the electric guitar than almost anyone else that decade. Heed to the anthology.
47 Sleater-Kinney
The Forest (2005)
The trio had ever sounded – appealingly – like a band rehearsing in a garage, but here they threatened to blow its door open and its walls apart. Like a superhero who doesn't realise their own strength, everything hits too hard, burning the edges of the guitars and drums with fuzz. Their near ferocious album, then, though the wry and bitter carol Modern Girl uses the distortion to prettier ends. Listen to the anthology.
46 Grimes
Art Angels (2015)
A massive leap in ambition equally the synthpop of Visions was pulled into HD, driven up a gear and transformed into popular-punk as thrillingly fast and trashy every bit a Nascar race. Tracks such every bit Impale 5 Maim were made for the balls of your feet, full of the chillingly cutesy pep of east Asian pop, merely the all-time tracks were the robo-funky Earth Princess Part II and the demo version of Realiti: the sound of speeding through a city, its sounds muffled inside a luxury sedan. Listen to the album.
45 Portishead
Third (2008)
Released more than than x years since their pair of trip-hop-defining albums, Third proved the west country trio still had information technology – information technology beingness their particular mood of hobbling, bloodied tenacity in a world that wasn't but uncaring, but actively violent. While they tease out the Morricone influence all the more than, the highs are all their ain – krautrock nightmare Nosotros Carry On; cyberpunk masterwork Machine Gun – on a record that has get i of the most influential of its era. Listen to the album.
44 Vampire Weekend
Modernistic Vampires of the Metropolis (2013)
A relatively bummer record equally the polo-shirted princes of prep entered an early midlife crisis: "Wisdom's a gift but you'd merchandise it for youth," Ezra Koenig sings at ane indicate. Only that wisdom, an upgrade from the mere cleverness of their before work, led to their nearly rounded songwriting yet, still gassed up with the buzz of old. Listen to the anthology.
43 Kendrick Lamar
Damn (2017)
More accessible merely no less skilful or hard-hitting than its predecessors, Damn rightly became the first not jazz or classical album to win the Pulitzer prize for music. Kendrick's brilliance is to swoop betwixt scales – nations, communities and individuals – to create a truly rounded portrait of contemporary dear and politics, and the sheer lip-smacking perfection of his catamenia on Apprehensive made it his biggest runway nonetheless. Listen to the anthology.
42 At the Drive-In
Relationship of Command (2000)
A band working in perfect equilibrium, where wild prog and problems-eyed Burroughs-esque visions were tethered by bawdy punk. The cracked poetry ("Jigsaw pattern dominoes left a trail / The whites of their eyes / Polaroids of the tale") was chewed up and then spat out for moshpit soundbites ("Cut away!", "Is it heavier than air?"), betwixt come across-sawing riffs and bursts of pure noise. Listen to the album.
41 Frank Ocean
Nostalgia, Ultra (2011)
That Frank Sea appears three times in this list is attestation to his universal appeal – this mixtape debut opened with a Coldplay comprehend, and Radiohead, the Eagles and even a sample of Nicole Kidman crop up, too. Released by the Odd Future collective, he and they have done so much in the last decade to suspension rap and R&B out of tired, restrictive genre considerations. Listen to the album.
40 Antony and the Johnsons
I Am a Bird At present (2005)
With its profile raised by a Mercury prize win, this album was the start time many people had encountered Anohni'southward voice, which didn't so much apply vibrato as go it: a beautiful musical instrument that instantly entranced. She would become on to embrace electronic pop that confronted the violence – environmental, martial or otherwise – of the anthropocene age. Mind to the album.
39 Britney Spears
Coma (2007)
Made amid her most troubled stage, Coma defied the odds to become a diamond pressed from trash. The product is all sleazy, buzzing electro, and Britney's melodies accept the twisted naivety of plant nursery rhymes. The ii big singles are genius: Piece of Me bats back tabloid gossip with a sonic golf game social club, and Gimme More is her best-e'er vocal, an erotic psychodrama where the purring come up-ons of the title also sound like a adult female drowning under her ambition. Listen to the album.
38 Yep Yeah Yeahs
Fever to Tell (2003)
For all the hype, the Brooklyn scene of the early on 00s didn't produce many 18-carat rock stars, but Karen O was its finest. On the group's debut, she could electrify her withering bluesy scorn with a single yelp, and suddenly she'd be a banshee screaming round the rafters; meanwhile the vocal Maps was pure vulnerability. Yep Aye Yeahs is non just O'south show: like Jack White, the other smashing guitarist of those years, Nick Zinner could make his axe into bass and atomic number 82 at all in one case, and drummer Brian Chase pits tub-thumping toms against seething hi-hats. Listen to the anthology.
37 Sufjan Stevens
Carrie & Lowell (2015)
Later on bulging baroque creations The Age of Adz and The BQE, Stevens pared everything back to soft electronics and fingerpicking for this moving rumination on his stepfather and late mother. He stumbles, numb, through his own poetry, pondering suicide, gaining existential clarity and – crucially – finding beauty: "The breakers in the bar / The neighbour's greeting." Listen to the album.
36 Grimes
Visions (2012)
Tiny, lisping and with a high-pitched voice, Grimes weathered enough of sexism with her breakthrough – but converted even indie snobs with her take on rave, Italo and industrial synthpop. The electro bass lines are the anthology's signature, lurching from the deep, but it is her vocals that brand it: a shapeshifting chorus of chattering gothic cheerleaders, solemn choristers and trance divas. Listen to the anthology.
35 Daft Punk
Discovery (2001)
Subsequently keeping their heads down for their brilliant 1997 debut, letting Spike Jonze videos exercise the talking, Daft Punk revealed themselves – sort of. The duo were obscured backside robot heads, and their music got equally playful: cock-stone guitars, vocoders and brilliantly manipulated slivers of records past ELO, Tavares and Eddie Johns condensed into tinny yet heavy filter-house. Listen to the anthology.
34 The Avalanches
Since I Left Y'all (2000)
It has the air of a piece of obsessional outsider art: 3,500 samples stitched together into a dense tapestry of goofy hip-hop and lounge pop. Miraculously, information technology makes a virtue of its maximalism: the title rails thick with jasmine and tropical heat, Electricity jumping out of the speakers like a jack in the box. Listen to the album.
33 Bon Iver
For Emma, Forever Ago (2007)
The backstory is almost a parody of a sure kind of hostage dude: retreating to the woods with just a guitar to get over a breakdown and sort out his crappy life. But after listening to the songs he came back downward the hill with, the story becomes gilded and mythic: lightly fleshed out with vocal harmonies and drums, they are sensationally cute. Listen to the anthology.
32 MIA
Arular (2005)
MIA oft showed simply how conservative the Usa is by doing ordinary things – rapping while pregnant, sticking her centre finger up – that even so had people reaching for the smelling salts. It all began with her debut collection of diddled-out rap and dancehall, stitched together with samples from a trolley dash down the unregulated internet – a harbinger of our cosmopolitan post-genre historic period. Listen to the album.
31 Burial
Untrue (2007)
The ghosts of London raves gone past are conjured by this ouija lath of a record, where garage vocals flit upward past grit-covered breakbeats. The influence of this and his 2006 debut cannot be overstated, feeding into the dub songcraft of the xx and James Blake, besides equally an entire generation of ambient producers. It also anticipated the way London's clubland – and indeed communities – would exist hollowed out past gentrification. Listen to the album.
30 Jay-Z
The Blueprint (2001)
Not but did information technology launch the career of Kanye Westward, showcasing his soul-sampling productions aslope those of Simply Blaze, this album cemented Jay-Z as i of the greatest to ever practise information technology. His evisceration of Nas on The Takeover made for a firebomb diss runway, generating gossipy heat fanned farther past some of his biggest pop moments: Girls, Girls, Girls, Izzo (HOVA) and Song Cry. Listen to the album.
29 Deftones
White Pony (2000)
By blending the frat-male child free energy of nu-metal with the goth moods of 9 Inch Nails and Great Pumpkins, the northern Californians united rival factions of brooding teenagers with these strangely sexy studies in tension and release. Chino Moreno's vox is magnificently plastic – rapping, bellowing, crooning, and deploying his secret weapon: vocal fry that creaks similar a door to a haunted business firm. Heed to the album.
28 Aaliyah
Aaliyah (2001)
This album is lauded for the three masterpieces Aaliyah fabricated with Timbaland – Endeavor Again, More a Woman and Nosotros Need a Resolution – that lend a serpentine malevolence to her voice, just there are also strong old-schoolhouse jams and languorous ballads. Lesser R&B stars match their voice to the beat – Aaliyah's genius, tragically cutting brusque when she was killed in a plane crash, was to slink through it with an virtually Latin sense of rhythm. Album not on streaming services.
27 Björk
Vespertine (2001)
The gentle glitches and serene pulses on this intimate, sensual, make clean record could audio naive, fifty-fifty simplistic, when put next to the complexity of her recent work with the producer Arca, but Vespertine remains one of Björk'due south defining records thanks to the strength of its songwriting. Unison rivals Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy as the keen ballad of trip-hop; It's Not Upwardly to You is well-nigh Disney-esque in its sweeping beauty. Listen to the album.
26 The xx
xx (2009)
Romy Madley-Croft and Oliver Sim made the almost compelling duets of the flow: rather than singing to each other, it was as if two people were going through the same thing without the other knowing it – the perfect mood music for the disconnected interconnection of dating apps and social media. Heed to the anthology.
25 Beyoncé
Lemonade (2016)
We'd seen Beyoncé angry before, whether defiant on Survivor or chillingly, wittily calm on Irreplaceable, merely never like this. Made after notable incidents of constabulary brutality, Lemonade was charged with real political fervour, while there were numerous sharp jabs at Jay-Z for doing whatever predicated that lift fight with her sister Solange. As a result, the terminal call for her ladies to get in germination felt genuinely martial. Listen to the album.
24 David Bowie
Blackstar (2016)
Released ii days earlier he died, Blackstar saw Bowie pour everything left of him into his best album since his 70s hot streak. He spliced the itchy drum'n'bass and industrial moods that fascinated him in the 90s with terrifically freaky jazz, symphonic balladry and – on Girl Loves Me – authentically heavy rap. "I'thousand dying to push their backs against the grain / and fool them all once more," he sang. And he did. Listen to the album.
23 OutKast
Speakerboxxx / The Love Below (2003)
Although less than the sum of their parts as they were on Stankonia, and with neither editing out the other's longueurs, the divided members of OutKast nevertheless delivered a vivacious pair of solo turns. Large Boi embraced saucy contumely licks and propulsive flow while André 3000 tapdanced through funk, though each arrived at solid gilt pop: The Mode You Move and Hey Ya! are both deserved wedding disco staples. Listen to the album.
22 Joanna Newsom
Ys (2006)
Newsom raised some eyebrows, fifty-fifty giggles, with her debut The Milk Eyed Mender cheers to her scrunched, cartoonishly girly vocalization. Simply on Ys, this unique instrument – alongside her beautiful harp, and orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks – plays out five masterpieces of American poetry to be filed alongside Whitman or the Beats: songs that move with the untamed direction of air current or water. Listen to the album.
21 PJ Harvey
Let England Milk shake (2011)
Harvey won her outset Mercury prize for Stories From the Metropolis, Stories From the Sea on 9/11. She won her second for her other masterpiece, released x years later, in the shadow of the wars that dragged on betwixt them. In that location is such anger as she reaches back to the commencement earth war to show how every generation destroys its young in the same fashion – summed up by the pompous fanfare in The Glorious Land, crushed past a tank of blues-rock. Listen to the album.
20 Arcade Burn
Funeral (2004)
The deaths of relatives of band members Regine Chassaigne, Richard Reed Parry, and Win and Will Butler underpinned the (mostly) Canadian band'due south debut. The songs here are full of the horrible electricity of grief, Win Butler sometimes hollering at the pain, sometimes burned out by it. Only the massed choruses suggest relief can be found in family, exist it claret or otherwise, marking the inflow of i of the period's few neat arena bands. Listen to the anthology.
nineteen PJ Harvey
Stories From the Urban center, Stories From the Sea (2000)
More city than body of water, PJ Harvey's most accessible and open-hearted record conjures that feeling of being on a rooftop, wanting to hear every story in the streets below you. Information technology is full of energy, Harvey stalking the gutters and subways; it is full of sexual activity, most of it new and dangerously in flux. Only then at that place are moments on songs such as Beautiful Feeling or Horses in My Dreams, where the mass of bricks and steel dissipates and y'all're afloat on the ocean. Listen to the album.
eighteen Kanye West
Yeezus (2013)
Kanye dived into a hell of racism, commerce, relationship strife and his own ego, with beats made aslope a brains trust of experimental producers. It seethes with trauma both personal and social, and the strongest moments consider how black America is sticking its caput in the sand – fifty-fifty Kanye himself, fretting about Kim while a sample of lynching lament Strange Fruit plays. But there are flickers of his old cheeky humour, especially in the immortal line: "Hurry upward with my damn croissants!" Heed to the album.
17 Outkast
Stankonia (2000)
The outset rap masterpiece of the century was an ballsy that covered all of hip-hop's bases – horndog G-funk on We Luv Deez Hoez and I'll Call B4 I Cum, raunchy boom-bap on Xplosion, rap-rock on Gasoline Dreams, pop on Ms Jackson – just added endless new flavours: pulsate'n'bass, acid, psychedelic soul. Heed to the album.
xvi Radiohead
Kid A (2000)
From the spine-tingling four-note downwardly melody that opens Everything in Its Right Identify, it was clear that Radiohead had taken a huge leap into colder, stranger territory. The electronic influences that had filtered into OK Figurer reached maturity – about spectacularly on techno anthem Idioteque – though in that location are way more guitars than its reputation suggests. Listen to the album.
15 Robyn
Body Talk (2010)
By blending the earnestness of ballad singing with cascading waves of electropop, Robyn became the chief of heartbreak on the dancefloor. There is some other side here, likewise: communicative, puckish and getting over it all. The anchor of the album – initially released in a trailblazing iii parts across 2010 – was Dancing on My Own, a breakup song with a wildly transgressive edge: is there a secret erotic thrill behind the pain of going to the guild to picket her partner with their new girlfriend? Listen to the anthology.
fourteen Kendrick Lamar
skillful child, m.A.A.d. city (2012)
The breakthrough moment for rap'south greatest ever talent. Loosely based around an LA street narrative, the storytelling was gripping; the bangers banged hard and information technology has Lamar'due south most gorgeous melodies, on Money Trees, Swimming Pools (Drank) and Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe. The blithe stoicism of his flow, seemingly resigned to a violent death at any moment, fills the record with poignancy, and transmutes his words into wisdom. Heed to the album.
13 D'Angelo
Voodoo (2000)
Bringing in a more rugged hip-hop mood to the neo-soul of his 1995 debut, D'Angelo created a landmark in black American pop. His multitracked harmonies are some of the most beautiful sounds in all of music, and surely at least half of the Americans entering college this year were conceived to Untitled (How Does It Feel). Listen to the anthology.
12 Frank Bounding main
Channel Orangish (2012)
The sun-soaked indolence of being young in LA is etched in aquamarine, purple and, yes, orange on this psychedelic-pop landmark. The tune writing on Forrest Gump, Sweet Life, Thinkin Bout You, Lost and others is joyously accomplished and sturdy, leaving room for 10-infinitesimal electro suites, jazz-funk flexing, stoner rap and smoky neo-soul. A generation'due south Stevie Wonder had arrived. Listen to the album.
11 Radiohead
In Rainbows (2007)
Initially grabbing headlines for its pay-what-you lot-want release online, information technology apace became clear that this was one of Radiohead'southward greatest albums. Undoing some of the knotted tension of the mail-Bends era, it has rollicking rockers (Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw Falling into Identify) and restless jitters (15 Step, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi), simply the core songs are deep, considered trip-hop ballads such every bit Estimator, House of Cards and All I Demand. Mind to the album.
ten Frank Ocean
Blonde (2016)
Less immediately tricky than its predecessor, Channel Orange, Blonde is the more than ambitious and visionary record. Resistant to beingness boxed in any one genre, the percussion retreats, the voice warps, the focus wanders and the emotion deepens as Ocean slips and stumbles through a series of poetic romances. A magical, impossible-to-imitate record. Listen to the album.
9 Beyoncé
Beyoncé (2013)
Love and self have always been Beyoncé's two grand themes, but they were each invested with more passion and nuance than ever before on her fifth solo anthology. Appearing from nowhere with videos for every track, it appear her every bit the era'southward defining megastar – marketing campaigns, it implied, were for the piffling people. Simply the album has endured by its k entrance cheers to its detailed, impassioned considerations of femininity and marital sexuality. Listen to the album.
8 Chill Monkeys
Any People Say I Am, That'south What I'g Not (2006)
He may now sing in an ironic mid-Atlantic croon, but Alex Turner started off with the most tangibly south Yorkshire voice in pop since Jarvis Cocker. Over street-fighting indie stone, he told of dirty dancefloors and scummy men, an observer sitting with his faced pressed up confronting a taxi window on a Sabbatum night watching humans bounce off one another. Listen to the album.
7 The Streets
Original Pirate Fabric (2002)
You can virtually touch the gold teeth, Valentinos and dreads in Mike Skinner'due south debut, a love alphabetic character to living for the weekend written in United kingdom garage that heralded the arrival of a brilliant British storyteller – Weak Get Heroes remains the single greatest evocation of being on ecstasy in a social club. Listen to the album.
6 Dizzee Rascal
Boy in da Corner (2003)
If Wiley'due south "eski beats" acknowledged grime's froideur, and then Dizzee Rascal turned the temperature downwardly further: his debut is a chillblained study in urban harshness that remains crud's masterpiece album. Among videogame clatter, Rascal's voice is full of scorn and bafflement every bit he considers girls, rivals and his place in the world. Listen to the album.
five LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silverish (2007)
James Murphy'due south group were the smart, snippy toast of Brooklyn after the hyper-literate breakthrough tracks Losing My Edge and Yeah. On their 2nd anthology, they broke through the snark, pondering their identities equally New Yorkers, Americans and thirtysomethings – and with a range of potential dance moves, from pogoing to sleek disco shapes. Mind to the album.
iv Kendrick Lamar
To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
Folding in influences from LA's beat out scene – including Kamasi Washington and Flying Lotus – Lamar exploded the possibilities for rap in the 2010s, bouncing like a automobile down Crenshaw on to neo-soul, jazz and squelchy funk. The police-baiting Alright became a ceremonious-rights anthem for the mail service-Ferguson era – indeed, equally a celebration of the richness of blackness artistry, the whole album was a riposte to discrimination. Listen to the album.
3 Kanye Westward
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
He would later lose the thread in a very public fashion, but Kanye West pulled every strand of his genius and torment together on his masterpiece: anthemic choruses, psychodrama lyrics and an all-star cast, from Bon Iver to that Nicki Minaj poesy. Westward's bombastic production, meanwhile, included samples of everything from Male monarch Crimson to Aphex Twin: a symphony to a new, omnivorous digital culture. Listen to the album.
2 The Strokes
Is This It? (2001)
Subsequently Britpop devolved into bedwetter indie and the Usa was churning out goofy pop-punk, the debut anthology by the New York quintet showed rock how to exist cool again: all droll, drawling observations and guitar lines that steamed into a dive bar to show up the clientele. Oh, and your dominate trying to be trendy by wearing a T-shirt nether his blazer at the office on Fridays? Blame these guys. Listen to the album.
1 Amy Winehouse
Dorsum to Black (2006)
That title sounds horribly prescient in the wake of the substance misuse that would kill her, but Winehouse was incandescently alive – funny, pissed off, in love – on her finest anthology. Producer Mark Ronson's luxuriant backings, which cherrypicked from the previous century of popular music (doo-wop, soul, hip-hop), are saved from mere classiness by that voice: impetuous, inimitable, always reaching for the incorrect interval that turns out to be totally right. Read Alexis Petridis's essay on our No 1 choice hither. Mind to the album.
This listing was voted for by a panel of 45 Guardian music writers, who ranked their 20 favourite albums from 2000 to 2022 inclusive. Twenty points were allocated for a No 1 selection, down to one betoken for No 20. These points were totalled upwardly, resulting in the following ranking. A total of 454 different albums were voted for.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/13/100-best-albums-of-the-21st-century
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