In lieu of rankings here are some albums from the last two years that I really dug. They’re organized into general genres and vibe for ease of digestion.
Pop Bangers
As I’ve gotten older I’ve become more and more fond of pop music. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve let go of pretension and stopped caring as much about what music is cool to listen to or if as I age I just have grown into the frenzied elegance of a perfectly crafted pop song. Either way, these albums bang and they’re full of joyful and interesting songs that are familiar and fresh at the same time.
SAWAYAMA (Rina Sawayama)
A whirlwind tour through pop subgenres of the ’00s and ’10s lead by the somber and exhilarating virtuoso Rina Sawayama, each song grabbing a new hook and angle and ramming it through a musical kaleidoscope.
Highlight: “Bad Friend”, a slow-burning monster track about being a sub-par friend. Sawayama takes a page from the Robyn playbook of thematically heavy pop bangers (a la “Call Your Girlfriend” and “Dancing on my Own”) and leads the way for a new generation of pop songs that make you dance then make you feel then make you think then make you dance.
Sour (Olivia Rodrigo)
Sour is ubiquitous and deserves every ounce of that ubiquit. Rodrigo blasted past any concerns about repetitiveness (by making every song about the same subject) and produced a breakup album that feels like an assault on the cliché from every angle, making the breakup trope twist and turn until she’s wring every ounce of pop magic out of it.
Highlight: “Good 4 U”, an only-slightly-vengeful anthem that demands to be shouted along to while you’re living your best life.
Charva Anthems (Bad Boys Chiller Crew)
An undiluted EP of British-bro-pop foolishness, every second is dumb and awesome. It requires no thought, no effort, no dissection; just let the fist-pumping club beats and West Yorkshire accents wash over you and ride the wave into party-town (party-shire?).
Highlight: “Don’t You Worry About Me”, you’ll either love it or hate it, what can I say? It’s a banger.
After Hours (The Weeknd)
After Hours isn’t close to The Weeknd’s best album but hey, the man can sing, is unique, and works with some great producers (notably llangelo, Max Martin, and Metro Boomin on this go-around), and that does the trick in my book. Maybe it was the longing COVID created for upbeat and party music but the pop I heard at least seemed to veer away from the somber, moody pop of the late 00s. Bless his heart the The Weeknd is keeping the mood alive for the woozy 3am club crowd and he does it better than anyone else.
Highlight: “Scared To Live”, a lovely power ballad that I wish had an extended 12-minute version with instrumental breakdowns and lengthy bridges. Too bad.
Indie (Soul)
Nary a newcomer in sight in this cohort. Waxahatchee is the only artists that I hadn’t heard of before their 2020-2021 album came out and with Saint Cloud being her fifth album she’s no musical spring chicken (incidentally, she’s actually a real life spring chicken; born in 1989, Crutchfield’s first album came out when she was 23 years old). The albums from this group come from a lot of indie vets and soulful solo artists, this may say more about my own listening tastes than the actual state of indie music but they’re good albums so here they are.
Saint Cloud (Waxahatchee)
Twangy and soulful (natch), Saint Cloud is a nourishing group of songs about dependency and self that feel as modern as they do timeless. Written in the wake of Crutchfield’s newfound sobriety, the album bounces through singer-songwriter staples and ballads with a distinct southern grit that are personal and profound, often dour yet full of hope and life.
Highlight: “Oxbow” – A wily opening track that perfectly sets the stage for the album to come.
Chemtrails Over the Country Club (Lana Del Rey)
Chemtrails doesn’t reach the soaring heights of Normal Fucking Rockwell but it’s a delightlful continuation of her work with songwriting and production partner Jack Antonoff. Del Rey gets a lot of shit and Chemtrails feels like a perfect “fuck off” to everyone who isn’t a fan. The lyrics are perfectly poignant and the production is as evocative and wistful as always, Del Rey seems to float along the album, passing through her past and our collective consciousness as she sings songs that like it or not capture our modern America.
Highlight: “Chemtrails of the Country Club” – I mean, it’s perfect, that title is just perfect. Great song too.
Fetch the Bolt Cutters (Fionna Apple)
The most lauded album of the last two years, I don’t know if Fetch the Bolt Cutters is really as good as everyone wants it to be, but it’s still pretty great. Apple returns from her eight year hiatus with a batch of challenging and interesting tracks that bend and break in a meticulously constructed fashion.
Highlight: “Under the Table”, a perfectly beguiling scene of domestic discontent, Apple paints a picture with her lyrics that are bolstered by the tense and hectic production, percussion and piano bouncing off the walls as we wait to see if Apple’s simmer turns to a boil.
Shore (Fleet Foxes)
The Ascension (Sufjan Stevens)
Do you like Fleet Foxes and/or Sufjan Stevens? Good, you’ll like these albums too. Definitely not the peak for either of these indie stalwarts but solid additions to both of their stellar catalogs that will satisfy any fan (not excessively picky fans at least) and hell, maybe bring a new listener or two.
Highlights: I dunno, the whole albums are good, how about “Can I Believe You” [Shore] and “Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse” [The Ascension]”?
Indie (Frenetic)
Like a window into the future of pop music, the most frenetic electronic indie music usually lays low for a while then all of a sudden they’re being copied by every artist on Top 40 radio. Which is good! I am strongly in favor of Top 40 artists being influenced by fun, interesting music. So here’s some frenzied fun.
Dreamland (Glass Animals)
Woozy and funky, bursting with light and color, Dreamland is a wonderful trip down energy lane. Glass Animals have a knack for hooks and catchy lyrics that are as fun as they are confusing (i.e. “CLAP CLAP YOU’RE A CLEVER CLEVER COOKIE NOW”). A consuming escape from our current, umm, situation, Dreamland is an explosive souffle of an album that never stops rising.
Highlight: “Heat Wave”, the song of COVID summers for all those who didn’t really have a summer. A smooth and jaunty track that fuses electro-pop, screwed vocals, and the perfect amount of swagger to be cool and endearingly corny at the same time. Also “Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth” deserves mention for batshit-wild lyrics that carry the song through its escalation and bring the make-or-break drop to its extremely satisfying conclusion. Clever clever cookie indeed.
Womb (Purity Ring)
After their breakout debut album Shrines in 2012 Purity Ring has been stuck in musical limbo, they haven’t made any big changes to their sounds and haven’t been able to recapture all the magic Shrines, but they’ve kept putting out music and their sound is so unique and entrancing that even a run-of-the-mill Purity Ring album blows most other albums out of the water. Womb combines the haunting pop sensibilities Purity Ring has honed over the years with their dungeon-fairy vocals and body-horror lyrics, a great album for a party that might turn into a seance.
Highlight: “silkspun”, feels like you’re in the eye of a spell and you’re not sure if it’s one of the good spells or one of the ah-shit-I’m-going-to-be-turning-into-a-small-woodland-creature spells, so you might as well enjoy the ride.
Mystic Familiar (Dan Deacon)
Listen, Dan Deacon puts out an album and I put it on the best of the year list, that’s just the way it works. Mystic Familiar is a continuation of the orchestral and sonorous electronic micro-symphonies he’s been producing since America in 2012, If you weren’t into him before Mystic Familiar likely won’t change your mind, it’s not a departure from his past, but it is a 45-minute hunk of excellent psychedelic glitch-pop and I’ll take that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Highlight: “Become a Mountain”, for his last three albums Deacon seems to be following the same format: two or three singles, some interesting instrumentals and low-key tracks, and a larger multi-part production. “Become a Mountain” is the single and it sounds like a big digital hug from the world.
Afrobeats, Reggaetón, & K-Pop
Apollo (Fireboy DML)
A boisterous and smooth album that would fit as well at a party as it would scoring an epic film. Fireboy DML croons and quavers his way through 17 short but sweet tracks (clocking in at less than 50 minutes that’s under 3 min/song for all you math people out there) that sound like his afro-beat highlight reel. Funk and flavor abound, Fireboy DML has made some inroads with the association football crowd (he’s featured in the FIFA 21 soundtrack and had a song used by Bayern Munich for their UEFA Super Cup celebration) and here’s to hoping he keeps making music as fun and interesting as a Copa América championship game.
Highlight: “ELI”, a saucy tale of seduction with a hook that’s superbly dramatic and powerful.
YHLQMDLG (Bad Bunny)
Sauce Boyz (Eladio Carrion)
The past few years have seen an explosion of reggaeton in American pop culture and we’re all better off for it. There have been a ton of great tracks and artists but these two projects stand out to me as the best cohesive albums. The singles are exuberant and sexy and the energy dips and dives throughout the albums keeping you hooked from one song to the next, giving you a break only to drag you back onto the dance floor for one more round.
Highlights: “Pero Ya No” [YHLQMDLG], it’s worth learning Spanish (if you’re not already familiar) just to sing along to this track. “Mi Error – Remix” ft. Zion & Lennox, Wisin & Yandel, and Lunay [Sauce Boyz], a slow burning party jam that brings half the party with it on the track.
Map of the Soul: 7 (BTS)
What more is there to say that hasn’t already been screamed out by stampeding hordes of K-Pop fans? BTS has taken over the world and we can only hope that they are benevolent leaders of pop music. The album is allegedly based on the analytic psychological theories of persona, shadow and ego (a la K-Pop demigod Carl Jung)…I don’t know about how successful it is in that pursuit but what I do know is that it’s chock-full of grand and lofty pop songs that demand to be blasted to the masses. Truth be told it’s a bit bloated (20 tracks, 75 minutes), but there’s enough great stuff in there to keep you hooked and convince you that BTS is not all hype and slick music videos, these fellas can make songs too.
Highlights: “ON”, their most dramatic and cinematic track, a jam that utilizes the full powers of BTS with a perfectly over-the-top music video to boot.
Where Did the Rap Go?
The Melodic Blue (Baby Keem)
Do I not like new rap anymore? Looking back at my best of 2010s list, the top 10 albums were half rap…but here in 2020-2021 I had to reach to even find one rap album to include on the list. Is it me or the music? I know that everyone thinks that the music they liked when they were 15-25 is the best music that has ever been made and all music after never lives up, and that’s exactly how I feel about rap, but maybe in this case it’s actually true? I don’t know. I’ve definitely kept up with old favorites who have put out new music recently like Kevin Gates, J. Cole, and Young Thug, but their albums sound uninspired to me, like they’re coasting with older energy but the same ideas. The rap mega-stars are still mega-stars but I was never really the biggest fan of Drake’s albums (new ones included, although he has a ton of great songs that I really like) and Kanye is, well, having a bit of a tough few years (to put it kindly).
There have been plenty of exciting newcomers too like Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, and the rest of the babies (DaBaby, Lil Baby, Sada Baby, Yung Baby Tate…) who also have great tracks but their albums are stuffed to the brim with filler once you get past the singles. I don’t expect to have the same fan-boy energy and obsession with new artists like I once did but looking back at the last two years of rap the tracks are still there but the albums sound lackadaisical to me.
Maybe I’m just older and moving into the “get off my lawn” phase of music consumption, but looking back to 10 years ago 2010-2011 had “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, “Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty”, “Shut Up, Dude”, “Flockaveli”, “Thank Me Later”, “Take Care”, “Watch The Throne”, “Live. Love. A$AP”, “XXX”, “Section.80”…and 2020-2021 has had, well, not a lot.
Anyway, maybe I don’t have my ear to the ground like I used to or maybe we’re in a lull or maybe TikTok and young people have ruined albums forever (damn young people). Either way, The Melodic Blue is a solid album from the Kendrick Lamar family (literally) that probably won’t go down as an all-time great but was the rap album that kept me the most hooked from the past two years.
Highlight: “Family Ties”, which features Kendrick Lamar, and that’ll do it.
Slam Zuckert is a municipal bureaucrat emeritus. He sees a lot of movies and reads a lot of books and sometimes writes about them. His favorite movie is There Will Be Blood, his favorite mathematician is Georg Cantor, and his least favorite mathematician is Leopold Kronecker.
Keep it Going Louder 