The first issue of Paste came out in July 2002. Since then, this site has catalogued the best and worst contemporary music the industry and the underground have had to offer. This week, we’re focusing on the former, highlighting our favorite albums released since 2000. We’re 25-percent finished with this century, and it’s given us some of the most important musical artifacts ever, from Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer Prize to Metallica declaring war on Napster. In-between, every genre and sub-genre imaginable, from egg-punk to math-rock to neo-soul to K-pop, has boasted a record or two worth checking out. We’ve compiled a list of the 250 greatest albums of the 21st century so far, spanning January 2000 to December 2024. If you’re looking for 2025 releases, or expecting either of our recent Perfect 10s to be present in this ranking, you’ll just have to come back in 2050 to see if their relevancy holds up.
In compiling this list, we’ve 1) reached back into the Paste archives and pulled out a few albums we’d consider to be “cornerstones” of this magazine’s 20-year identity and 2) re-evaluated albums we scored high, low, and all decimal points in-between. These 250 entries feature editorial and freelance voices from all iterations of the magazine, from our inaugural issue to our most-recent online features. We’ll be unveiling the ranking in five parts from now until Friday, in fifty-album increments. Today, it’s numbers 250-201, featuring heavy-hitters, underrated gems, and maybe some records you forgot about. Thanks in advance for taking this journey with us, and thanks for the twenty-three years of support along the way. Now, let’s see what the millennium has had to offer thus far. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor
There are a good slew of records we now associate with lockdown, simply because of their unfortunately timed release dates—Chilombo, Future Nostalgia, The New Abnormal, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. These albums had been in the works long before the fabric of our society permanently changed as we knew it. how i’m feeling now, by comparison, was born directly from its circumstance—written and recorded in real time from an LA rental Charli XCX shared with her then-boyfriend Huck Kwong. She turned the brick walls into something era-defining. With tour plans scrapped, Charli turned to Zoom calls, livestreams (lest we never forget her now-canon, Grindr-sponsored DJ set that gave us “HOW WE FEELIN’ TONIGHT GRINDR?”), and fan groupchats. She crowd-sourced demos, artwork, single rollouts (“Which should I release??” she tweeted in advance of the lead single. Fans crowned “claws” the winner). The resulting record is raw (“enemy”), unexpected (“c2.0”), brash (“pink diamond”), and vulnerable (“i finally understand”). It captured the emotional chaos of early pandemic life, while somehow refusing to stay tethered to it. The record’s impact has only expanded with time, evolving far beyond its original moment. We now can’t talk about how i’m feeling now without talking about “party 4 u,” a then B-side that has, five years later, been catapulted to radio play and main setlist status. What was made for a specific moment in time has evolved to represent something bigger: the way collective isolation shaped not only our emotions, but our relationship to art, intimacy, and each other. —Cassidy Sollazzo
that he was shot into the mainstream. Not only is this his most commercially successful album, it’s also one of his best. Some were disappointed when he swapped guitar-leading tracks for these dripping in synth, but the resulting album is a maximalist project full of clean, psychedelic intrigue. While every song comes rife with impressive production, the album flows together seamlessly, and it remains one of his most cohesive projects to date. From the strong disco-pop opener “Let It Happen,” which details Parker’s urge to surrender to life’s spontaneous ways, to the gargantuan closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” each song tells a distinct story that contributes to the album’s themes of heartbreak while committing to its all-consuming psychedelic sound. Even the deep cuts, like “Powerlines,” are full of impossibly funky, layered textures. What more can be said that hasn’t already? —
The title of “best female rapper” could go to any number of women: Nicki, Cardi, Kim, Latifah, Lauryn. The list is rich, yet I think the eventual answer may very well be Rapsody. Her second album, Laila’s Wisdom, is tremendous and packed with superstars. Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhyme, BJ the Chicago Kid, Lance Skiiwalker, Black Thought—that’s the caliber of musician tasked with going bar-for-bar with Rapsody, and she holds her own with all of them. Eight years later and it’s still her best work, packed with smooth, powerful bars and excellent production from 9th Wonder, Eric G, Ka$h Don’t Make Beats, Khrysis, and Nottz. “Power,” “Nobody,” “You Should Know,” and “A Rollercoaster Jam” are some of the best rap records of the last ten years; Rapsody is a once-in-a-generation storyteller. In another twenty-five years,
will sound just as good. —
Nicole Bell, who adopts the Dollanganger surname on record in honor of the protagonists of V.C. Andrews’ legendary novel series, was a niche figure within a niche culture. She shared her bedroom recordings and strange drawings on Tumblr, where she and other young people shared an adoration for horror and gothic imagery as a way of understanding and representing their experiences. With
, though, the small-town Ontarian got a boost from Grimes, who co-established Eerie Organization with the expressed intent of getting this album heard by as many people as possible. It’s a wild listen: Bell’s voice is high, almost childlike, but when she sings about reveling in isolation (“White Trashing”) or craving disembodiment (“Angels of Porn II”) against Matthew Tomasi’s pummeling punk-shoegaze production, you can feel yourself shedding what remaining innocence you have. In Bell’s world, disorder and violence and desire and desolation are co-constitutive, to where you don’t remember what it is you fear and what it is you crave. —
, Frank Ocean published a letter on his Tumblr disclosing his affection for another man. The revelation of the enigmatic Odd Future vocalist’s queerness acted both as a major turning point for his still-nascent career and as an exciting primer for what was to come. Backed by gorgeous, sun-soaked R&B/pop production,
sounds like falling in love in the summertime. It gave us a swooning ballad (“Thinkin Bout You”), a 10-minute strip club epic (“Pyramids”), a sweet ode to his first love (“Forrest Gump”) and some clever class satire (“Sweet Life,” “Super Rich Kids”). Though Ocean has continued to maintain his mystique, having only churned out two back-to-back records in 2016 and a string of one-off singles,
paved fertile ground for other queer Black musicians to make unconventional, intimate pop music. —
Bradford Cox, Deerhunter’s lead singer, traded dresses, rants, and provocations for a steady, serious normality on
). This is neither a sellout nor a copout. In those days, the sight of the unconventionally handsome Cox as a conventional rock frontman was exhilarating, affirming stuff. And though
is hardly straightforward, it was an aggressive step toward the mainstream that sacrificed none of Deerhunter’s woozy adventurousness. The album still finds Cox uncertain and a bit paranoid (on “Agoraphobia,” he blurs the distinctions between “cover me,” “comfort me,” and “come for me”), but the shifts from languid ambience to hard-edged rock are much less stark than on the band’s previous album. Indeed, if predecessor
asked the listener to swim around in the murky depths before shaking a fist in the air,
was instantly ingratiating. The short intro is a burst of almost kitschy instrumental lushness, while “Never Stops” is a pulsing, revelatory masterpiece, its shimmering guitars meshing beautifully with Cox’s hypnotic voice. The rest of the album balances the meditative and the direct, but it’s the uptempo songs that leave the strongest impression. For the first time, Deerhunter was writing genuine anthems. —
, avant-garde musician Kristin Hayter’s fourth and final album released under the name Lingua Ignota, has the rare distinction of already feeling like it’s never not existed. That’s intentional, as the record serves in part as ethnography, weaving traditional sounds of Christian liturgy into traditional Appalachian folk and more recent modern strains of experimental neofolk. That timelessness feels just as present in its horrifying subject matter, documenting Hayter’s own suffering at the hands of domestic abuse, filtered through the violence and pageantry which colors much of organized religion. With the harrowing, dissonant drone of both the instrumentation and lyrical content, Hayter digs mercilessly at the centuries of pain buried beneath the pulpit at which she wails, sounding a million feet tall—relentlessly damning, even in the album’s quieter reprieves. The cultural reckoning with
’s central concern is ongoing and, on this front, no one can blame Hayter for wanting to retire the project for good. Still, even as it ends with the acceptance of loneliness and pleas for absolution, the record stands as one of the most dense, brilliantly-realized pieces of art that we, as listeners, will ever have the honor to grapple with. —
remains The Knife’s most commercial record, one that brought the Swedish experimental electropop sibling duo into the mainstream with tracks like “Pass This On” and “Heartbeats”,
not only holds its own, but is more cohesive than its predecessor. It’s as dancey and alluring as
, but the mood is darker, hazier, and sexier, with Karin Dreijer Andersson giving hints of the sound they went on to focus on for solo project Fever Ray after the duo disbanded. It’s accessible enough that it would feel at home at a nightclub, with techno bangers like the title track and “Forest Families,” while still having the experimental touches that resonate with those who weren’t into the poppier approach to
. —
For pop music obsessives like me—born just before the turn of the millennium—it may be nearly impossible to convey to anyone either older than us (who had lived through No Doubt’s reign) or younger than us (who mainly know Gwen Stefani as prayer-app-influencer Mrs. Blake Shelton) how
shaped our perception of what could be accomplished within the confines of the Top 40. Though we all may look back with more stringent sensitivity around Stefani’s fetishization of other cultures in the record’s visuals, the music itself has never felt fresher; the bittersweet coo of “Cool,” the dancehall-cribbing bounce of “Rich Girl,” and the zaniness of the André 3000-assisted “Bubble Pop Electric” all crackle with a sheer willingness to
anything. Without the weight of being a “rock chick” tying Stefani down, she constructed a maximalist, Westwood-corested pop wonderland which still represents the best the genre has to offer. It’s a shame that her finest moment as pop’s princess of cool came with the first single from her first solo record, but it’s also impossible to deny the staying power of the Nellee Hooper-produced “What You Waiting For?,” a manic new-wave sugar rush fusing Marc Almond and Betty Boop into a pulsing anxiety attack that you can hear traces of in most weird-girl alt-pop made in the intervening twenty-one years. All sins committed in that time are forgiven the second I hear her delivery of that first “Well, look at your
now!” in the pre-chorus, and I’m injected with that same sugar rush I felt the first time I heard her—when one song forever changed what I’d searched for while turning the car radio dial. —
241. The Hold Steady: Separation Sunday (2005)
Move over, American Idiot: When it comes to punk-adjacent, Bible-busting concept albums, The Hold Steady set the standard in 2005 with their second full-length. Separation Sunday told one of the most bizarre and ambitious epics of any album in the past twenty-five years. It’s too sprawling for a 200-word write-up, but it follows Holly, the up-against-the-world protagonist, and takes place in the band’s native Twin Cities. There are geographical motifs like the Mississippi River, and at least one DIY/off-the-books baptism (one more than most albums). And for a band defined by Craig Finn’s alley-behind-a-shotgun-wedding-chapel storytelling, it’s easy to forget how many superb, fist-bitingly awesome instrumental passages there are on this thing. There’s a gorgeous extended piano interlude during “Stevie Nix” queuing Finn to slur, “She got screwed up by religion / She got screwed by soccer players,” a moment that hits while raising eyebrows, illustrating the band’s range/dichotomies/brilliant insanity. And don’t get me started on the confetti-canon bridge from “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” a triumphantly happy song at odds with fucked-up lyrics about Jesus-inspired lowerback tattoos created with rusty steel guitar strings. Find me honkier harmonicas, more blinding rays of hammond organ, or guitars that manage to be punk-as-fuck while embracing comically goofy, ZZ Top-esque tropes of rock and mother-effing roll. I’ll wait—down by the banks of the river. —Hayden Merrick
240. Arca: Arca (2017)
Looking at what music has given us since 2000, I’m not sure there’s an artist more fascinating than Arca. The Venezuelan DJ, producer, and songwriter went to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and emerged with the Stretch EPs. Since then, she’s made a few perfect records, some of which appear in her 4-part Kick series released four years ago, but none strike me like Arca. Encouraged to sing on an album for the first time by her friend Björk, Arca delivers these songs in Spanish, because it was the language that her parents “fought and divorced in”—her voice, her processing, and her curiosity exists there. Arca is intimate and bounding, with operatic vocals contrasting with the album’s minimalist instrumentals. The songs sound like rituals; “Reverie” and “Piel” are the great paeans of our time. Even a wordless track like “Castration,” which calls back to Arca’s compositional beginnings, feels of another artistic chasm—a portal at-once futuristic yet ostensibly close. Arca towers in brilliance. —Matt Mitchell
239. Wisin & Yandel: Pa’l Mundo (2005)
So much iconic reggaeton emerged from Puerto Rico in the 2000s, from Daddy Yankee to Calle 13, but it’s Wisin & Yandel’s 2005 record Pa’l Mundo that’s aged best and shaped the new class of reggaeton stars like Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro. The album is stacked with hits, from “Noche De Sexo” to “Rakata,” that are ripe for summer nights perreando at house parties and clubs, and are still blasted by cars at all hours in New York City. The beats are sticky, the bars unparalleled, and the collaborations top-tier, with appearances by Daddy Yankee, Héctor el Father, Tony Dize, and Aventura and producer credits from major names like Luny Tunes, Thilo, Nales, Tainy, Nely and Nesty. —Tatiana Tenreyro
238. Waxahatchee: American Weekend (2012)
Katie Crutchfield has put out many fantastic albums over the years under the Waxahatchee moniker, from Cerulean Salt to Tigers Blood, but we owe those records to her outstanding debut solo LP, American Weekend. With its lo-fi production, pared-down, acoustic instrumentations, and vulnerable lyrics, American Weekend feels deeply intimate, like one of those records that you’d be convinced was written just for you if you found it at the right time. It captures a specific time as an early twenty-something trying to understand who you are and where you’re meant to be going in life while feeling utterly lost, whether it’s thinking about friendships that drifted apart (“Noccalula”) or navigating situationships while convincing yourself you don’t need it to turn into something more (“Be Good”). —Tatiana Tenreyro
237. Slowdive: Slowdive (2017)
Comeback albums are tricky. When you’re a band that has cultivated a cult following through classic, genre-defining records, how do you make sure that your first LP in over two decades measures up to fans’ expectations? Slowdive embraced the challenge with their 2017 self-titled record, their first since the polarizing 1996 LP, Pygmalion. Slowdive almost feels like a companion piece to Souvlaki, building on the dreamy sound of their beloved 1993 record while creating something that feels like its own world. That realm of Slowdive takes you to the cosmos, awash in lush, galactic dream-pop soundscapes. Every song is breathtaking, from the soaring opener “Slomo” to the melancholic “Sugar For the Pill.” While it’s not as risky and experimental as Pygmalion, it thrives in its simplicity, with a precise attention to detail where each instrumentation fills its purpose to create Slowdive’s most atmospheric record yet. —Tatiana Tenreyro
236. Blood Orange: Freetown Sound (2016)
Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange, had an unbelievable streak of first three records under the moniker—Coastal Grooves, Cupid Deluxe, and Freetown Sound—each transforming the future of pop with a genre-blurring sound that felt both nostalgic and forward-thinking. But it’s Freetown Sound that sounds particularly timeless, a profound celebration of Blackness that is steeped in the lineage of funk, R&B, and soul while giving them a contemporary twist through nimble drum-machine work and smatterings of electronica. The star-studded features, including Zuri Marley, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Debbie Harry, don’t distract from Hynes’ talents; instead, they’re invited into Hynes’ transfixing sonic world. —Tatiana Tenreyro
235. Vampire Weekend: Contra (2010)
On their sophomore record, Vampire Weekend created one of the most innovative and iconic melodies of the early 2010s. This marked a new era of indie, one that wasn’t afraid to be peppy and preppy in a time when sleazy synths and heavy guitars reigned supreme. While Ezra Koenig is the bandleader, it’s producer and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij who threads Contra‘s eclectic sound, connecting soukous, dancehall, baroque, and synth-pop influences together into a sonic aesthetic that continues to define Vampire Weekend. More than a decade later, not one song off the album has been forgotten; each has taken a life of its own, equally beloved by fans, proving Contra‘s staying power. —Tatiana Tenreyro
234. Lil Wayne: Da Drought 3 (2007)
The most important mixtape of all time is Lil Wayne’s Da Drought 3, a project that came out right before Tha Carter III. Wayne was already one of the best lyricists of his generation by 2007, but hearing him on the precipice of blockbuster status on Da Drought 3 was an experience I haven’t had since. This mixtape was among my first introductions to hip-hop music; “Upgrade U” and “Everlasting Bass” are two of the best rap tracks of the last twenty-five years; it’s not so much a mixtape as it is a greatest hits collection—and it came out a year before the album most listeners cite as his biggest. “Promise,” “I Can’t Feel My Face,” “Seat Down Low”—these are all-timers dressed in one-hundred minutes of absolute rap psychosis. The mixtape era was great for a number of reasons; Da Drought 3 alone accounts for a few of them. —Matt Mitchell
233. Deafheaven: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (2018)
On Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, Deafheaven gets back to being exactly what it wants to be, and they waste no time diving way down into the deep end. Opening track “You Without End” is more or less a piano-pop song with a vaguely eighties vibe, adorned with a spoken word piece by Nadia Kury, decidedly non-blast drum beats and guitars that swoop and soar. Deafheaven, without question, has a distinctive sound. Here, however, they don’t sound like themselves until George Clarke comes in halfway through, howling about dark tunnels and glowing orbs and love. Later, “Night People” and “Near” continue the band’s explorations; the former a goth-rock duet with Chelsea Wolfe, and the latter a pillowy psych number reminiscent of Pink Floyd. Clarke sings cleanly on both; no snarls, no growls, and so on. Deafheaven should go further down this path in the future. The hypnotizing ending of “Honeycomb,” where the ring of electric guitars give way to chorus of electronic voices, leads perfectly into “Canary Yellow,” which evolves from dancing fountain of pretty guitars to heart-bursting crescendo to blackened thrash to bluesy guitar bends and an unexpected group chant in the span of twelve minutes. The guitars have always been the band’s bleeding edge, even when they were obscured by black metal vocals or handsome haircuts or bright pink album cover art. Deafheaven is an ambitious, heavy rock band, a gathering of innovative musical minds, and one of the very best guitar bands on Earth. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is strong evidence of all three. —Ben Salmon
232. Charlotte Adigéry / Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer (2022)
Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s electronic music melds their experiences of being othered with hilarity and stern lucidity; in their own words, “We sugarcoat the message, but we put it in your mouth.” The duo began a creative partnership after being connected by Soulwax for a film soundtrack before developing their debut album, Topical Dancer. Biting lyrics are followed up with a precise jest, keeping you constantly guessing what comes next. It helps, too, that Topical Dancer is soundtracked by buoyant synths and oil-slick production; “It Hit Me,” the album’s centerpiece, features dissonant whistles and details Adigéry’s teenage memory of being sexually harassed for the first time, before Pupul recounts his first brush with being an object of desire. Devastation always lurks in the viewfinder of Topical Dancer, as Adigéry and Pupul paint portraits of those who should know better but don’t. “Esperanto” chides performative political activism, while “Thank You” smiles sarcastically before taking a switchblade to the unsolicited counsel of their critics. The minimal “HAHA” is flat out bonkers, and is built around Adigéry’s guffaws that are cut apart, dissected, and sewn back together. Topical Dancer is a science experiment left unsupervised by a professor, but in turn yields a result of the future of electronic music. —Jaeden Pinder
231. A Silver Mt. Zion: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms (2000)
In my eyes, the debut album from A Silver Mt. Zion is as good as any Godspeed You! Black Emperor release. It’s a “Jewish experience,” based on Efrim Menuck’s “immersion” in a friend-based Jewish community in Montreal, but the imagery and meanings explored on He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms are cryptic and moody. Even without resolution, it’s a technical accomplishment spanning forty-seven minutes separated onto two sides. The CD edition of the record breaks it down into eight tracks, but I prefer to consider the LP as it is presented on vinyl: “Lonely as the Sound of Lying on the Ground of an Airplane Going Down” on side one; “The World Is SickSICK; (So Kiss Me Quick)!” on side two. What we’re left with regardless is a dynamic collection of sometimes bucolic, sometimes brutal pathways. There is almost no percussion on the album; Menuck’s compositions, compared to Godspeed’s, are sparse, emotional, and without the kind of pretentiousness that so often plagued many of his other band’s earliest releases. I find myself flummoxed by the humanity in these songs, in the haunting, great ruminations on death as life’s ungovernable, non-negotionable punctuation. I’m terrified of this record yet I’m always in need of it. —Matt Mitchell
230. SZA: SOS (2022)
Released in the middle of list season in 2022 and then grossly snubbed for Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2024, SZA’s SOS is the kind of record that dares to abolish the “sophomore slump” concept entirely. SOS was a critical darling immediately, receiving resounding universal acclaim across the world—and for good reason, as it is exactly why, even in 2025, we are still looking back at the album and trying to predict all of the ways it will influence the shape of soul, R&B and pop to come. The album, even at twenty-three songs (not including the Lana tracks), is cohesive and commanding; try finding a place in the tracklist to hit pause on. Collaborations with Phoebe Bridgers, Travis Scott, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Don Toliver stick out, but it’s the solo tracks that let SZA’s stardom radiate. “Blind,” “Conceited,” and “Kill Bill” are some of the best pop songs of this decade for a reason: SZA’s ambitions are shown to us intimately, in a blend of ferociously hypnotic and expansive genre studies and rap notes that are so melodic that the concept of “mood” becomes its own eccentricity on SOS. —Matt Mitchell
229. The Microphones: The Glow Pt. 2 (2001)
The Glow Pt. 2 is what I always considered to be a rite of passage album. Anyone who is familiar with the Microphones can easily recall the first time they heard this seminal album. It’s the type of project that every 20-year-old should be mandated to listen to upon reaching a certain point in their adolescence. Phil Elverum was only twenty-two years old when the album came out on September 11, 2001, and he affirms it as a product of his coming of age, stating that, in his older age, he now finds the songs to be almost unrecognizable. The youthful threads of Elverum’s early songwriting are woven together with a disjointed and immersive lo-fi sound set against a crisp Pacific Northwest haze. We see him emerge for the first time with a newfound mastery of space and structure as he navigates through a fluid and ever-evolving tracklist. From the introduction of “I Want Wind to Blow” leading into “The Glow Pt. 2,” Elverum presents us with an album of subtle contradiction and volatility. If you think the tracklist is going in one direction, it veers left in the other. The vast, rumbling instrumentation of “Instrumental – 2” softly bleeds into the bare acoustic guitar of “I Felt Your Shape” as Elverum creates an expanding canvas of sound and feeling. Eerie corridors of sparse noise trail through the tracklist, ringing out in melancholic fragments that culminate in the ambient and evocative final track “My Warm Blood.” The timeless magic of The Glow lies within its tragic and radiant exploration of youth and human connection. —Grace Ann Natanawan
228. Spellling: The Turning Wheel (2021)
In the first half of a decade which saw the rise of many diaristic singer-songwriters, the indie world still struggles with whimsy or theatricality as concepts. Yet, Oakland art pop multi-instrumentalist Tia Cabral crafted one of the most ambitious, existential sleeper hits of the past five years by operating in a fantasy world of her own. Centered around her distinctive soprano cutting through lush, immaculately produced walls of harp, prog guitars, woodwinds and strings, The Turning Wheel is half paean to the natural world, half chilling depiction of isolation outside of it. From the pulsing lovesickness of “Always” to the icy synth showcase of “Queen of Wands” to the grandiose centerpiece of “Boys at School,” she carves out one mini-opera after the other, dazzling us one breath and haunting us the next. For all the critical darlings singing plaintive, poetic lines over acoustic guitars, few moments will still cut like Cabral’s delivery of “I’m meaner than you think, and I’m not afraid of how lonely it’s going to be” by the decade’s end. —Elise Soutar
227. Queens of the Stone Age: Songs For The Deaf (2002)
Queens of the Stone Age may very well be directed almost exclusively by alpha-male head honcho Josh Homme. It’s the stoner rock troupe’s most collaborative record, Songs For The Deaf, that remains their defining statement, ironically. Dave Grohl’s recruitment attracted a great deal of attention, naturally, given it was the first time the Foo Fighters’ frontman was seen hitting the skins since Nirvana’s abrupt end. But Grohl’s inclusion was no novelty gesture. His erratic, claustrophobic—and dare I say iconic—intro on “Song For The Dead” has been mimicked by drummers to the hilt. But each ragtag player’s qualities meld exquisitely on Songs For The Deaf: Homme’s cryptic wordplay and melted guitar grooves conduct the late Mark Lanegan’s haunted growl, whilst Grohl’s taut rhythmic knowhow ratchets up Nick Olivieri’s primitive combustibility only when required. When the druggy road trip departs from Los Angeles (as the concept-driven, GTA-pandering radio interludes imply) the opening tracks pound the hot pavement with high stakes drama. As Joshua Tree’s hostile desert landscape looms on “God Is In The Radio” and “Song For The Deaf,” the carcass-resembling molten rock piles begin to peer intently. Must be the drugs, man. In 2002, the cranium-rattling riff to “No One Knows” became so ubiquitous that everyone knew it. It’s a hard rock benchmark you simply can’t leave in the dust. —Tom Curtis-Horsfall
226. Bad Bunny: YHLQMDLG (2020)
Benito Martínez Ocasio—AKA Bad Bunny—has always honored his roots, with albums that celebrate Puerto Rico. But it’s YHLQMDLG that is the ultimate love letter to his island, taking you through his nights out in Condado, name-dropping hot spots like nightclub Brava and sushi spot Kintaro, and giving props to Barrio Obrero, a neighborhood in Santurce that plays a large role in shaping Puerto Rico’s reggaeton. His way of combining the expected dirty lyrics in reggaeton with sweet, sincere sentiments in YHLQMDLG is a big part of what turned Martínez Ocasio into a superstar. Even with some big collaborations on the album, such as Daddy Yankee, Anuel AA, Arcángel, and Jowell & Randy, Martinez shines best on his own, boasting some of the sharpest bars in current reggaeton, unforgettable beats, and signature slurred vocal flourishes. —Tatiana Tenreyro
225. Charlie Megira: The Abtomatic Miesterzinger Mambo Chic (2001)
Of all the forgotten gems that Numero Group has worked to dig up in its time as a label, few of those revitalized back catalogs dazzle like that of Charlie Megira, whose hazy, lo-fi rockabilly transmissions from another planet floated his devout cult following into a strange new century. Clocking in at a lean twenty-three minutes, Megira’s debut The Abtomatic Miesterzinger Mambo Chic doesn’t so much play but drift and disappear in a cloud of smoky reverb. It’s surf rock for inside kids, “hypnogogic” before music writers knew to milk that descriptor—a dusty, dreamy doo-wop missive meant to be heard through your neighbor’s wall during a night with no moon. Or, at the very least, has the power to transport you there, regardless of the actual time. —Elise Soutar
224. Kelela: Take Me Apart (2017)
I think of what Devon Chodzin wrote about Raven two years ago: “Kelela is no stranger to changing the game through her futuristic dance music.” That is entirely true in the context of her great debut album Take Me Apart, which landed eight years ago yet remains under-appreciated. The songs within it are sensual, vulnerable, and urgent. “Frontline” spreads out on its own time; “LMK” is undeniable at every breath; “Blue Light” is dripping from club splashes; “Turn to Dust,” backed by vibrating, wincing strings, is among Kelela’s smoothest ballads; the title track explodes in glitchy, cacophonous desire. With production from Bok Bok (!), Ariel Rechtshaid (!!), and Arca (!!!), Kelela’s voice goes from mantra to muscle, in rituals of divine, blown-apart R&B music. Devon was right all along; Take Me Apart still obliterates the present in 2025. —Matt Mitchell
223. Stars of the Lid: The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (2001)
On their sixth album as Stars of the Lid, The Tired Sounds of, Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie don’t just come across groggy: They seem to dwell in some sleep-induced otherworld, doused in heavenly light. While it might sound like the Texas duo were working around traditional synthesizer pads in the studio, the 19-track record was actually built on groundbreaking tones generated from processed string and woodwind instruments, peppered with occasional samples pulled from arthouse films. Extended drone pieces can sometimes have a tendency to become pleasant, yet ignorable background noise. But The Tired Sounds of proves that this isn’t always the case, with a capacity to be as entrancing as it is cloudy. —Ted Davis
222. Tommy february6: Tommy Airline (2004)
One of the best J-pop albums of its time, Tommy Airline, the second record Tomoko Kawase made under her Tommy february6 alter-ego, is undeniable all over. Bubblegum bombast and trashy celebrity sound so good in Kawase’s hands that her blatant eighties worship is more than forgivable. Compared to her work with the Brilliant Green, this music marks for her a total reinvention. “Everyday at the Bus Stop” and “Kiss One More Time” are catchy like something Madonna would have made forty years ago, and Kawase’s utilization of nonsense English and sugary, anthemic pop gloss is borderline batshit. Tommy Airline isn’t just a lot of fun; it’s glorious, costumed, dance-music delirium. —Matt Mitchell
221. Jordaan Mason & The Horse Museum: Divorce Lawyers, I Shaved My Head (2009)
Is Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head mainstream? Absolutely not. Accessible? No. Polished? Not particularly. But is it a masterpiece? Without question. There’s a reason jokes abound online about it being the In the Aeroplane Over the Sea of gender dysphoria, the The Glow, Pt. 2 of queer identity crises. Jordaan Mason and the Horse Museum’s only album—though Mason themselves has released many more, including the devastating and criminally unknown Earth to Ursa Major—is as unruly, unrepeatable, and unforgettable as the records it’s most often likened to and arguably more uncompromising than either. The premise is a failed queer marriage during the fictional “glandolinian war of 1990,” but the story it tells could not feel more familiar: every single one of us lives inside a body, has loved other people in other bodies, and the experience of flesh and blood, more than anything else, is what Divorce Lawyers so idiosyncratically chronicles. We music writers love to call records visceral when we mean emotionally raw, but this record isn’t just visceral—it’s viscera. It opens with “my mouth is filled with his ovaries,” and from there you get childbirth, disease, lactation, shotgun weddings, horse motifs, swallowed caskets, analphabet soup, and the least sexy and most bodily descriptions of sex ever put to song. Mason’s voice (keening, heartrending, stretched until it breaks) is joined by an ad-hoc orchestra of family, friends, strangers playing everything from banjo to trumpet, clarinet to “floor creaks.” Housed somewhere between sickness and sex, between poetry and pathology, Divorce Lawyers is both a singular body amalgamated from a dozen histories and a chorus of voices echoing from a single throat. The effect is both holy and hideous: a cathedral built from dirty laundry and broken sinks. Everything is sacred and nothing is. We are alive and breathing and breeding and that is something worth celebrating and fearing in equal measure. Divorce Lawyers may not offer resolution, but what it offers is something arguably far more valuable: a real, raw glimpse at our own bodies, in all their gruesome animal glory. —Casey Epstein-Gross
220. Santigold: Santogold (2008)
In the alternative music landscape (if we can still call it that in post-monocultural world), the concept of “genre-bending” now feels like a given in any standard promotional materials. It’s difficult to imagine the tenor of the MySpace era, when an artist like Santi White—formerly of New York punk band Stiffed and her then-new project, Santogold (now Santigold, following a lawsuit from jewelers Santo Gold)—was told by at least one A&R rep that her “genre-bending” work was essentially unmarketable. Thankfully for us, she got to cap this story with, “But then I had Björk reach out to me on my Myspace page!” Blending strains of electropop, dance-punk, dub, and hip-hop to spin tales of city social climbing and self-possession in an industry that others you, Santogold remains one of the most forward-thinking, indelible albums of its time and place—as indicative of the Lower East Side in 2008 as the punk she loved was of the same neighborhood in 1976. Though plenty has changed here in the years that followed, the city as it stands still hums with the sound White captured on her debut: kinetic, hungry, and bafflingly singular. —Elise Soutar
219. Modest Mouse: The Moon & Antarctica (2000)
Modest Mouse have lived many lives throughout their discography: their off-kilter breakout record, The Lonesome Crowded West; hitting mainstream with their foray into indie pop with Good News For People Who Love Bad News, and the Johnny Marr team-up for their delightfully bizarre half-baked nautical concept album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. But their third album, The Moon & Antarctica, is the one that perfectly encapsulates why Modest Mouse became one of the biggest indie bands of all time. They didn’t leave behind their avant-garde approach for their major label debut under Epic, as fans at the time worried they would. Instead, they refined and expanded their sound, crafting experimental folk that drew on electro-funk, post-punk, and ambient elements, creating their most groundbreaking material to date. —Tatiana Tenreyro
218. Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotic 2 (2023)
Describing anything as “DIY”—or, God forbid, “bedroom pop”—can conjure the sound of music made minimal by necessity, with its charm derived from its limitations. Though his full-length debut under the moniker Nourished By Time was entirely made in his parents’ basement in Baltimore, Marcus Brown’s blend of nineties R&B and eighties freestyle is so impressive because it appears to have arrived fully formed. For such a bare-bones operation, its fruits overwhelm. Planting himself at the midpoint between SWV and The Blue Nile, between heartbreak and life under late-stage capitalism, between dance floor bangers and deeply-felt pleas for understanding, Brown threads all of it together to create an idiosyncratic, well-crafted collection of songs that can’t help but attach themselves to you. The melancholic guitar fog of opener “Quantum Suicide” runs perfectly into the synth-driven bounce of “Shed That Fear” and “Daddy.” By the time he’s wringing your heart out with lines like “My prayer is for our clouds to collide / But I have to face the possibility that I’m wasting my time”—delivered in lush harmonic layers on “Rain Water Promise”—you’re ready to pivot with him wherever he aims Nourished By Time’s arrow next. Loving and losing are eternal themes for a reason, but in his isolation, Brown repurposes them into something strikingly original and frequently gorgeous. —Elise Soutar
217. Elliott Smith: Figure 8 (2000)
“I’m alone / That’s okay / I don’t mind / Most of the time.” Loneliness is ever present, but not always unwelcome. Figure 8 feels like a dream; intricately constructed, echoing with ghosts. It’s Elliott Smith at his most refined, finding him in the aftermath of his Oscars-sponsored catapult to stardom and his major label record deal. It captures both the peak of his studio experimentation and the ache that ran beneath all his work. Though he split recording between LA and Abbey Road, Figure 8 is Smith’s de facto LA record. He possessed a Brian Wilson tilt—bursts of bleak humor met with a mix of brooding rock, ornate arrangements, and gentle textures—and the record’s baroque beauty (harpsichords, stacked vocals, strange key changes, and wandering interludes) is put in direct contrast with its lyrical detachment and disillusionment. Figure 8 is a self-contained entity, a closed loop that exists perfectly within itself while not always being what it seems. Its moments of sheer turmoil are met with a punch of sobering rock passes, Smith never letting you get too comfortable. The ripping “LA” following the heartbreaking, orchestral “Everything Means Nothing To Me” is a perfect example of this. “LA” enters with a jolt, the biker rock-adjacent guitar riff cracking the soundscape wide open. Smith hides an unsettling narrative in the energizing and head bangable instrumentation: the bright light of a Los Angeles morning keeping him from sending himself over the edge (“But last night I was about to throw it all away”). Smith toys with his own mortality throughout the record, following “LA” with “In The Lost And Found” where he drops lines like “I don’t feel afraid to die,” making peace with a sort of purgatory existence he seeks comfort in. Smith is everywhere now: in the lyrical narratives of Phoebe Bridgers, the melodic intricacy of Sufjan Stevens, the hushed self-deprecation of Snail Mail. Figure 8 remains Smith’s most ambitious and elusive album. If Either/Or made him a legend, Figure 8 is the myth: a sprawling, meticulous, deeply sad masterpiece that circles questions without answers, refusing to simplify feeling. —Cassidy Sollazzo
216. Playboi Carti: Whole Lotta Red (2020)
After Die Lit, everyone anticipated that Playboi Carti’s next studio album would be another statement. What remarkably few guessed was in which direction that statement would hurl. Hype built in spurts around Whole Lotta Red before it dropped on Christmas day in 2020, and with it emerged a nascent bold energy that had been bubbling in rap’s increasingly globalized and online underground. Whole Lotta Red has become the defining influence for what would become rage, the trap subgenre hallmarked by blown-out electronics and punk-inspired open aggression. Carti’s take on proto-rage is dark, frantic, and disinterested in structure, begetting a level of freedom in mainstream rap that still feels like a massive level up. Not unlike on follow-up album Music, Carti’s coterie of features on Whole Lotta Red feel like they don’t live up to the task at hand, but on Red especially, that’s forgivable given everything that came after. Carti’s connection to the underground never wavered, but Red showed that he knew how to take newfound sounds to the next level and curate them with a transgressive artistic statement that still proves resonant nearly five years later. —Devon Chodzin
215. Sleigh Bells: Treats (2010)
The title for Treats, the dazzling debut from Brooklyn noise pop duo Sleigh Bells, is incredibly apt. Listening to it often feels like getting a sugar rush after eating large swaths of candy. Across a half and hour of bubblegum pop, raucous punk, and crunchy guitar riffs, the record’s relentless energy rarely lets up, but you kind of don’t want it to. Its commanding opener “Tell ‘Em” announces the band’s arrival like a triumphant fanfare played for a king and queen, blasting its acid-laced sonic distortion loudly and proudly. The tracks that follow—particularly “Kids,” “Riot Rhythm,” and “Crown on the Ground”—keep that first song’s kinetic charge flowing, enough to make you want to scream, thrash, and start throwing shit. But despite its infectiously blaring bounce, the LP’s greatest offering, “Rill Rill,” is also its most grounded, thanks in part to an impeccably used Funkadelic sample. Alexis Krauss’s shimmering voice rises above all the clamor like a cushion to soften Derek E. Miller’s blaring, blown-out sound, either offsetting its intensity or roaring along with it. Though the two struggled to replicate and expand on their formula in their subsequent work, Treats remains a propulsive, buoyant pop confection that still satisfies fifteen years after its release. —Sam Rosenberg
214. Bjӧrk: Vulnicura (2015)
If the best art really does come out of the most personally trying situations, then Björk’s eighth studio album, Vulnicura certainly upholds that theory. On the day that the album leaked on iTunes (two months before the original release date), the Icelandic artist posted on her Facebook page that Vulnicura is, “a complete heartbreak album.” And true to her word, Vulnicura documents the dissolution of her more-than-a-decade-long relationship with avant-garde visual artist Matthew Barney. The nine tracks document this distraught nature “in pretty much accurate emotional chronology,” Björk writes. Liner notes detail the timing in proximity to the dreaded breakup—opening “Stonemilker” is “9 months before,” whereas the 10-minute “Black Lake” is “2 months after.” Complexity and metaphors reign on Vulnicura. The stark, dueling musical styles invoke a rare intricacy and intimacy that seem to represent her mixed emotions of fear, anger, depression and sadness. But Björk manages not to make her suffering sound self-indulgent on Vulnicura. Offering her stories in honest and often anthropological ways allows her to communicate her pain in the most objective ways. So while the swan of Björk’s past may have manifested itself in a 2001 wardrobe, a swan song for an artist this record is not. Rather, Vulnicura marks a bold return for such a storied singer. —Hilary Saunders
213. Cassandra Jenkins: An Overview of Phenomenal Nature (2021)
On her breakout 2021 album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, Cassandra Jenkins allowed other people to speak through her: her mother, friends, therapist, driving instructor, and even acquaintances like the security guard at the Met Breuer museum. She shared their sage wisdom (and hers) in soothing, let-your-shoulders-back spoken-word while wafts of saxophone allied with pattering drums and pristine guitars. By giving others a voice, it’s easy to find space for yourself—your voice—in the album, which is one of the kindest and most generous of the century so far, so clearly was it born from a place of love and space and patience (Jenkins grew up playing in her family band and works in a florist—playing music was never a career move). David Berman’s death pervaded Phenomenal Nature like a fine misty rain, and in only seven songs, Jenkins laid out a template for post-grief healing and renewal, teaching us what to hold close—and who to listen to—in order to live peacefully and meaningfully. —Hayden Merrick
212. Usher: Confessions (2004)
Out of the four Usher songs that topped the Hot 100 in 2004, I think “Confessions Part II” is the “worst”—though that means hardly anything, given that Confessions became one of the biggest albums of the decade. It’s a great song that’s smooth as hell, a true Pandora’s box of infidelity that does more finessing than confessing, but we’ll let Usher slide for that one. All braggadocious lyrics about getting a mistress pregnant aside, Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox’s production is hot, hot, hot. As far as R&B ballads are concerned, few from the 2000s reach the same emotional climax as “Burn,” a song that makes a reference to Usher’s Alicia Keys duet “My Boo” while showcasing his perfectly achy falsetto vocal. It’s a break-up song that, even at its most cliché, is a slow jam for the ages. Rolling Stone’s Laura Sinagra described that excellence so well that I wish I’d thought of it myself, writing that “Burn” “convincingly marries resolve and regret, but when it comes to rough stuff, there’s still no ‘u’ in p-i-m-p.” And I vividly remember spending a study hall period in my school’s computer lab downloading an MP3 of “Yeah!” on Grooveshark and playing it through one of those shoddy, grey speakers. Usher’s magnum opus, which spent 12 consecutive weeks at number-one, features crunk&B production, a collage of Lil Jon’s beats, and Ludacris’s steady, seductive rhymes. Together, the track becomes a booty-bopping, club panic masterpiece. There’s a reason 27-year-old me is as entranced by Confessions as teenaged me was when it spilled onto the dancefloors of many school formals. This is, simply put, one of the most important dance records of the century thus far—music put into a spotlight it still has yet to fully relinquish. —Matt Mitchell
211. New Pornographers: Twin Cinema (2005)
The third album from Canada’s foremost purveyors of singalong power pop sneaks up on you. The grab-you immediacy of Mass Romantic and Electric Version gets stretched and delayed a bit: Hear the quiet build of “Bones Of An Idol,” or the slow build to anthemic catharsis of “The Bleeding Heart Show,” or even the cracked groove workout of “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” and marvel at how such undeniably catchy hooks get filtered through deceptively elegant arrangements. But after a few listens, the arms-length orchestration transforms into an audaciously expansive whole, a record equally at home being deconstructed through serious headphones or simply enjoyed via crackling car speakers with the windows down. But at the end of the day, it’s just a towering collection of bangers, one after the other, an indie rock jukebox—all killer, no filler. —Alex McLevy
210. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma (2010)
The third album from Flying Lotus is an engrossing exploration of sonic possibility. Featuring contributions from Thom Yorke, vocalist Laura Darlington, bass producer Thundercat, and jazz instrumentalist Ravi Coltrane, it’s a study in contrasts: provoking but reassuring, kinetic but focused, clean but clattering. Though it lacks a narrative frame, the album manages to remain stylistically and thematically cohesive. In the first ten minutes, the beats build almost frantically, then relax into a dreamy spiral and spike again; Yorke and Darlington’s vocals highlight Lotus’ swirling sounds, giving them sonic edges. The Radiohead frontman’s dreamy musings on “…And the World Laughs with You” aren’t an intrusion, but they work better as gleams and fragments on “Do The Astral Plane,” a track that begins with playful scatting and settles into a deep swinging groove, backed by impeccable percussion. Flying Lotus has truly mastered the silicon machine: His byte-and-bass combo screams, buzzes and pounds through ever-shifting beats, which clink with mantra-like repetition until they suddenly give way to a universe of unforeseen noise. On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum ’n’ bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic. —Katelyn Hackett
209. Sheena Ringo: Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana (2003)
Sheena Ringo’s third album, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana, is maximalist pop at its absolute best. The arrangements are scattershort and vibrating, from arena-rock guitar shouts (“Shuukyou”) to atonal violins and didgeridoos (“Meisai”) to baroque piano dramas (“Okonomi De”) to avant-garde pocket symphonies (“Poltergeists”). The rock structures from Ringo’s first two solo albums are here, but in splashes against expressive, muscular strangeness. It reminds me of Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, or even the more whimsical moments of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is an MP3 album to its core and one of the greatest (if not the greatest) J-pop projects ever released. Somebody once compared Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana to MC Escher’s Drawing Hands. I can’t quite think of anything quite as perfect. —Matt Mitchell
208. Common: Like Water For Chocolate (2000)
I don’t know many records that make me feel what Like Water For Chocolate makes me feel. The music, backed by the Soulquarians collective, is rap at its most powerful, with juggernaut funk, stirring soul, and big-band jazz baked into high-res beats. With contributions from Questlove, J Dilla, Pino Palladino, D’Angelo, and James Poyser, this LP, along with Voodoo and Mama’s Gun, came together at Electric Lady Studios in New York, and singles like “6th Sense” and “The Light” remain some of Common’s greatest efforts. Seventy-seven minutes flies by, especially when Mos Def hops on “The Questions,” or when Vinia Mojica, Roy Hargrove, and Femi Kuti get in on “Time Travelin’ (A Tribute to Fela).” Looking at the last twenty-five years of music, “conscious rap” starts with Like Water For Chocolate. The number of rap records that sound better than it can be counted on one hand. —Matt Mitchell
207. Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour (2018)
Why do we cry even when we’re overwhelmingly happy? Kacey Musgraves sought to answer that question on her 2018 masterpiece, Golden Hour, namely on the fittingly titled “Happy & Sad.” “You got me smiling with tears in my eyes,” she sings in the chorus. Golden Hour, magnetizing and mystifying, underlines the nuances of love young and old, how the strongest emotions contain countless multitudes. Like love itself, Musgraves draws from a varied palette: vocoder-tinged reverie on “Oh, What a World,” wistful indie-pop on “Lonely Weekend,” buoyant disco on “High Horse.” She never provides a scientific reason for “happy crying,” per se, but she has given us its aural analog. —Grant Sharples
206. Women: Public Strain (2010)
Before Patrick Flegel started Cindy Lee, he was in the band Women, and their 2010 album Public Strain is a bleak, droning guitar album thrashing through pools of distortion and off-kilter time signatures. What melodies exist here are still intense, a departure from the sugary, whizzing madness of Women’s debut. The gorgeousness of Public Strain is in its cacophonous variety: the garage rock-y “Narrow With the Hall”; the gentle “Penal Colony”; the Sonic Youth-equalizing “Locust Valley”; the 6-minute “Eyesore,” a concluding epic of big riffs and Beach Boys verses. “Vintage” doesn’t say enough about Public Strain; it’s a noisy suite of against-the-grain vantages that still haven’t quite settled. Flegel would obliterate his own maddening phrases in Cindy Lee by mid-decade, but Public Strain is among his most outstanding efforts. It’s a textural, wintry world. —Matt Mitchell
205. D’Angelo and The Vanguard: Black Messiah (2014)
Fourteen years dissolved. One key-stroke, and the mythic follow-up to D’Angelo’s Voodoo could be yours. Luxurious, raw, crashed-up, silky, a funky collage of sounds and grooves, Black Messiah takes listeners even deeper into the dozen songs with repeated listening. More heartening than the hodgepodge of elements and seeming precision of their interweaving is the social consciousness rising. Yes, D’Angelo, that glorious objet d’amour, has not eschewed his romantic bent, but with the exhortative-sample, wah-wah guitar-slither collapsing into writhing moans on “1000 Deaths,” the drum-rolling phased vocal delight “Til It’s Done (Tutu)” and the elegantly moody “The Charade” with its wailing chorus “all we wanted was a chance to talk / ‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk…,” his desire to expand higher societal awareness dominates. Also declaring in the liners the all-analog recording of real hands on real instruments, Black Messiah churns the “old school” in ways that bristle with vitality, yet are as fresh and urgent as anything on radio. Fourteen years is a long time. Devotees were aware of the personal issues which have plagued the artist and delayed the album; each passing year suggested a lessening of what might be hoped for. To his credit, D’Angelo didn’t attempt to “supersede” what he’d built, but rather develop the nitty gritty gospel/soul/jazz/hip-hop bindings of his nu-funk excavations. —Holly Gleason
204. MJ Lenderman: MJ Lenderman (2019)
Jake “MJ” Lenderman broke out in 2022 thanks to Boat Songs, and last year’s Manning Fireworks made him an indie-rock superstar. But his first record started something greater six years ago, marking the beginning of Asheville’s current reign as an American epicenter for rock and roll. Lenderman’s deadpan humor and big, nasally hooks hadn’t yet come together, but the guitar playing is loud and fascinating. Alex Brown’s drums are humid, Xandy Chelmis’ pedal steel is on fire; Karly Hartzman and Indigo De Souza sing perfect harmonies. Some of the best and loosest rock songs of the last ten years live here, like the grisly, epic opener “Come Over,” the Jason Molina-summoning “Heartbreak Blues,” the Drive-By Truckers-honoring “Left Your Smile,” and the head-rattling, Crazy Horse-y “Space.” The character stories on Lenderman’s latest projects gets a test-run on “Basketball #1”; “Southern Birds” is a sing-it-like-you-see-it pastoral. MJ Lenderman is a sad, distraught, hazy, and distorted blend; its influence is ever-captivating and ongoing, present now in just about every new rock or country record coming out of the Carolinas. —Matt Mitchell
203. Beyoncé: Lemonade (2016)
The album Lemonade tells the story of a woman experiencing the high highs and low lows that come from loving, from believing, from existing. She’s confident (“6 Inch”), she’s scorned (“Hold Up”), and she’s vengeful (“Don’t Hurt Yourself”). She’s painfully aware (“Pray You Catch Me”), blinded, then restored by love and lies. She’s open, she’s hopeful (“Sandcastles”), and she’s incomprehensibly fierce (“Sorry”). She is everywoman—in love and in pain (“All Night”), defined as much by her romantic life as she is by her parents (“Daddy Lessons”), and the cultures and worlds that birthed her (“Formation”). Songs about heartbreak no longer merely signify love lost, but must be understood alongside certain losses unique to women in the Black community. Anthems about reclamation of power in the aftermath of an unfaithful lover take new meaning, when you see images of black women gathered. I stress the word because of all the different ways Lemonade embraces the notion of Black women gathering. Useless lovers who have failed to appreciate a certain magic in their midst must be gathered—as in almost violently collected, if only to be torn apart; a community of women bound together by a history that stretches from the continent of Africa, to the Caribbean Islands, to the French Quarters must gather to share collective tales and to pull on each other’s individual talents for strength. And of course, the reaction to Lemonade reflects such gathering. Since the album was released, Black women have been gathering to speak, write and reflect on the impact of the album, to share syllabi—required reading to understand the layers Beyoncé veils and unveils—and to simply exist in a certain glory that we only feel in the presence of those who know us well—Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Julie Dash, Kara Walker, Mara Brock Akil—those women whose work we have been gathering around for years. Now of course, Lemonade is to be enjoyed by every gender and every race the world over. And it has been. But if anyone feels the need to ask why Lemonade exists, and how Lemonade came to be and what it means that the album arrived at that particular moment in American history, well, I believe Bey made herself quite clear. Everyone else (the others) gets to look on and listen in, as she sings her own interpretation of a deceptively simple hymn that’s been passed down through generations of Black women, to the Black women of this moment: Gather, heal, slay, repeat. —Shannon Houston
202. Perfume Genius: Set Your Heart On Fire Immediately (2020)
Perfume Genius is best known for centering his queerness in his experimental pop, but Mike Hadreas has also long explored how our bodies betray us. On 2014’s name-making Too Bright, his body was a “rotted peach,” and even the iconic, out-and-Capital-P-Proud protagonist of breakout single “Queen” was “cracked, peeling, riddled with disease.” (Hadreas has been vocal about his struggle with Crohn’s disease.) On No Shape, he sang about death not as a feared end, but as liberation from our fragile, unreliable biological shells. When Hadreas took up modern dance in 2019, it seemed like a deliberate step to reclaim his body: To turn your movements into art is the polar opposite of feeling “rank, ragged, skin sewn on sheets.” His effort to overcome the body-brain gulf is more apparent than ever throughout Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, on which Hadreas loses control of not just his body, but his heart. As ever, his voice and music contort and warp in tandem with his anatomy. —Max Freedman
201. Anna von Hausswolf: Dead Magic (2018)
There’s a moment on “The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra”, perhaps the most accessible song on Swedish composer Anna Von Hausswolff’s opus Dead Magic, where her repeated whooping collapses into what can only be described as an unguarded, delighted, and evil cackle. As overdone as references to “catharsis” when talking about music can feel, there is more than a trace of it in even the most sinister sounds Von Hausswolff committed to tape for her fourth studio album, fittingly recorded in the hallows of a Copenhagen church. Around the atmospheric, gothic intonation of the pipe organ, she builds a full-length funeral mass mourning lost love and grappling with crippling existentialism, as all holy sermons should. When your towering creation channels emotions powerful enough to spark accusations of satanism and to soundtrack Demi Moore’s body horror meltdown, you can safely assume you’re one of the best doing it. —Elise Soutar
