The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far: 200-151

191. FKA twigs: LP1 (2014)

FKA twigs’ debut full-length LP1 was a blend of glitchy futuristic R&B we hadn’t heard before. A music-video dancer turned singer, FKA twigs experiments with sound and space, her beats stuttering and stopping like a modern dancer. Although it may not sound like it, FKA twigs is essentially a singer/songwriter fearless in her approach to experimentation. Her vocal range forces a new take on desire, and puts her own personal signature on a theme we’ve heard before—sex. On LP1 we get all sides of FKA twigs: She sings to us digitized and Auto-Tuned from far off in space before whispering in our ear, intimate and bare. Beats drop in and out with no warning or obvious structure, and yet it’s catchy. Yes, these 10 disjointed anthems somehow manage to be catchy songs. FKA twigs released a video for every song on the album, a testament to her clear vision for LP1, a truly unique and noteworthy debut. —Alexa Carrasco

190. King Krule: The OOZ (2017)

Beginning with the clunky lounge-hop of “Biscuit Town,” Archy Marshall employs street-smart rhymes in a fiendish croon on The OOZ. The track, like much of the record, warbles a bit, like a melted vinyl record with the needle gliding across the valleyed grooves. Allusions to lovesick lows and drug-haze highs dominate the musical panorama here and give glimpses into the somewhat reclusive Marshall’s last four years beneath the moon. Partly due to Marshall’s incredibly low register, songs throughout The OOZ take on frightful undertones, as howls and shrieks are riddled atop meditative musical ambience, like a Lynchian fever dream. There is something unsettling around every corner—the title connoting an exfoliation of biological detritus, which this album sonically approximates over nineteen toxic tracks. It’s not a record to absorb in desperate moments, but rather an artfully brooding, grime-y thing that stands as a terribly unique and nightmarish account of what it might sound like to spiral out of control. —Ryan J. Prado

189. Ichiko Aoba: 0 (2013)

Ichiko Aoba will get her flowers someday. She should have gotten them twelve years ago for 0, one of the prettiest, sparsest guitar albums I’ve ever spent time with. A Western comparison could never do Aoba’s songwriting justice. Fingerpicking, no percussion, biophony, lullaby vocals, holistic production—there’s not a flaw on 0 to be found. If I’m not looking at a translated lyric sheet, I don’t know what Aoba’s singing about. But none of that has ever mattered; the emotions she conveys through her guitar and jetstream singing are heavy on the mind and the matter. Windswept Adam and qp are great Ichiko Aoba albums too, but neither of those albums have “iam POD (0%)” on them. That’s the song I return to when I need to be reminded of music at its most marvelous. —Matt Mitchell

188. Little Brother: The Minstrel Show (2006)

Take your pick: The Listening or The Minstrel Show. They’re both perfect or damn-near. What matters is that Little Brother is the unsung rap group of the 2000s. I’m partial to The Minstrel Show, because it’s just one of the best albums of its time. Sure, it’s a little more mainstream than The Listening was, but even that high-definition upscale doesn’t take away the tongue-in-cheek, Black popular culture parody it serves and the underappreciated Southern rap record it remains. A fictional television show called UBN (“U Black N****s Network”), which satirizes Black programs and ads, runs across the album. Phonte (under the name “Percy Miracles”) pokes fun at the R. Kelly-style of R&B melodrama on the hilarious “Cheatin’”; Darien Brockington’s appearance on “All For You” is a soul confection; Big Pooh’s bars give “Lovin’ It” a deep pocket of rhythm; 9th Wonder’s beats on “Slow It Down” hit you everywhere you need ‘em to. The album forced the Editor-in-Chief of The Source to resign because he scored it higher than Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101; the fiasco put more eyes on The Minstrel Show and Little Brother than ever. BET wouldn’t play the “Lovin’ It” music video because it was “too intelligent” and poked fun at hip-hop subgenres, like gangsta and backpack rap. No matter the controversy surrounding it, The Minstrel Show is a hip-hop essential where Little Brother at its best. —Matt Mitchell

187. Destroyer: Destroyer’s Rubies (2006)

Dan Bejar’s output since Kaputt has been nothing short of masterful. But if you go back even further, to 2006, you’ll find one of his greatest treasures: Destroyer’s Rubies. I can’t help but think that this is one of the most inspiring indie-rock records of all time. The opening track alone, “Rubies,” confirms as much. It’s a 9-minute saga oscillating through fingerpicked dirges, distorted tangents, and encapsulating, elliptical lyrics. That’s a statement track. Look elsewhere, to “European Cities,” “Painter in Your Pocket,” and “Priest’s Knees,” and you’ll see the next twenty years of Bejar’s curiosity—in glammy, chamber-poppy, scattershot poetry. Full of jams that take you everywhere and nowhere at all, Destroyer’s Rubies is the ultimate entry point into Destroyer, if only because it’s got every bit of Destroyer wedged into its literary teeth. —Matt Mitchell

186. Kamasi Washington: Heaven and Earth (2018)

If you told me Heaven and Earth is the best jazz album of this century, I wouldn’t dare disagree. Kamasi Washington’s 2018 LP feasts on his ideas from The Epic and establishes him as one of our very best living bandleaders. Sure, his tenor saxophone does wondrous things in the context of these sweeping, ambitious statements; but Washington’s compositional genius is the bedrock. Here are sonic contrasts; two hours of multi-disc, heroic voicings. His reimagination of a Bruce Lee movie theme “Fists of Fury,” the cosmic, sprawling “The Space Traveler’s Lullaby,” the amped-up, boppy “One of One”—this is jazz at its vampiest and most spiritual. With jazz’s modern vanguard uncorking all around him, Kamasi Washington ignites and exhales on Heaven and Earth, playing music adrift somewhere in-between the two. The songs are mind-altering and mind-opening. —Matt Mitchell

185. The Wonder Years: The Greatest Generation (2013)

I’m not sure there’s a record that’s come out in my lifetime that has affected me as much as The Greatest Generation; it’s a perfect collection from front to back, scattered with Dan Campbell’s own self-proclaimed imagery of “devils, ghosts, bombs, birds and pill bottles.” It’s an illustration of the American Dream’s relentless paradox—how the men who won the war came home and created a long-term world so inhospitable and improbable to succeed in. Interwoven within that tapestry of brutality, too, is an anti-pastoral about childhood, mental illness and lineage. The Greatest Generation is, just maybe, the quintessential album for someone in their mid-twenties—especially those of us who might be considering the potential of getting married and having kids. The Greatest Generation was the start of Campbell’s focus turning deftly onto a lot of the systematic flaws in the Western capitalist, warmongering culture that we live and exist in. The record came at the genesis of those clickbaity, “Millennials are ruining __” op-eds that were ransacking the internet. A title like “The Greatest Generation” carries so much weight and privilege—especially when you consider how kids who were born into a Great Depression were then shipped out to a global war as their adulthood was only just beginning. The album, while songs like “Teenage Parents” and “Cul-De-Sac” are these portraits of Campbell’s upbringing, largely bypasses Gen-X-ers and Baby Boomers—at least thematically. The record is a mass exodus of the internal parts of us that are hereditarily built into us and trick us into believing we are helpless—the pieces of DNA transposed across centuries of living. —Matt Mitchell

184. Chief Keef: Almighty So (2013)

On “Self,” Chief Keef had the wisdom to preemptively ask, “They want the old Sosa, for what though?” Once Chief Keef was anointed as the indisputable future of rap music with 2012’s Finally Rich, he could have wisely cruised along, topped the charts for a few years, and settled into the comfortable path of familiar rap fame. Instead, he slammed the petal to the floor, blew past the guardrail into a ravine, and changed the game twice before twenty, this time with Almighty So. Then, critics derided the tape as sloppy, a lousy outing from a young voice packed with potential! What a waste of talent, what a shame. But it’s that exact attitude that makes Almighty So a lasting standout from an era saturated with homebrewed post-Finally Rich mixtapes. Random track cut-offs, stock synth lines, and off-beat hooks sung with no key in particular aren’t an avant-garde recipe designed to be taught and learned; rather, Almighty So was churned in a magic cauldron of Chief Keef’s adolescent apathy and fame-fueled egoism. As generation after generation, whether Bladee, Carti, or Xaviersobased, vie for that same sloppiness, the sheer indulgence and depravity Chief Keef captured on Almighty So remains an unreachable summit. —Benny Sun

183. The Chicks: Home (2002)

Before they dropped the “Dixie,” the Chicks became the best-selling all-woman band of all-time, nabbing thirteen Grammys and six number-one hits in the process. But the band’s public criticisms of then-president George W. Bush’s handling of the impending Iraq War got them blacklisted in country music spaces that, five years later, forced them into hiatus. It fucking sucked, to put it plainly. The album they were touring when they talked their shit, Home, is one of the most important bluegrass records ever, let alone in this millennium only. The backlash from their anti-Bush comments stunted the album’s sales, though it still went multi-platinum in the United States. “Travelin’ Soldier” can make a grown man weep; the Chicks’ cover of “Landslide” is, by my account, the best interpretation of Stevie Nicks’ emotional avalanche ever. “Not Ready to Make Nice” went to number-four on the Hot 100 and was the band’s biggest crossover hit. “Lil’ Jack Slade” and “Long Time Gone” both won Grammys, and “Top of the World” took one home two years later. This is one of the first records I remember hearing as a kid; Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, and Emily Robison’s poetry lives with me always. If the awards weren’t proof enough, let it be the balm of the Chicks at their best. —Matt Mitchell

182. Rowland S. Howard: Pop Crimes (2009)

Australian post-punk guitar legend Rowland S. Howard could have retired after leaving Nick-Cave-helmed genre innovators The Birthday Party and still be referred to as legendary, satisfied to hear traces of his influence on most bands in the eighties and nineties alt-rock milieu. Yet he soldiered on, producing increasingly evocative work following the band’s split in 1983. Though his first truly solo effort, 1999’s Teenage Snuff Film, found its own dedicated cult following, his brand of nocturnal, cutting punk blues is arguably at its most refined on his final solo effort released two months prior to his death, Pop Crimes. From the teasing Hazelwood/Sinatra interplay of “(I Know) A Girl Called Johnny”, to the devastating drowse of “Shut Me Down”, to the title track decrying its author’s agony on this “planet of perpetual sorrows,” the crown prince of the crying jag went out with a howl, gagging on his own broken heart and leaving behind some of his best tracks of his storied career. —Elise Soutar

181. Dean Blunt: BLACK METAL (2014)

If there’s one word I could use to describe the back section of BLACK METAL, it’s “grimy.” In our current era, where the residents of New York City try to keep making indie sleaze happen, “MERSH” feels certifiably nasty compared to the faux debauchery of an artist like the Dare. Dean Blunt has long shied away from fame, or at least has sought stardom on his own terms. As of now, he has no personal social media accounts (that we know of), hasn’t done an interview since 2016, and only has so many photos of himself in circulation—as the only ones he’s officially posted in the last few years are all obscured to some degree, and feature him flipping off the viewer. “LUSH” is a verbal version of those middle fingers. If Big Star’s “For You” is a love song paying tribute to a devoted partner, its sample on “LUSH” pushes the listener away. After well over a decade of toiling away in the underground—where his reception was mixed amongst music writers/publications—Blunt’s star rose to new heights this decade via TikTok. Users across the globe latched onto BLACK METAL’s Side A centerpiece “100,” a forlorn heartbreak song about wanting what he can’t have: a romance that’ll never come together. The melancholic way Blunt delivers “I’m dying to meet you / But everybody says I’m wrong” just destroys me still, almost ten years since I heard it for the first time. With some sloppy but heart-wrenching guitar work of his own, an acoustic loop courtesy of the Pastels’ “Over My Shoulder,” and his baritone, somewhat-monotonous voice, Blunt creates one of the greatest pop songs of the last decade. If there was a simple way to describe his work, I’d say he’s deceptively compelling. On paper, his whole deal just shouldn’t work. His lyrics, for the most part, are fairly simple; his voice is limited, only so capable of showing a broad range of emotion; he samples the works of others quite liberally, rarely flipping anything to a level beyond a simple loop or some slight pitch changes. And yet, he somehow found the magic formula to bring all these disparate elements into one on BLACK METAL, influencing and inspiring a new generation of songwriters and fellow musicians worldwide. —Matty Monroe

180. The Weakerthans: Reconstruction Site (2003)

More than a band, Winnipeg’s Weakerthans constructed a moral universe through their music, one informed by Quaker teachings, radical anarchist politics (bandleader John K. Samson cut his teeth in Propagandhi and founded leftist publishing house Arbeiter Ring), and a devotion to the profound everydayisms of home, which they whisper-heckled outta love. Reconstruction Site, the quartet’s third album, released in 2003, is about life, about the tireless rebuilding efforts of humanity, about everything—cats, coats, commuters, the Arctic. Its protagonist battles the depression-addiction-capitalism trifecta while their partner falls ill and ultimately concludes their story in the obituaries. And it’s musically conceptual, too, with three melodically identical vignettes that checkpoint the comforting, uplifting, sometimes sickeningly poignant songs. You’ve got joyful blasts of power pop like “Our Retired Explorer” and “The Reasons”, and woozy alt-Americana via the sunbaked title track. But it’s best experienced when you surrender to the whole, to the many turns that keep revealing with each listen. The Weakerthans may have been too mission-driven and studious to be compatible with the next level of success or a capitalist industry—period—but Reconstruction Site is a truly special record that all autumnal, literary indie rock should judge itself against. We’re so glad it exists. —Hayden Merrick

179. Katy Perry: Teenage Dream (2010)

Katy Perry’s third album completely reinvented pop music at the beginning of the 2010s. Teenage Dream is only the second album in history to have five number-one hits on the Hot 100, and the record’s sixth single, “The One That Got Away,” got as high as number-three on the chart. In the fourteen years since its release, Teenage Dream has been certified Platinum nine times and has been on the Billboard 200 three different years. If you can remember what it was like to have received Teenage Dream and its singles in the summer of 2010, then you understand just how massive Katy Perry was a decade ago. “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream,” “Firework,” “E.T.,” and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” is such a remarkable run of hits that it’s no wonder that the only competition it’s ever had is Michael Jackson’s run ahead of Bad back in 1987. Teenage Dream is why mega-pop had such a renaissance fifteen years ago, and the record earning Perry seven Grammy nominations just made sense. Her walking away with zero wins, however, remains a massive blunder by the Recording Academy. Teenage Dream was the perfect soundtrack for fleeting moments, like weekend benders, hangovers, love won and love lost, and, of course, a sweet set of Daisy Dukes. The songcraft here is better than you remember, and the magic still persists. Katy Perry was on top of the world once, when her pop music was utterly bulletproof. —Matt Mitchell

178. Feist: Let It Die (2004)

I think Let It Die is one of the greatest Canadian albums of all time, let alone the 21st century. Leslie Feist sings every word like she means it, in bossa nova charms and a smorgasbord of French pop and folk music, as synths, samples, hand percussion, and big drones rummage in jazz guitars and vocal whimsy. “Mushaboom,” “One Evening,” “Inside and Out,” “When I Was a Young Girl”—these are some of the airiest, most-interesting songs I’ve ever heard, released after Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes” made Feist an indie household name. A record like this can’t be made twice; Let It Die is an emotional powerhouse. “Now I know what I don’t want, I learned that with you” still hurts so, so much. —Matt Mitchell

177. Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher (2020)

Her sophomore album Punisher cements what may be Phoebe Bridgers’s most understated gift of all: her seemingly innate ability to capture the mundanity of modern sadness in song. Tucked in among the record’s memorable melodies, clever arrangements and impressive guests are a steady stream of details that lend a plainspoken perspective to Bridgers’s emotional highs and (mostly) lows. These kinds of details ground her work in the same way shading makes a still life painting pop. They make them feel not just sad, but real. As an example, look back to “Funeral,” one of the highlights of Bridgers’s 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps. It’s a devastating tune about death and depression, and if it ended at the three-minute mark, it would still be a stunner. But she tacks on an extra bit that contextualizes the rest of the song: “It’s 4 AM again,” she sings flatly, “and I’m doing nothing again.” And all of a sudden … you’re there. Because you’ve been there (probably), and because Bridgers has been there, too, and she knows how to make this song about a stranger’s overdose into a highly relatable moment. The story now has a place to sit—in a dark room, screen glowing, silence deafening, thoughts racing. Again. Those kinds of moments pop up all over Punisher, which is generally noisier and more upbeat than its predecessor. The album’s clear standout (and one of the year’s best songs), “Kyoto,” features Bridgers’s crunchiest guitar riffs yet, a soaring chorus and the travails of dealing with someone who can’t quite get their shit together juxtaposed with a wander through a 7-11 and trip to the suburbs to stare at chemtrails. “I don’t forgive you,” she sings as a horn arrangement crests over this mind-numbing scene, “but please don’t hold me to it.” Later, in “Moon Song,” Bridgers traces the blurry boundaries of a complicated relationship before laying it all out in the final verse: “You are sick and you’re married and you might be dying,” she sings over a small crescendo, “but you’re holding me like water in your hands.” —Ben Salmon

176. Kanye West: The Life of Pablo (2016)

It’s incredibly difficult to encapsulate the tumultuous force in music, fashion and pop culture that is Kanye West—none of his peers have simultaneously stirred as much controversy, crafted as many masterpieces and wielded as much influence as he has. He revels in this position, and it’s no surprise that he was best suited to articulate his own mythos, which became the loose concept of 2016’s The Life of Pablo—a disorienting rollercoaster that masterfully blurs the line between the legend of Kanye West and the man himself. Everything about the album rejects cohesion, from its exhilarating mashup of high and low culture to its being proudly presented as an unfinished product, even receiving updates after its chaotic release. In its constant juxtaposition of the profound and the profane, and in its deconstruction of the music making process, The Life of Pablo is one of the best examples of postmodernism in album form. —David Feigelson

175. Sade: Lovers Rock (2000)

The cool thing about Sade Adu is that she’s been making the best music ever for, what, forty years now? The eighties and nineties were something else for her, thanks to Diamond Life, Promise, Stronger Than Pride, and Love Deluxe coming out one after another. At the dawn of the new millennium, she took her signature, ephemeral style and buttoned it up with some rock textures. It sounds like Diamond Life and Love Deluxe put together; songs like “Somebody Already Broke My Heart” and “By Your Side” rival “Smooth Operator.” As the music melts, a minimalism that covers the songs with a smoky, balmy film. Sade’s mid-career transformation sent her home with a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. Lovers Rock is one of those listens that’ll have you saying, “No one else could do this.” —Matt Mitchell

174. Belong: October Language (2006)

There’s something about New Orleans duo Belong’s debut LP, October Language, that can only be described in mixed metaphors. It sounds like TV static. It’s a photo so overexposed that all the colors bleed white and drip distortion. It’s submerged in fuzz. In a 2006 interview, Belong’s Mike Jones was asked if the duo’s sound was inspired at all by the city of New Orleans. Jones replies, “New Orleans feels…worn. There’s a decay in the city. Things that aren’t obviously beautiful. Dissonance. And distortion and buzz and layering sounds.” Released just six months before Hurricane Katrina brought devastation to New Orleans, October Language is a hauntological epic that finds sonic beauty in physical decay, not unlike William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops,but not particularly like that record, or really, any other—take the droning feedback that intensifies as the title track progresses. There’s a single tone that persists throughout, modulating either slightly or not at all, with a warbling surround of feedback and the slight glissando of a slide guitar that seems to seep through the cracks. Tracks like “I Never Lose. Never Really” and “I’m Too Sleepy…Shall We Swim” crackle on their surfaces, the layers of highly modulated guitar and synth noise enveloping each other. There’s a bleakness to October Language, despite the swirling bliss, that makes it perhaps the most stirring ambient record of the 20th century. —Madelyn Dawson

173. L’Rain: Fatigue (2021)

On Fatigue, the second album from Brooklyn singer and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek (aka L’Rain), the artist presents lush, textural music that encourages deep, emotional change. Each song its own sonic universe, the sprawling compositions are matched with introspective lyrics that guide the listener towards individual catharsis. Songs like “Two Face” experiment with dark themes and conversational misunderstandings atop an extremely lively, jazzy-sounding beat, while “Suck Teeth,” a song meant to evoke “a very Black sound of disapproval, annoyance and disappointment,” is groovy and unsettling. Several short interludes scattered throughout the album offer glimpses into its creator’s mind, pulling the listener deeper into Cheek’s creative vision. Fatigue, with its ever-shifting soundscapes, illuminates the magical aspects of change, and how it can shape us into the best versions of ourselves. —Jason Friedman

172. Bon Iver: 22, A Million (2016)

The “cabin” was never merely a shelter but an emblem of solitude, a gravity well where Justin Vernon’s loneliness condensed into myth. As that myth swelled, he longed to slip free—to be unburdened, to become again. From that desire came “The Messina,” a machine of split signals and synthesized harmonies, as if a demiurge had fashioned a choir from hallucinations. In “715 – CRΣΣKS,” a polyphonic Vernon laments in a vacuum. Soon after, in “33 ‘GOD’,” a moribund voice murmurs: “Why are you so far from saving me?” The “cabin” becomes a metaphysical stage. Michael Lewis, oracle of the saxophone, and the ensemble Sad Sax of Shit trail the unfolding tragedy. Words falter: “Threw the meaning out the door, there’s no meaning anymore.” As meaning dissolves, sound resounds. But the structure cannot hold. Transmissions flicker, progressions stutter, repeated renovation and disintegration: “Fall and fixture / just the same thing.” Each step is Sisyphean, a plea caught in dust: “Help me reach the hammer.” Returns remind us: wherever we go, we always arrive at the same place. What changes is how we meet it. “Now I’m more than I am when we started,” Vernon sings, before later concluding: “It harms me, I’ll let it in.” —Andrew Ha

171. Gas: Pop (2000)

Most new age music coming out nowadays doesn’t reach me with the same potency as Wolfgang Voigt’s ideas. I’ll follow him wherever he takes me. When he did LSD in a German forest and tried making a pop record for his German techno peers, Voigt came back with Pop, an ambient album with enough texture and sustain to turn your hands and feet numb. Drones alternate between pitches, downcast melodies fall out of reversed crash cymbals, synthesizer vignettes, and field recordings. William Basinski would use a drone on The Disintegration Loops in a manner similar to Voigt’s on Pop’s fifth untitled track. For me, Gas is the fascinating third option after Eno and Aphex Twin; the first two songs on Pop are beautiful, bright works that sound like worlds I’ve only dreamt of. —Matt Mitchell

170. Jay-Z: The Black Album (2003)

I’m sure Jay-Z would say that his favorite record is Reasonable Doubt, but that record isn’t eligible here. I go back and forth on what his best 21st-century release is; 4:44 is a mid-career triumph, while The Blueprint was a reinvention. At thirty-three, he made The Black Album, and I think it’s one of the greatest rap statements ever. Featuring production from Just Blaze, the Neptunes, Eminem, DJ Quick, 9th Wonder, Timbaland, Rick Rubin, and a young Kanye West, Hova surrounded himself with the best ears in the game, and what came of it are some of his greatest singles (“99 Problems,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”) and some of his greatest album cuts (“Encore,” “My 1st Song”). The record is largely just Jay-Z going at it alone, ensconced in samples of the Beatles, the Chi-Lites, UGK, Madonna, Slick Rick. It’s an audacious, perfect rap record in an era where rap music was waist-high in the mainstream. —Matt Mitchell

169. Wednesday: Rat Saw God (2023)

I listen to Rat Saw God and the bees in my stomach have come alive once more, just as they have in the molecules of Wednesday’s sound. I now care about what the news anchor in the gas pump wants to tell me. There are teens doing whippets in the alleyway behind the local pharmacy; guns and cocaine are hidden in drywall. There is a parade everywhere, bounties of gargoyles, neon signs half alive and heads full of lice. When the eye of the storm calms down, there are five people. Five Tar Heel punks. Five rats. All of them, they’re more in love with each other and more in love with music than ever before. And what do rats do? They scavenge. They make use of what others throw away. On Rat Saw God, Wednesday have taken the ugly bits of their pasts—what everyone else has forgotten about—and reworked them into funny, imperfect and beautiful mementos of chaos and growth. —Matt Mitchell

168. Beyoncé: Beyoncé (2013)

Regardless of what the music sounds like on Beyoncé’s self-titled fifth LP, the album’s intended significance is hard to overestimate. Considering the unorthodox release, which included music videos for every song and lack of a standard pre-release marketing push, the album was historic, especially considering that, at least initially, it worked, and the sales boomed as they had never boomed previously. Of course, her previous months of touring the world were good marketing; they were just marketing the entity Beyoncé and helped create an atmosphere that was hungry for an album. Then there are the feminist themes, a crucial co-headliner to the Beyoncé talking points. After all, what is the point of making a big splash if you don’t intend to swim? The attention that Beyoncé’s release earned her—and let’s not pretend every Beyoncé release doesn’t get attention, but this turned heads that typically wouldn’t turn—is for good reasons, to perpetuate the pushing of women’s equality into every conversation and the need for reexamination of societal expectations and attitudes toward women, not limited to sexuality, motherhood, the workplace and appearance. And this closing portion of Beyoncé is probably the best of her career, with first single “XO,” previously teased romp “Flawless,” the unabashed, uncompromising tribute “Heaven,” and “Blue,” which concludes the album with a striking similarity to how Arcade Fire’s Reflektor ends, mainly in the atmosphere of the song, though having her daughter guest as a ghostly voice at the album’s finish is slightly unsettling. The appearance of her child seems mostly put there for herself, which is all well and good. It is her album—and her choice. But, just as there’s a fine line between self-love and self-obsession, art often runs the risk of crossing over from personal to self-absorbed. The lack of universality to much of it keeps it from being the great album it wants to be, and some of the fascination seems to stem from 2013 celebrity culture obsession and speaks to the need to disappear from our own lives and become so wrapped up in the world of the rich and famous. Beyoncé does her part to make her world worthwhile, but it is our job to try and do the same. In the end, the success of the album can be measured by whether things actually change, because a million copies sold should be a million changed attitudes, and that would be something pretty special. —Philip Cosores

167. Radiohead: In Rainbows (2007)

In one of modern music’s more lamentable historical twists, In Rainbows’ legacy will likely be its ground-breaking online marketing strategy and not its glorious music. Remember double-clicking that little zip file you “bought” for $0.04 and downloaded to your computer desktop? Remember how inspiring it was to hear a band with nothing left to prove make music this ambitious: Phil Selway’s tasty, constantly morphing polyrhythmic percussion assault on “15 Step”; the only bass line to ever put a lump in your throat, courtesy of “All I Need,” with Thom Yorke’s sleepy melody adding the pitch-perfect counterpoint; “Videotape,” with its steady march of chiming, heartbreaking piano chords. The next time you go see Radiohead in concert, you’re going to walk your sorry ass to the merch booth and buy an absurdly overpriced American Apparel-brand concert T-shirt that probably cost half-nothing to manufacture. Then you’re going to buy another one to give to your next-door neighbor. You owe Radiohead at least as much for giving the world this gorgeous, underappreciated masterpiece for the price of an unbuttered scone. —Jason Killingsworth

166. Earl Sweatshirt: Some Rap Songs (2018)

Seven years later, everyone cites Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs as a classic. It’s a benchmark for this decade’s deluge of odd-ball, atonal rap music from the likes of MIKE and MAVI. But if you were there, feasting upon Earl’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, grainy offerings, then you know that those conversations deserve to begin with Some Rap Songs. The songs are ancestral, brisk, clever, and non-sequitur. Ideas in one line vanish by the next; samples of Soul Superiors, Mighty Flames, the Endeavors, Billy Jones, and the Soul Children are among Earl, Shamel of SOTC, and Mike Bozzi’s greatest finds. Collaborating with dudes like Standing On the Corner and Navy Blue, Earl is at his best on Some Rap Songs: every second is his; songs like “The Mint,” “Riot!,” and “December 24” still rummage around my head even now. —Matt Mitchell

165. Charli xcx: BRAT (2024)

On BRAT, Charli XCX is once again channeling her experiences into radical, bite-sized pop songs. It makes CRASH feel even more like an aberration, drawing way closer from the forthright nature of how i’m feeling now. BRAT, though, is messy and vulnerable—in a way Charli’s work has lacked over the last decade. Her own framing positions the album as a club record, written as though she’s spouting these songs off via drunk texts to a friend. That last part is unambiguously true, right down to the sentence case titling. BRAT is a love letter to the sounds of electroclash (think Ed Banger Records, Peaches, Uffie). Though BRAT is, at every moment, an album about Charli XCX’s feelings, it’s important to note that not all of those feelings are raw. There’s the ebullient “Club classics,” a song that exists both within and outside the club, building alongside her anticipation for a night out. There’s the bold and, well, bratty “Von dutch,” a self-obsessed and deliriously fun romp so good that its second-verse-same-as-the-first structure isn’t reductive. Much like when a song’s chorus is so good you find yourself hoping they’ll do it one more time, all of “Von dutch” is that good. By all means, repeat it! There’s the icy, disaffected cool of “360,” an all-timer in her catalog already—where Charli absolutely floats over a simple but thrilling beat from Cook and Cirkut. Its video is packed with It Girls like Chloe Sevigny, Rachel Sennott and Alex Consani, as are its lyrics. There’s no reason that a song whose chorus namedrops Julia Fox should work so well, but it just does! —Eric Bennett

164. The National: Boxer (2007)

I don’t care if you think the National is a boring band. Boxer is one of the only albums I wish I could hear again for the first time. An old love showed me this record but I got to keep it in the divorce, and now “Fake Empire,” “Slow Show,” and “Mistaken for Strangers” are a part of me forever. Matt Berninger’s slurring wizardy on “Apartment Story”… I can play the music video in my head frame-by-frame; “Green Gloves” returning to me on an episode of One Tree Hill; the not-talked-about-enough back-half sequence of “Start a War,” “Guest Room,” “Racing Like a Pro,” and “Ada”; the Dessner brothers’ controlled intensity perfectly fitting into Berninger’s witty phrases—Boxer sings to me even when I’ve forgotten to think about it. The National are The National in its context. Whatever brilliance came after owes its skin to the figure-skating trumpets of “Fake Empire”’s crescendo. This is music that meets me where I’m at, not the other way around. —Matt Mitchell

163. Erykah Badu: Mama’s Gun (2000)

Baduizm was a perfect album twenty-eight years ago. Its successor, Mama’s Gun, arrived just as great. For anyone else, that’d be a miracle; for Badu, it was just another thing. The LP, recorded mostly at Electric Lady with live instruments, marked Badu’s first release with Motown. She assembled a band that, in retrospect, seems improbable: Questlove on drums; Pino Palladino on bass; James Poyser on piano; Roy Hargrove on trumpet; J Dilla on production. They were all working on records by D’Angelo and Common at the same time, but Mama’s Gun is arguably the best of them. Dilla merged Badu’s soul style with jazz, reggae, and rock music, and her songwriting became filled with ideas about motherhood, fame, and her high-profile split from André 3000. The record inevitably went platinum, thanks to songs like “Didn’t Cha Know,” “Bag Lady,” and “Kiss Me On My Neck.” In seventy-two minutes, and with contributions from Roy Ayers and Stephen Marley, Badu became one of the most important performers of her time and all the ones that preceded it. —Matt Mitchell

162. Chuck Person: Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010)

As if Daniel Lopatin didn’t already transform electronic music as Oneohtrix Point Never on Zones Without People a year earlier, he returned in 2010, under the pseudonym “Chuck Person,” and created maybe the most impactful vaporwave album ever. Caught somewhere in-between DJ Screw and William Basinski, Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 is a divine, plundering, chopped-and-screwed approach to eighties and nineties dance music. Portland Monthly called the album “somber-yet-tropical,” while Vice labeled it “dystopian.” Both certainly apply, as Lopatin takes Toto’s “Africa,” JoJo’s “Too Little Too Late,” Michael Jackson’s “Morphine,” Janet Jackson’s “Lonely,” and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up” and turns them into this 52-minute, existential, candied obliteration. Full of warping, compression, noise, loops, harmonies, and a lot of what-the-fucks, Eccojams Vol. 1 is one of the coolest electronic albums I’ve ever heard. —Matt Mitchell

161. Sufjan Stevens: Michigan (2003)

Sufjan Stevens’s breakout third album suffers from constant comparison to its broader-scale, more polished state-themed sibling. But turn your gaze northeast from Illinois over to an awkwardly shaped duo of peninsulas cradled tenderly by four of the Great Lakes. Look to the Canadian border and watch deer bound through enormous forests of aspen and fir. Trace your fingers along the peeling paint and green-gray metals of the Rust Belt’s belly, imagining what it must have been like when the factories shut down and the wheels stopped turning. You’re in Michigan now, where Stevens spent the first twenty-two years of his life, and everything he’ll tell you about the state is interfused with the years he spent there, becoming himself. Michigan is a personal, ancestral history; a self-portrait wrought in the negative. Through images of fractured faith, of railways and rust, shopping malls and snowstorms, Stevens cracks himself open for us. It’s microscopic and injured and real in a way that Illinois is not, and only the two albums together can create a complete picture of the American tragedy Sufjan exorcises from his chords. What Michigan lacks in the mysticism that permeates Illinois, it makes up for in the throbbing pathos of working-class, Midwestern hurt. It serves as the perfect anchor for the doomed 50 States Project because of its own broken promise, a portrait of the unfulfilled wish of an America that gifts you what you need with outstretched hands and a sunny smile. It’s an orchestral, pigmented picture of why Stevens is who he is—pain and God and trees and all. Every chord reveals a bit of himself, so close your eyes and listen to those first piano notes on “Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid).” You’ve made it to your destination: The Michigan inside Stevens’s mind. —Miranda Wollen

160. Jamila Woods: LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019)

Chicago singer-songwriter Jamila Woods’ resume runs deep: poet, dancer, scholar, anthologist, and activist to name just a few areas of expertise outside of her work as a musician. What makes her sophomore record, 2019’s LEGACY! LEGACY!, so unique is how she manages to pour all these facets of herself into a truly enriching concept album examining the legacies of her own heroes. “I am not your typical girl,” she declares on “BETTY,” an ode to singer Betty Davis. “Throw away that picture in your head.” That statement rings true throughout LEGACY! LEGACY! as Woods crafts a singular listening experience, beautifully blending elements of R&B, soul, and hip-hop while dropping in on everyone from literary trailblazers like Sonia Sanchez and Octavia E. Butler to cultural icons like Frida Kahlo and Eartha Kitt. It’s a masterclass in ancestry, community, empathy, and critical thought and never lacks the musical dynamism to make the lessons stick. It would be fitting should one day a young person listening to this record scribble the name “JAMILA” in all caps as they list their own inspirations. Talk about a legacy. —Matt Melis

159. Panda Bear: Person Pitch (2007)

Person Pitch wasn’t the first foray into a solo career for Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear. There was his self-titled 1999 debut, which had a very limited release, and Young Prayer, which featured a collection of untitled tracks. But it was Person Pitch, his third studio album under his moniker, that proved Lennox’s work without his bandmates is just as significant as his accomplishments under the Baltimore-born group. After trading the US for Portugal, settling down with his then-wife Fernanda Pereira and becoming a father, Lennox uses his collagist, sample-driven approach to create an album that’s serene and sunny, with a sound that reflected his new life. Having moved to Portugal with a sampler box as his only instrument, Lennox made wonders with the limitations, with songs that manipulate samples to create experimental yet accessible sounds. Only Lennox could make a manipulated sample of a medieval piece sound hauntingly beautiful over a dub beat in “I’m Not,” and blend ’60s psychedelia with the sound of swooshing trains and crying babies in “Bros” in a way that is strangely blissful. —Tatiana Tenreyro

158. Danny Brown: Atrocity Exhibition (2016)

Coming off of the cultish excitement of records like XXX and Old, Detroit rapper Danny Brown maintained his impressive streak with his masterful 2016 album, Atrocity Exhibition. Even though he was now signed to the electronic label Warp Records and capable of securing big-name features like Kendrick Lamar, Danny hadn’t lost the eccentric idiosyncrasies that made his music so appealing in the first place. His nasal delivery and queasy, off-kilter instrumentals are a match made in hip-hop heaven. Featuring cuts like the rap Avengers anthem “Really Doe,” the brassy four-on-the-floor banger “Ain’t It Funny” and the sample-heavy fever dream “Lost,” Atrocity Exhibition firmly cemented Danny as one of the greatest rappers doing it. —Grant Sharples

157. Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud (2020)

In 2017, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfeld quite literally blew the music world away. Her record Out in the Storm, which we named one of the best albums of that year, displayed a whole new side of the singer. Gone were the fortified bedroom pop of 2015’s Ivy Tripp, the rock-tinged freak-folk musings of her 2013 stunner Cerulean Salt and the brainy lo-fi recordings of her 2012 debut American Weekend. Out in the Storm sounds like its title suggests: loud, windy, chaotic and emotionally intense—a tried-and-true breakup album and a throwback to Crutchfield’s punk roots. If Out in the Storm was a tornado of sound and emotion, Saint Cloud, Crutchfield’s fifth album under the Waxahatchee alias is the calm that comes afterwards. In some ways, it possesses little pieces of all the musical lives Crutchfield has lived before: punk-y vocals à la her once-upon-a-time rock band with Allison, P.S. Eliot; searing, Dylan-esque vocal delivery; chiming guitars straight off Out in the Storm; pastoral folk not unlike that of her 2018 EP Great Thunder. The songwriting remains impeccable. Within ten seconds, you know—without a doubt—it’s a Waxahatchee album. Yet it’s different from anything she’s ever released before. Saint Cloud is Crutchfield’s country/Americana record. It runs on twang, jangle, truth and wide-open spaces; on the album cover, Crutchfield, dressed in a billowy baby-blue frock, sprawls across an old Ford truck bearing a license plate from her native Alabama. “Can’t Do Much,” a single released ahead of the record, possesses that old-time lilt and a head-over-heels chorus that sounds like something Lucinda Williams may have spat out on Essence. Saint Cloud is a whole new world. —Ellen Johnson

156. Aphex Twin: Syro (2014)

Almost anything Richard D. James puts his hands and curious mind on—even the relatively straightforward acid house tracks he released under the name Analord through 2005—are little musical puzzles, puzzles that keep changing and adapting as you try to solve them, but also of a sort that if you just leave them be, the fractured picture in front of you is still satisfying. Every spin through these twelve songs keeps revealing new structures and details that skipped past me until this moment. And the end result after each listen is a desire to just dive right back in from track one and look for more clues. One thought that I keep returning to with Syro is how accessible it is, how welcoming it seems to be for listeners unaccustomed to his fevered, restless compositions. There’s something inviting about the melodies he’s working with: the charming female voices that appear at the end of the bouncy “XMAS_EVET10 [thanaton3 mix],” his animated synth lines and gloriously dumb funk beats on “produk 29,” the little bit of electro swing that anchors “CIRCLONT6A [syrobonkus mix].” With the spotlight on James and his music getting brighter by the minute, what better time to open the doors to fresh ears. What also kept changing for me is the decision about what my favorite song is. Right now, I’m stuck on the blast of acid house air that is “PAPAT4 [pineal mix],” but even as recently as a few days before writing this, my heart belonged to the glitchy jungle jam “s950tx16wasr10 [earth portal mix].” The point is that, as all great albums should, Syro seems destined to be pored over and analyzed and argued about on message boards and Twitter feeds the world over. We’re going to be talking about this album for years to come. And more than likely by the time our conversations start to run out, Aphex Twin will return, igniting our analytical fuse anew. —Robert Ham

155. Mitski: Puberty 2 (2016)

Mitski often relays sensitive emotions through simple, sparse soundscapes. The resulting off-kilter pop songs are pure poetry, each a symbolic tale that explores some of life’s most delicate pictures of unrequited love and an uncertain self-image. Her powers are on full display in the transcendent Puberty 2. In “Once More to See You,” she expresses a deep yearning for emotional intimacy in a secret relationship. “In the rearview mirror, I saw the sun setting on your neck / And felt the taste of you bubble up inside me,” she sings. With affecting lyrics framed by mid-tempo drums, and an otherwise minimalist sound, the song shines a spotlight on desire. “Crack Baby” equates the dangerous cycle of yearning for happiness when we’re sad, and bracing ourselves for disappointment when we’re happy. Amongst fittingly jolty percussion Mitski sings, “Went to your room thinking maybe you’ll feel something / But all I saw was your burning body waiting / All these twenty years on a vacation.” In “Fireworks,” she walks listeners through a life lived behind the fog of depression. She laments on trading her tears for numbness, a bleeding heart for a stoic reality. Once in a blue moon, fireworks strike, and she trades this disconnect for an intense period of feeling. But after the cathartic release, she’s pulled back into the fog to fade again. One of the biggest highlights on this album is its fifth song “Your Best American Girl.” In it, Mitski yearns for a relationship with an “All-American Boy,” but is held back by their cultural differences. The song is a slow slink into the realization that, just like the movies sometimes irritatingly suggest, love isn’t always enough. Rife with searing electric guitar, the song is an empowering step toward self-acceptance for Mitski. —Camryn Teder

154. Slum Village: Fantastic, Vol. 2 (2000)

The last Slum Village record before J Dilla’s departure is my favorite. The group had finished it two years prior for A&M but was stuck in limbo after the label went defunct in ‘99. By the time Fantastic, Vol. 2 actually hit the shelves, Dilla was becoming one of the most in-demand producers, working with Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, and Common. What helped the record, however, was word-of-mouth hype. The Roots and Q-Tip kept telling people how good it was, and they were right. It’s one of the most-bootlegged albums of its time, and its resulting impact on rap’s underground suggested that Slum Village were the obvious successors to Tribe. Dilla’s grooves take the record in a soulful direction akin to that of his recent collaborators, and Baatin and T3’s flows are still impossibly timeless. D’Angelo, Kurupt, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, and Busta Rhymes show up, as does Common on the hidden track “Thelonius.” “Raise It Up” is unbeatable; “Climax (Girl Shit)” is smooth bar after smooth bar and then some. As far as rap records from twenty-five years ago are concerned, few have kept as fresh as Fantastic, Vol. 2. —Matt Mitchell

153. Behemoth: The Satanist (2014)

I didn’t really get death metal until I heard The Satanist. Diving into Behemoth’s tenth album was like running head-on into an electric fence. The music is vivid and punishing and blackened. In 2014, it was the band’s first release after frontman Nergal’s leukemia diagnosis four years earlier; what lingers in these songs is a pulverizing, heretic landscape of songs as aggressive as they are approachable. “Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer” rips apart the Lord’s Prayer, while “O Father O Satan O Sun!” still has one of the best death metal choruses I’ve ever heard. Behemoth’s ideas, often presented in anti-Christian grafs inked with a smirk, dare the listener to look further into the messages. Inside The Satanist are gestures of Latin and Coptic, textures of horns and seam-splitting riffage. All of it is dynamic, even when it’s thrashing in pits of tar. Hear every second of The Satanist, I can’t help but wish that every death metal album would collapse into the same conversations around death and scripture. —Matt Mitchell

152. Wilco: A Ghost is Born (2004)

A Ghost is Born was supposed to be Wilco’s “Noah’s Ark” record. Jeff Tweedy wrote a lot of songs with animals in the title—“Muzzle of Bees,” “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” “Hummingbird,” and “Panthers,” the last of which didn’t make the final cut; there were lyrics about a fly in “Company in My Back”—with the hopes that those animals would serve as metaphors for the parts of himself worth saving. “The dread I was feeling was profound and definitely biblical in its scope,” Tweedy wrote. “It felt like a big flood was coming, something no one could survive. So I was saving anything I could, piling it all onto this ark as a way to salvage whatever I could of myself. I was a goner, but I didn’t have to lose everything.” Tweedy saw A Ghost is Born as being something his sons, Spencer and Sammy, could hold close to remember him with—a document of the good stuff, the things you pass down through a lineage until it becomes folklore. All of it was, as Tweedy aptly puts it himself, maudlin and grim. Eventually, he abandoned that direction (but kept some of the animal songs), realizing that, if he were to die, his sons couldn’t just make A Ghost is Born their surrogate father. A Ghost is Born sounds like Tweedy and the band’s one final nod to the sound they created on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, while also foreshadowing the back-to-basics rock ‘n’ roll they’d embrace with open, rehabilitated arms on Sky Blue Sky three years later. Wilco’s fifth LP was defined by the band’s conscious attempt to make their own Marquee Moon, completely galvanized by Television’s ability to play unmistakable, deranged guitar solos that twisted genres and sounded like epic, Shakespearean gut-punches that curdled your blood and widened your eyes all at once. At an hour in length, Wilco refused to edit themselves. The twelve tracks sound like rough drafts anodized in kinetic zigs too fast for their own zags. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” was eleven minutes long, “Less Than You Think” clocked in at fifteen. Wilco had never dragged themselves out so far, never ratcheted up the distressing so loudly. But Tweedy, who played nearly every guitar part on A Ghost is Born, was not as mixolydian as Tom Verlaine was. No, he was far more pentatonic like Neil Young. In my opinion, the messiness is reflected in the music all the same. —Matt Mitchell

151. ROSALÍA: MOTOMAMI (2022)

After 2018’s El Mal Querer put Rosalía on the map, her 2022 follow-up, MOTOMAMI, proved the hype around the Spanish superstar was well deserved. Freewheeling, seductive, moving and occasionally silly, MOTOMAMI is as tonally unpredictable as it is sonically. Splicing together aspects of flamenco, pop, R&B, reggaeton and dembow into musically distinct experiments, these songs are all distinct, and yet sit comfortably side by side. Rosalía even tries her hand at chiptune on “BIZCOCHITO,” a song packed with enough attitude that it almost makes her much memed gum-chewing pose worth it. Its bright, blinking synths get at what makes MOTOMAMI so special. There is no sound that Rosalía can’t shape to fit into her homespun-yet-futuristic sound. Only she could pull as much pathos out of a stuttering electronic ballad about riding her lover’s “pistola,” as she does on “HENTAI,” or weave an overwhelming amount of drama into the Tokischa-assisted “LA COMBI VERSACE,” a paean to designer threads. MOTOMAMI is one of a kind, but its bright flashbang isn’t that of a shooting star. Instead, think of it as a Kawasaki zooming past. —Eric Bennett

Tune in tomorrow morning for Part III of our list.