So, as tradition dictates, it is time to look back at an arbitrary section of history and make conversation related to personal opinions about things that cannot be objectively measured! Hooray! I've been wanting to write something up like this but kept putting it off. It just seems like such a ridiculously huge undertaking, to think about ten full years of albums and sift through those and figure out which ones are THE BEST. I was thinking about reading some sort of list of everything released from 2010 to 2019 and the very thought made my eyes shrivel into their sockets and call for their respective mothers. Yes, each of my eyes has a different mother. They are half-eyes.
I finally came up with a solution this morning that I think will work for me - you might think it is dumb, but you also are not the one writing this blog, yo. Instead of an exhaustive review of all albums, I'm just going to think of the ten albums from that time period that I go back to and listen to repeatedly to this day. True, that will not provide you with some sort of value calculus, like the main stream publications might do, explaining to you that Beyonce's album was a "thunderclap statement of marital collapse, personal triumph, radical blackness, Southern roots, and boundless musical vision." Yeah. If you want to find out about IMPORTANT albums or whatever, then go look at the lists published by many of the music sites. (and while you're there you can see the rimjob that RS gives to Bowie's Blackstar - in fact, most of their top ten is whack. That Lorde album is weak. And Drake? Top ten? Nah).
So, without trying to order them, and without any real study to find out every single album that came out in the last ten years, I present to you my personal top ten. I'd love to know yours, if you feel like hitting me up.
1. Tame Impala - Currents. 2015. This is the first one that popped into my head. I play it all the time. It matches up really well with my mood a lot of the time, with a hip-hop-centric tone underlying the experimental psych rock crunchiness popping along the top. Absolutely my most go-to album of the last decade.
2. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour. 2018. Pretty sure this is the only one I have on this list that will make anyone else's top albums of the decade list. I'll investigate that before I publish this, but I'm pretty sure that is true. [edit, not true - Taylor Swift was more popular] This album is perfection. It bounces between true country, oddball disco diss tracks, and soft rock action, and throughout are her excellent lyrics and gorgeous voice. The last time I got to see her live was wonderful, mainly because of these songs.
3. Chris Stapleton - Traveler. 2015. This was the second album that popped to mind as one of the discs I have never stopped listening to since it came out. I have great memories with this one. The first time I heard it was during a rainy backporch hang with some friends in the dark of night in a canyon in the Hill Country, watching little waterfalls form and shift on the cliff walls ahead of us. The time I really drilled it into my head was on a dove hunt east of downtown, with it playing on repeat in my shirt pocket while I waited for birds that likely never came. It has soundtracked a few of my road trips with the family, its been a good go-to by the pool, and before each time I saw him, those nights were bookended with a heavy dose of this album. BTW, if you haven't seen him live, he shreds. His ACL taping was outrageous. "Whiskey and You" is perfection. "Daddy Doesn't Pray Anymore" is great. Really, the whole damn album rules.
4. Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, Madd City. 2012. I know that all of the critic lists are going to have To Pimp a Butterfly as their selection for the important Kendrick album, but that disc has never clicked with me nearly so tightly as Good Kid. The story woven through the album, the great lyrics, the tasty beats - I love this whole album. I had it burned to a disc that just lived in my car CD player for years, so that anytime the radio got annoying, it was right back into the fantastic story of a crazy day in Compton.
5. Taylor Swift - Red. 2012. This was the first album I ever reviewed for this blog, and then I was too nervous to actually post the dumb thing, thinking that it would hurt my street cred to be seen as loving TayTay's turn into pop. Only later, once I had fully debased myself with bad music opinions, was I able to embrace my unfettered love for this album. "22" is my favorite song of all of them, its up there with "Party in the USA" for favorite dance jam with my kids. But the storytelling and lyrical goodness in "All Too Well" and "Begin Again" is the reason to come back to this one over and over.
6. Black Keys - El Camino. 2011. When I first unwrapped this disc in my car, I can clearly remember the visceral reaction to hearing "Little Black Submarines" for the first time. I might have doubled over in pleasure. I might have needed fresh underwear. I might have fathered an orca. "Gold on the Ceiling" is a jam as well, but nothing touches that gentle intro, leading into a crushing slam, like "Submarines." That song slays. It was a show highlight at their show last year. And the whole album is damn good. I frequently go back for another serving of this one when I need to peel away a lot of the indie stuff I listen to for the blog, and need to clean my palate with righteous rock.
7. The Beths - Future Me Hates Me. 2018. Here's my cool guy pick. Every good music critic has that one weird thing they have to include in their albums of the year to show that they are totally in the know and have exotic taste that you can't understand. "oh, yeah, I'm totally into Icelandic shoegaze, bro. You don't know kzzdyyke?" Actually, this album is just so purely pleasing to me that it kept popping into my mind as I was thinking of albums - I kept trying to push it down out of the top ten, but then I'd throw it on again, and I'd fall in love all over. Its my sweet spot of tuneful rock, with just a touch of wild abandon. The title track rules, "Not Running" makes me want to cry and punch and run - hell, just about every song on here is a great little nugget of shiny rock pleasure. No need to talk about them one by one, its all just greatness.
8. Run the Jewels 3. 2016. I thought about making #2 the RTJ album that I put here, but #3 is the one that I can never get enough of. I've also listened to #2 a ton, but #3 is the one that I've bounced enough to be able to keep up with their speedy ass lyrics. It was also the new album out a few years ago when I saw these guys three times in the span of a week, including an ACL taping, which was supremely dope. They apologized to the engineer who was going to have to figure out a way to censor their songs, because they didn't change a lick. And my GOD it was loud. I'll also never forget when the dudes in front of my turned around and gave me respect after I shouted along to the line: "a wise man once said, we all dead, fuck it!" "Legend Has It" is the track to put on a rocket to show an alien about the lyrical prowess of Run the Jewels.
9. Beck - Morning Phase. 2014. This was that perfect curveball from Beck - going from his usual electronic-infused rock and roll to dropping a beautiful album of comfortable, warm, 70's AM gold. When no one else was doing that sound. This one is also a go-to for road trips and times with the kids when we need something lush to relax to. Not that I should put any stock in the dumb Grammys, but this also managed to snag Beck the Album of the Year award, in a surprising shock. As you are about to see, I love just about everything Beck, and this one was a welcome slice of downtempo pleasure before the next one ramped up the action.
10. Beck - Colors. 2017. When this disc came out, I just recall being floored. He went from pure, organic throwback to purely orgasmic dance music, like it was nothing. "Colors" and "WOW" were the two initial singles (unless I am mistaken), and both are these high energy, weirdly fun, pop nuggets that throw me into a good mood in a heart beat. "I'm so Free" makes me want to grow wings and jump out of a window when the beat kicks in. If you don't need to jump right then, or at least bob your head, then you should shop for a gravestone. And "Dreams," especially the remix (which is inexplicably in the middle of the album while the normal version is at the end) is the centerpiece of the album - clean, bouncy, imminently sing-a-longable in the chorus slice of perfect pleasure. This was my favorite album of 2017, and it still jams.
By the way, as proof that I have no concept of time anymore in my old age, I totally put Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf in there, before realizing that it freaking came out in 2002. Almost 20 years ago! Holy crap! Others that caught my eye - Sturgill Simpson's Sailor's Guide to Earth, Jay-Z & Kanye's Watch The Throne, Foo Fighters' Wasting Light, Vampire Weekend, Courtney Barnett's Sometimes I Sit and Think, First Aid Kit, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, Arctic Monkey's AM, Queens of the Stone Age's Villains - a bunch of others that I recall really liking, but since I'm trying to say only those that I go back to and actually listen to repeatedly, the ones up above are the winners.
And after taking a look at the major publications, I can very clearly say what the hell? Frank Ocean? No. But Pitchfork has him in both the #1 and #10 slots? Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (#1 for RS, #2 for Pitchfork, #4 for SPIN). I mean, some of those tracks were good, but it doesn't hold a candle to his first two albums. Right? Am I crazy here? Fucking SPIN put Yeezus up at #2! That album is actively bad! Robyn, Solange, Beyonce, Lorde? I guess for some people, just no where even close for me. Musgraves only makes #23 on Pitchfork, but #11 on RS. Red made the top ten for RS, so that is encouraging or something. And To Pimp a Butterfly made every top ten. Good for him!
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