The Best Albums of the 2010s Showed Music Can Spark Revolutions and Change the Soundtrack of Our Lives

Music, more than any other form of entertainment, serves us like a memory scent. We take songs and albums on the road and into our lives, letting them soundtrack first dances and funerals and late night ragers. In our private moments, they console broken hearts and anxious minds or, on better days, prompt solo dance parties. In pivotal moments, a music release changes the culture, as rallying cries carry marches through the streets. So to remember what came out—and, even more, what took off—is to remember who we were, then.

If the Internet killed music with sites like Napster, Limewire, and Bearshare in the '00s, the rise of streaming outlets saved it this decade. Spotify came to the United States in 2011 and YouTube totals were officially factored into chart placement by 2012, and, immediately, the records began to topple—Drake was the most streamed artist until Ed Sheeran and then Sheeran until Drake—while a new swath of top dogs were welcomed to the A-list. Hip-hop and electronic music, which finally earned the household name of EDM, exploded, and the lines between genres all but vanished completely.

Revolutions arrived. Frank Ocean, then just 24 years old, changed R&B forever with his sparse, stunning Channel Orange LP and the ensuing tumblr post where he came out as queer. The most important trilogy of music from this century kicked off in 2012 as Kendrick Lamar made his major label debut with Good Kid, M.A.A.D City; a near-perfect ode to Jesus Christ and West Coast rap. He'd follow with To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), which gets its due below, and DAMN. (2017). As 2019 wraps up, and the the Grammys edge ever closer towards oblivion, the 32-year-old has collected a Pulitzer, but not Album of the Year from the Recording Academy. Guitar god antics are alive and well, but their ambassador is a 37-year-old woman named Annie who hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma and absolutely fucking shreds under the moniker of St. Vincent.

And, the reality that never gets easier, an unbearable number of icons were lost. Prince, George Michael, Aretha Franklin, Merle Haggard, and David Bowie all slipped beyond that silvery screen to the Far Beyond this decade. But before he went, The Thin White Duke pulled off the finest magic trick from a career that was full of them: a perfect goodbye. Blackstar released just two days before his death in 2016. —Madison Vain