The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far: 50-1

46. Madvillain: Madvillainy (2004)

The only studio album made by MF DOOM and Madlib for their Madvillain project, Madvillainy is one of those hip-hop records that lives in the spaces beyond the limits and continuums of time and space. Madlib created most of the instrumentals on a Boss SP-303 sampler, a turntable and a tape deck in a hotel room in Brazil, while DOOM penned relaxed, confident and free-associative lyrics. The product of their collaboration is a string of vignettes that glow like full-bodied portraits. Much of the tracklist is full of brevity, yet cuts like “America’s Most Blunted” and “Rhinestone Cowboy” sprawl where they need to and boast impeccable beats and slick, attractive and soulful verses. “Fancy Clown” is a devastating effort that orbits a relationship crumbling to pieces, while “Accordion” is catchy yet minimal. Released into a hip-hop landscape that bent to the will of the pop charts, Madvillainy was a revelation and a risk. The work is methodical, intricate and wholly sublime album—influenced greatly by crate-diggers and flow-scholars alike and unabashed in its scope. Look no further than the pinnacle of Madvillainy—“All Caps”—where you’ll find the crux of the best debut record from this century: “Hit it on the first try, villain, the worst guy. Spot hot tracks like spot a pair of fat asses,” DOOM spits. “Shots of the scotch from out the square shot glasses, and he won’t stop ‘till he got the masses and show ‘em what they know not through flows of hot molasses.” Like one-half of its namesake, Madvillainy rebels against the safety of living in lowercase. —Matt Mitchell

45. Weyes Blood: Titanic Rising (2019)

Natalie Mering’s work under the name Weyes Blood feels less like a catalog of music and more like a journey. And each time she releases a full-length album, her destination comes a little more into focus. That’s especially true on Titanic Rising, which finds Mering edging her peculiar psych-folk closer than ever to the sound of traditional pop music. For someone with a documented predilection for idiosyncrasy and experimentation, she sounds completely at ease in these songs, and ready for bigger things ahead. Folks who know her debut, 2011’s The Outside Room, might have been surprised to hear Weyes Blood in 2019, but they shouldn’t be shocked. Even on that lo-fi bundle of echo and noise, you could hear Mering’s gift for haunting melody and the folk form hovering slightly below the surface. Titanic Rising doesn’t feel blissfully adrift. Instead, it feels like Mering knows exactly where she’s going. You can hear it in the robust string sections of album opener “A Lot’s Gonna Change” and the sturdy backbone-beat of “Andromeda” and the sentiments of “Wild Time,” a patient ambler with a ’70s soft-rock vibe (including a hint of “Landslide”) and a plainspoken bridge: “Everyone’s broken now,” Mering sings, “And no one knows just how we could have all gotten so far from truth.” —Ben Salmon

44. Animal Collective: Feels (2005)

When it comes to Animal Collective’s extensive discography, Merriweather Post Pavilion tends to get all the glory. But Feels is the group at its finest, with some of their strongest, most enchanting melodies to boot. As the album title suggests, vocalist Avey Tare processes a lot of his complex emotions with a collection of snapshots of his life, ranging from his close bond with his bandmates, whom he grew up with in Baltimore, to the giddy, childlike emotions that come with falling in love. You experience his highs and lows: “Purple Bottle,” a Coke bottle that’s been filled with Mentos in song form, is an explosive track where Tare bursts out declarations of devotion to his other half, but two songs afterwards you’re shattered by “Banshee Beat,” a somber, building, droney song where Tare processes the betrayal of a past romance and tries to move forward. The seesaw effect of constantly switching between jubilant tracks that celebrate the wonders of life, with the contrast of the darker, moodier moments, is what makes Feels so thrilling. As soon as the effervescent closer “Turn Into Something” ends, you’re left wanting more. Feels is one of the few records that I’ve found myself hitting play again right after finishing it, keeping it on loop for hours on end. Two decades after its release, it gets better with age, feeling fresher than some of the Animal Collective records that followed it, with microtonal instrumentation that, combined, make some of the most beautiful arrangements the band has created. —Tatiana Tenreyro

43. Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020)

For those of us who lived through its album cycle, we will always associate Fiona Apple’s long-awaited fifth record with pandemic malaise—a message regarding the urge to break free of shackles imposed upon us resonating in ways Apple could never have imagined. However, when further generations listen through Apple’s discography—as they surely will, with fresh ears—they will still place it on par with long-acclaimed entries like When the Pawn and Bolt Cutters’ predecessor, The Idler Wheel. Inventive, delightfully shambolic in its use of a percussive palette and, above all, hopeful in the face of difficult odds, it sounds like the moment Apple fully frees herself from others’ expectations, defying any restraints you might try to place on her. This is the sound she makes when she “only move[s] to move”, and what a glorious thing to be privileged enough to hear. —Elise Soutar

42. LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening (2010)

Over the course of four proper full-length albums and a smattering of singles and compilations, LCD Soundsystem—the oft-one-man-show of New York DJ, producer and DFA Records co-honcho James Murphy—has become an increasingly sure bet. After 2002’s “Losing My Edge,” an 8-minute takedown of rock and roll posturing, the band avoided novelty-act territory with a helping of self-skewering; Murphy dressed himself down almost more than anyone else, stripping away all traces of preening entitlement and pretense, readying himself for a three-album run that would build on—not trade on—his cutting wit. The records have a wry take on certain social graces, toying with the kids packing underground bars and the same kind of house parties that probably wound up blasting the songs. This Is Happening is, in all respects, LCD’s best album. There’s a remarkable sustained energy to this collection; its electronic textures thrum and shimmy, and wall after sonic wall is built up and torn down with impeccable precision. But there’s an odd tension throughout; Murphy sounds both all-in and like he’s keeping one eye on the exit—in no small part, surely, because he intended this album to be LCD Soundsystem’s last. It’s not a swan-song, exactly—that would require some degree of sentimentality and forced closure that seems wholly absent from Murphy’s world, plus it preceded the band’s rebirth in 2017—but it’s deliberate and no-nonsense; he doesn’t want to waste his time, or yours, or anyone’s. Instead, we get a handful of parting gifts: The insistently lovelorn “I Can Change,” featuring Murphy’s most oddly sophisticated vocal delivery to date; the percolating piss and vinegar of “Hit” and its record industry shrug-off; the skittering, spoken-word discourse, snide asides and comic-book chorus of “Pow Pow.” It would still be a shame to see LCD Soundsystem go—but you know, the coolest kids always ditch the party early. —Rachael Maddux

41. Gillian Welch: Time (The Revelator) (2001)

The best Americana albums are so attuned to our shared reality that they enhance our understanding of the world around us—and our place in it. Gillian Welch’s third album, Time (The Revelator), is no exception. Written and recorded with David Rawlings, the timeless project radiates with wisdom and a quiet lust for life. On the title track, Welch mulls the cruel passage of time and uses it as inspiration to hit the road and find new horizons. While on “Everything is Free,” she delivers the ultimate anthem for creatives everywhere (“We’re gonna do it anyway / Even if it doesn’t pay”). “Everything I ever done / Gonna give it away,” she declares later, a fitting mission statement for an endlessly generous album whose existence feels like a gift. —Tom Williams

40 Aaliyah: Aaliyah (2001)

Released one month before her death, Aaliyah will go down as one of the best R&B albums of all time. Working with Static Major, Bud’da, Timbaland, Rapture, J. Dub, and Eric Seats, Aaliyah’s music is magically ambitious, zipping funk, rap, alt-rock, and Latin into a neo-soul template. She and her producers toyed with distortion, choppy beats, synths, and vocal effects so that songs like “Rock the Boat” and “We Need a Resolution” could pave the way for an artist like Beyoncé’s later experiments. Aaliyah’s blend of ideas is a perfect one, full of charm and harmony. It’s a catchy fantasy—art spawning from the indents of finesse and beauty. R&B and soul music rarely have soundscapes so extraordinary. What an adventure Aaliyah mapped out for us when she was still here. —Matt Mitchell

39. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree (2016)

Art attempts to make sense of a life that often seems to make very little sense. However, sometimes life plays too difficult to tame, the usual narratives break down, and the artist’s tools feel woefully inadequate. That’s the story of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree. During the making of the record, Cave’s teenage son, Arthur, fell from a cliff and suffered fatal injuries. As Cave explains in the documentary One More Time with Feeling, the challenge became learning how to work again as the different person this trauma had created. Consequently, Skeleton Tree feels minimalist, yet experimental, Cave opting for ambiance and improvisation over the structures, stories, and characters leaned on in the past. Listeners can seek out the autobiographical in the ominous summons of “Jesus Alone,” the enveloping grief of “I Need You,” or the dashed hopeful horizons of “Distant Sky,” but Cave suggests they’re more likely to find Arthur in an odd note or rough edge left unsmoothed. In the end, Skeleton Tree looms as the type of triumph no artist wishes for. It touches us, perplexes us, and devastates us, and yet, for the sake of Cave and kin, part of us wishes it didn’t need to exist. —Matt Melis

38. Smog: Dongs of Sevotion (2000)

The title alone—Dongs of Sevotion—is so dopey it almost dares you to underestimate it, to groan and skip to the next record. Do so at your own peril. Bill Callahan has always had a gift for disguising profundity in absurdity, and here he makes the childish pun into a thesis: the sacred and the ridiculous occupying the same breath. Released in 2000, the record finds him between worlds—still wrapped in the dry hum of his lo-fi past, but opening toward something stranger, starker, and far more deliberate. The songs hang in that liminal space between prayer and punchline, eulogy and euphemism. “Dress Sexy at My Funeral,” his darkly comic masterpiece, turns death into erotic memoir: “Tell them about the time we did it with fireworks above us.” But the tone is warm, not crude; it’s a funeral rite that refuses solemnity, insisting that desire, not virtue, is what keeps us human. The rest of Dongs lives in that tension. “Justice Aversion” opens the record like a death rattle rendered by drum machine; “Nineteen” is a frostbitten coming-of-age dirge; “Easily Led” exhales the quiet devastation of emotional surrender. Callahan pares the arrangements down to their bones—his baritone moving through air thick with reverb and hesitation—yet each track feels meticulously built, its stillness architectural. When the noise does arrive, as in the delirious “Bloodflow,” it’s like the body revolting against its own decay: Dongettes chanting, jaw harp twanging, Callahan rhyming “tête-à-tête” with “machete” as if trying to laugh mortality out of the room. And then there’s the closing track, “Permanent Smile.” Over funereal piano loops and echoing percussion, Callahan imagines his own decomposition in slow, radiant detail—“Seven waves of insects make families in my skin / … / And then I will have earned my permanent smile”—until transcendence and rot become the same thing, and we’re to dress sexy in the face of both. When the last note cuts off abruptly and with finality, there’s a certain crude epiphany to it: if death is life’s punchline, it’s devotion that tells the joke. —Casey Epstein-Gross

37. Lamp: For Lovers (2004)

For Lovers is one of the most captivating albums you’ll ever hear. Done by Lamp, the Japanese trio of Kaori Sakakibara, Yusuke Nagai, and Taiyo Someya, the record luxuriates in the currency of jazz horns and percussion, Someya’s psychedelic guitars, and sun-dappled lounge-pop singing from Sakakibara. The title track and “Hirogaru-Namida” are both gentle, plucky ballads that give way to “Last Train At 25 O’Clock,” a swirling dance-rock juggernaut, and “Out On Sunny Sunday,” a glamorous saga of syrupy guitar voicings; the sultry, swooning “Rainy Tapestry” melts into disco-inflected beats and string stabs threaded through “Words of Love.” But I return most often to For Lovers’s beginning, when Sakakibara sings, “My favorite season is the short one, melting into a house with no scratches. Alone in the changing scenery, I’m standing there thinking about you.” I can’t think of a prettier image from any other record on this list. Lamp radiate on J-pop’s greatest pocket symphony. —Matt Mitchell

36. Radiohead: Kid A (2000)

OK Computer spoke to something deep and pervasive running through the nervous system of modern culture at the time, and the framing of the album as a ’90s answer to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon made sense on a number of levels. Radiohead circa 1997 hadn’t become a quote-unquote progressive rock band, but their music was progressive in a broader sense. Still, no one (perhaps not even the band themselves) had any idea how radical Radiohead’s next move would be. As much as OK Computer had been heralded as a turn into the uncharted—a signpost pointing the way to the future—the sound the band introduced in October 2000 with Kid A was something else entirely. In a sense, you could say that the digitized froth at the beginning of album opener “Everything In Its Right Place” was the sound of the future arriving at our doorstep. Listening to both albums in hindsight, OK Computer dates itself with elements that telegraph the nineties sensibility it was born out of. Kid A, on the other hand, remains strangely untethered from time. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t read between the lines to spot the unease that attended our transition into a new millennium, but only that we should be cautious in doing so. At the time of Kid A’s release, it was clear that the band was voicing a malaise bubbling up in our collective awareness as we hurtled towards a heavily media-enmeshed way of life. None of us could have known what that would look like two decades later, but listening back now, it seems safe to say that we had some gut-level precognition of what it would feel like, which is part of why Kid A still resonates so strongly. —Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

35. Angel Olsen: All Mirrors (2019)

From her very earliest recordings, Angel Olsen has mined drama from her relationships with physically present but psychologically absent partners. Across her often-brilliant catalog, the Asheville singer/songwriter has sung candidly about staying with these partners despite recognizing their awful qualities. Her fascination with this unhealthy dynamic, in addition to her unmistakable, showstopping vibrato, has tied her songs together across multiple genres, from haunting lo-fi folk (2010’s Strange Cacti EP, 2012’s Half Way Home) to scorching rock (2014’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness, 2016’s MY WOMAN). Olsen still deals with bad partners on her fourth album, All Mirrors, but this time around, she escapes their destruction and finds not just happiness, but catharsis. She narrates her journey alongside a 14-piece orchestra, with string co-arrangement from Ben Babbitt and conductor-arranger Jherek Bischoff (and co-production from the ever-busy John Congleton, who also co-produced Burn Your Fire). Her newfound embrace of violins, violas, and cellos elevated her shadowy, often synth-infused rock to extraordinarily goosebump-inducing heights, making All Mirrors her then-third consecutive (and likely still best) masterpiece to date. —Max Freedman

34. Sturgill Simpson: A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016)

A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is a country album at its core, but there’s a whole lot more happening here besides. Sturgill Simpson dips into the sound of vintage soul with horns courtesy of the Dap-Kings. He often evokes the countrypolitan flipside to the outlaw movement with lush string charts and full-throated vocals that suggest there’s a “Rhinestone Cowboy” for every generation. And he indulges his moody inner teen with a cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” that swells from spare and brooding to full-on rhapsodic by the end. As a whole, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is simultaneously eclectic and of a piece: It’s big and bold and sometimes messy, but never unfocused. The way that Simpson captures the passion, joy, anguish and exhaustion that are part of first-time parenthood makes the album a powerful tribute to his son, while establishing Simpson as an artist who, despite his country heart, simply won’t be confined by notions of genre or, for that matter, anyone else’s expectations. —Eric R. Danton

33. Dirty Beaches: Badlands (2011)

Some albums just recalibrate everything you’ve ever known about music. And you never forget about those albums. For me, that was Badlands, Alex Zhang Hungtai’s fourth album under the Dirty Beaches moniker. My context for music exists now because of Badlands. After seeing Mac DeMarco show off a copy of Drifters/Love Is the Devil on an episode of Amoeba’s “What’s In My Bag?” YouTube series, I went on an exploration of Hungtai’s work. Landing in Badlands, I was met by impossibility and displacement. I was met by this noisy, sometimes illegible collection of sounds and ideas, dressed up by a druggy, pompadoured voice. The songs on Badlands are drenched in noir, conjuring the provocative, myth-making stylizations of Lynch or Jarmusch, and they toil in rockabilly and doo-wop morphed by distortion and grain. Pulling from the Everly Brothers, the Cramps, and Alan Vega, “Sweet 17” and “Speedway King” hit you with lo-fi mania until “True Blue” and “Lord Knows Best,” soothe even in the distorted soup. They are somber but romantic paeans full of mood and swing. Hungtai could have only made those two tracks and he’d be one of the most important artists of my life. Before Diamond Jubilee, there was Badlands. Fourteen years later and nothing has ever sounded quite like it. —Matt Mitchell

32. SZA: Ctrl (2017)

If you’re currently anywhere from twenty-two to forty-five years old, have even a teensy bit of taste and an ounce of anxiety, Ctrl likely has a residency in your headphones. It came out on my last day of high school, and has stayed with me through some of the most change-filled, formative, lesson-learning years of my life. Each listen shapeshifts with time, meeting you exactly where you are, even as you become someone new. The album’s lore is as chaotic as the album itself: SZA took so long deciding on the final tracklist (out of 150+ songs) that her label, TDE, stole her hard drive and released the record for her. What remained is a magically clandestine, gorgeous batch of songs that feel like a late-night journaling sesh set to warped R&B and stoned guitar loops. SZA captures the hyperspecific and makes it universal. Ctrl has been especially important for young Black women, for whom SZA’s honesty, hesitations, and contradictions felt like real, holistic representation. She makes self sabotage sound romantic and fear feel poetic, summing up a generation’s worth of anxieties into a few sparse lines. (“Fearing not growing up / Keeping me up at night / Am I doing enough? / Feels like I’m wasting time” off “Prom” couldn’t define my existential worries better.) Standouts like “Garden (Say It Like That)” and “Broken Clocks” are as confessional as they are catchy, perfect for when you’re getting ready to go out, or quietly unraveling once you’re there, while moments like “Go Gina” see SZA baring her frustrations a little more candidly (“Picking up a penny with a press-on is / Easier than holding you down, can’t be any / Harder than holding you up now” will go down in history as far as I’m concerned). When I listen to Ctrl, countless versions of myself are reflected back at me: the me driving aimlessly around my hometown, shouting along to “Normal Girl” like it’s gospel, the me quietly crying to “20 Something” from the bottom bunk of my freshman dorm. For as of-the-moment Ctrl can feel, it continues to unfold with time, changing meaning without losing impact. —Cassidy Sollazzo

31. Destroyer: Kaputt (2011)

Dan Bejar stepped through a sea of fog on the Kaputt tour, his microphone at half-staff while his white robe skirted the stage lights and Joseph Shabason and JP Carter the air with horns. My stoned high school self imagined him as Krusty the Clown, hungover and barely touching his condor egg, bemoaning being caught up in the great comedy of life. The Canadian singer-songwriter and one-time New Pornographer’s best album came at what is at this point halfway through his career, and though he’s got great albums from every decade he’s been active, he never found a more fitting stage for his cryptic murmurings and cycling phrases than in the smoky rooms of Kaputt. Much talked-about in its time as an example of a move in indie rock towards cheesy MOR textures (see also Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest”) Kaputt has long since transcended that moment. To listen to it now is to fall backward into its spell, which Bejar seems to cast with two words he repeats throughout: “Who knew?” Fifteen years later, we’re still bewitched. —Daniel Bromfield

30. Britney Spears: Blackout (2007)

Close your eyes and visualize the year 2007. Take note of your surroundings; what catches your attention? Maybe you’re seeing garish Juicy Couture velour sweat suits. It could be the faint vocal fry of a blonde socialite whispering that’s hot. Or maybe it’s a woman in her mid-twenties, sitting in a salon, shaving her head while the paparazzi peer on with ravenous eyes. ’07 is synonymous with Britney Spears, and this intense tabloid scrutiny mostly overshadowed the brilliance of her fifth album Blackout at its initial release. When it comes to albums about celebrity (and there have been plenty this century), the Princess of Pop’s fifth album presents fame as a grotesque Faustian bargain, with Spears’ lyrics often biting back at the media’s portrayals of her as a trainwreck. Timbaland protégé Danja produced some of the album’s best songs (“Gimme More,” “Get Naked (I Got a Plan),” “Perfect Lover”) with his grimy and distorted production acting as bedrock for Spears’ coy vocalizations. Blackout was Spears’ last gasp of air before being placed in a 13-year long conservatorship, and it’s her most liberated work to date. —Jaeden Pinder

29. Kanye West: Yeezus (2013)

Yeezus is Kanye at his most influential. 808s & Heartbreak may have altered the rap genre, opening up the option for a more exploratory approach on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy two years later, but Yeezus took that evolution even further. Detailing his rise to fame, the songs each detail a different chapter in West’s then-life, all framed by surprising samples from Hungarian rock groups and religious choirs, and an intense commitment to an industrial, noisy sound. From the visceral self-portrait and timely pop culture references on “Black Skinhead,” to the inventive transitions and powerful Nina Simone sample on “Blood on the Leaves,” to the College Dropout-worthy gospel of “Bound 2,” the record is not a deviation from Kanye’s previous ideas, but an expansive new look at them through an experimental, electronic, whacked-out filter. Rap music right now doesn’t look the same without Yeezus —Camryn Teder

28. FKA twigs: MAGDALENE (2019)

In the five years after her transformative debut album, 2014’s LP1, FKA twigs went through a lot. As though having six fibroids removed from her uterus during this period wasn’t torment enough, she dated and split up with two famous actors, to one of whom she was engaged. As she suffered both immense emotional and physical pain, she all but rebirthed herself. This rebirth narrative is one possible reading of the stunning video for “cellophane,” the first song released from MAGDALENE, LP1’s long-awaited album-length follow-up. A devastating piano lament that only vaguely includes the howling, clicking and stuttering vocal and synth tricks of LP1, “cellophane” arrived alongside a video that, like the majority of FKA twigs’ visuals to date, exists in a not-quite-terrestrial space full of forthright sexuality, brooding sci-fi, angular dancing and plain old horror. The two videos that have followed have been, well, exactly not that, and that contrast lies at the heart of what makes the game-changing genre-less artist’s sophomore album so special. MAGDALENE is the sound of an artist gluing together the million tiny shards in which she found herself after an explosive breakup. If FKA twigs previously sang about her isolating sexual desires, here she details the journey to regain her strength after she’s seen the other side of romantic fulfillment. As expected, the climb is often challenging: On the loping, shapeless “daybed,” ostensibly the only track to survive FKA twigs’ 2016 sessions with Oneohtrix Point Never, she struggles to even leave her bed. As she sings lines like “dirty are my dishes,” “friendly are the fruit flies” and “possessive is my daybed,” she equates the disheveled state of her home with the disheveled state of her heart, and the analogy is nothing short of crushing. —Max Freedman

27. Lift to Experience: The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001)

Josh T. Pearson, Andy “The Boy” Young, and Josh “The Bear” Browning formed Lift to Experience in Denton in 1996. Five years later, their one and only record, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, came out on Bella Union. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard, released twenty-some years before a boom of sweeping, post-punk bands fell off the Windmill stage and into the critics’ palms. But Lift to Experience stick to guitars. And then they add more guitars. Blues, krautrock, ambient, noise, and hymns fill the album like a ten-gallon hat. It’s a Biblical concept album but the setting is a Texan apocalypse. The twang you’d expect is substituted with hailstorm drumming and sprechesang singing from Pearson. And, considering that 66-percent of Cocteau Twins mixed the record and Pearson’s currently making the rounds as a folky, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads feels all the more unlikely. It’s a maximalist masterpiece full of humanness and titanic instrumentals. Redemption and spirituality abound yet the end is nigh. Space-y breakdowns and flare-ups are soothed by soupy, melodic exhales and acappella scripture singing. The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads is ninety minutes long, longer than your typical prayer service. Have a step inside to look at “God’s terrible swift sword.” Texas is the reason. The city is yours for the taking. The Lord’ll make you a deal. —Matt Mitchell

26. Deltron 3030: Deltron 3030 (2000)

Rap concept albums likely don’t make it to Man On the Moon or Astroworld without Deltron 3030. The eponymous debut from Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and DJ Kid Koala is among the best of its kind, in this century at least. Del plays Deltron Zero, a soldier and computer prodigy who rebels against a New World Order in the 31st century. In that interplanetary universe, humanity and hip-hop is ruled by oligarchs. Del fights for freedom in rap battles until he wins the Galactic Rhyme Federation Championship. But Deltron 3030 is more than just storytelling ephemera; it’s alt-rap excellence that arrived in an era of hip-hop without a concrete mainstream identity. Rather than follow the templates of the Roots or DMX, Deltron 3030 avoided extremes at all cost and became a new, ambitious third thing. Their debut attests to that, with songs, like “Time Keeps On Slipping” and “3030,” that flourish alone but impress with context. And with guests like Prince Paul, Peanut Butter Wolf, Sean Lennon, Hafdís Huld, and Blur’s Damon Albarn on call, Deltron 3030 is as mystifying as the Perisphere on the record’s cover. —Matt Mitchell

25. Burial: Untrue (2007)

William Bevan (aka Burial) quietly changed the course of contemporary electronic music before anyone even knew his name. The shadowy artist anonymously came up adjacent to the mid 2000s UK dubstep boom, putting out spindly, crackling dance tracks on Kode9’s Hyperdub label. His 2007 sophomore LP, Untrue, is beautiful, albeit wholeheartedly glum. Crafted using the unconventional software Soundforge, lopsided jungle and 2-step grooves are outlined by gritty effects and chopped-up pop vocal samples. It paints an overcast portrayal of meandering city life and clubbing, resulting in the most poignant party record ever. —Ted Davis

24. Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest (2010)

Before Halcyon Digest came out in 2010, Deerhunter bandleader Bradford Cox wrote on Facebook that its title was “a reference to a collection of fond memories and even invented ones, like my friendship with Ricky Wilson or the fact that I live in an abandoned Victorian autoharp factory. The way that we write and rewrite and edit our memories to be a digest version of what we want to remember, and how that’s kind of sad.” And, too, Halcyon Digest is one of the most important albums of the last twenty years, compiled like a newsletter and devastating like an open-casket funeral. Cox’s songwriting was in the echelons of the craft when he made this record, and songs like “Memory Boy,” “Helicopter,” and “Revival” are such impressive, existentially profound demonstrations of lostness and our mortal coils. But it’s the closing track “He Would Have Laughed,” which Cox recorded alone in memory of the late Jay Reatard, that makes Halcyon Digest such a fixture in our hearts and tastes. “In sweetness comes suffering,” Cox announced to the world. And, without a second thought, we all listened. —Matt Mitchell

23. Justin Townes Earle: Harlem River Blues (2010)

Long before I came to Paste, Justin Townes Earle was one of the publication’s cornerstone artists. Fifteen-odd years after making Harlem River Blues and five years after his far-too-soon passing, he’s still just as integral to us. The son of a folkster, Justin made good on his birthright and wrote records that have stood the test of time, whether it was Midnight at the Movies or Kids in the Street. But where my heart returns to most is Harlem River Blues, his ambitious, tack-smart, and wayward third album. Backed by one of the best country bands of the millennium, Justin obliterates the promise of his early stuff. The summery grooves of “One More Night in Brooklyn” meet the rockabilly blessing of “Move Over Momma.” Channelling his father Steve, “Wanderin’” is a bluegrass nebula. He and the players sound like they drifted through Muscle Shoals on “Slippin’ and Slidin,’” and “Christchurch Woman” is a night-soaked, sweeping concoction of back-alley horns and extraterrestrial blues guitar licks. But the Harlem River Blues title track… I can’t think of many songs that have put more joy into me than that one. The Hammond organ puffs, the serpentine rock riffs, Justin’s porch-step singing—it sounds of this world yet like a fantasy. There’s history in this record. —Matt Mitchell

22. David Bowie: ★ (2016)

Our small corner of the cosmos felt a little more mundane and a lot less beautiful on the day that David Bowie returned to Stardust in January 2016. Blackstar, released on Bowie’s 69th birthday just two days before his death, had been secretly recorded with longtime producer Tony Visconti and a local NYC jazz quartet. Neither the band nor the public had known the artist had been fighting a losing battle with cancer. It’s not surprising then that Bowie’s studio swan song does face death head on, though not as we might expect. Blackstar turns out to be his most experimental turn in ages, inspired as much by modern acts like Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips as Bowie’s own pop past. And while coping with (“Girl Loves Me”) and fighting (“Dollar Days”) his present battle, the ultimately liberating “Lazarus” and mercurial title track find Bowie equally fascinated by what lies in store for both himself and the rest of us. If anyone could’ve rested—or, in this case, rested in peace—on his artistic laurels, it was surely David Bowie. Instead, our eternal Starman left us a parting gift that keeps us guessing, wondering, and looking to the skies in anticipation of what might fall to Earth next. —Matt Melis

21. Kylie Minogue: Fever (2001)

On Kylie Minogue’s dancefloor, love can take on any shape. Warm embraces morph into sanctuaries; late night lust mimics an incurable case of pyrexia; memories of your lover’s voice becomes an infectious earworm, following you into the days after. Fever posits that every new romance should always feel as earth-shattering as the drop on your favorite disco song. The Australian pop star’s eighth album largely eschews the experimentation and frenzy of her oft-misunderstood nineties record Impossible Princess, but its escapist fantasies re-solidified Minogue’s status as a modern commander of the discothèque. It’s hard to believe that nu-disco was once considered new, especially when it feels the genre has been bled dry, to mostly stale results. But at the turn of the century, Fever provided a framework for all that came after it. Minogue gave us the disco bug, and most attempts to repeat the highs of Fever (the starry-eyed floor filler “Love at First Sight” and the acidhouse-adorned “Love Affair”) have been futile. Love can be one hell of a drug. —Jaeden Pinder

20. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)

Arriving at a time of political unrest and visibility of hot-button social issues via social media, Kendrick Lamar’s second major label album To Pimp A Butterfly solidified him as a conscious rapper. Over smooth, jazz-inspired beats, Kendrick delivers thought-provoking bars and rhymes, detailing the issues that plagued the world, both then and still now. Songs like “i” highlight the mental health struggles in low-income neighborhoods, serving, too, as dedications to fans who have shown up at Kendrick’s shows telling him how his music saved their lives. A standout track, the Pharrell Williams-produced “Alright,” features a passionate Kendrick envisioning rising socioeconomic inequality. Having first arrived at the height of the blog era—among the likes of Drake, ASAP Rocky and J. Cole—Kendrick, from the beginning, was a promising act. Through his Interscope debut, good Kid, m.A.A.d. city received much acclaim upon its release in 2012, it was 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly that set him apart from his peers, and solidified him as a purveyor of strong and insightful concepts. —Alex Gonzalez

19. Robyn: Body Talk (2010)

No pop performer in the last twenty years has made as much monumental dance music as Robyn has. The Swedish singer is as close to a one-in-a-million star as anyone else on this list, but her album Body Talk is one of the best synth-pop projects ever. Though you might consider it to be a compilation album, it’s still a studio work that combines all of the tracks from her multi-part Body Talk series—and every entry deserves some spotlight. Spearheaded by the monster single “Dancing On My Own,” it’s here, in 2010, where Robyn found her own legend. Pulling influence from Prince’s Dirty Mind, the Knife’s Silent Shout, and Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside, she made a dance record that is still, thirteen years later, relevant. “Fembot,” “Dancehall Queen,” and “Hang with Me” are each perfect on their own accord and help propel Body Talk into the lauded annals of electronic music forever. —Matt Mitchell

18. The War on Drugs: Lost in the Dream (2014)

I wasn’t sure I needed an album like Lost in the Dream until I heard it. Even then, it took a few listens before I could articulate why it scans the way it does: Wistful but not resigned, invigorated but not wide-awake. As its title suggests, Lost in the Dream often trades in gaseous, impressionistic hues, and a cavalry of affected guitar, synth, lap steel, sax, harmonica and piano tracks gel into luminescent aural sunsets at several points throughout the album. These ambient drifts bookend Adam Granduciel’s tender songs, the lyrics of which also tend to reveal themselves in refracted ways. Indeed, it can be difficult to discern more than a handful of lines in succession—Granduciel’s feathery, mostly reserved delivery sees to this, as well as the tonnage of reverb baked into the mix—but listeners can’t miss the sense of melancholy and anxiety woven into nearly every second of Lost’s hour-plus run-time. “Am I alone here, living in darkness?” he asks on “Eyes to the Wind,” his questioning telling all in a handful of words. —Ryan Burleson

17. Viktor Vaughn: Vaudeville Villain (2003)

MF DOOM went by many names—King Geedorah, Metal Fingers, Metal Face, Zev Love X—but the most fascinating of all is Viktor Vaughn, the alias he made two records under in the mid-2000s. Vaudeville Villain is the best thing DOOM ever did, aside from the multi-volume Special Herbs project. After the introducing “Overture,” it’s just us and him alone for five tracks, including one-two of “Vaudeville Villain” and “Lickupon.” Maybe DOOM’s inability to stick to one persona rings silly to some, but his tail of influence being so non-linear and non-sensically vast is singular. No one’s trying to be MF DOOM and no one should be. I listen to him for abundance, and Vaudeville Villain gives me that and then some. Here, the underground sounds like it’s on the moon; pockets become the whole pair of jeans. “Saliva” is one of the best rap tracks ever finished DOOM and Apani B’s chemistry during “Can I Watch?” turns into a verse-off (I think Apani takes it for this alone: “I caught him sneakin’ peaks at my breasts while frontin’, name-droppin’ connects”). The inclusions of Lord Sear, Hydro, M. Sayyid, Brother Sambuca, Dr. Moreau, and Louis Logic turn Vaudeville Villain into a roundtable of cool. The company DOOM helped him come even more unglued, but he could rhyme like no other; Vaudeville Villain demands that language be rap’s greatest weapon. No other album in this ranking has the word”knuckle-fuck” in it. —Matt Mitchell

16. System of a Down: Toxicity (2001)

Even if this list wasn’t being published in the midst of an ongoing nu-metal revival, the sheer prescience of the Armenian-American quartet’s crossover smash makes it worthy of all the newfound retrospective praise it’s been garnering in recent years. In the two decades since plagued with still-increasing mass incarceration, police brutality targeting the weak and young, rapid industrialization at the cost of environmental decay and the bloodletting shed over land division and subjugation of entire peoples, the lyricism of Serj Tankian and Daron Malankian—pointed, winding, but knowing exactly when to jab the spear of brevity into the jugular—remains just as striking a vessel for infusing headbanger earworms with subversive punch as ever. Toxicity’s penchant for variety is its greatest weapon of all, though: there’s never a moment to rest, but there’s never a retread of what came before, thanks to System of a Down’s steadfast attention to dynamics and melody. The band also recognizes the value in tonal idiosyncrasy too—where else can you find a track with a handful of statistics about how governments profit off prisons followed up with the hook “pull the tapeworm out of your ass”?—and know that any nu-metal record that aims to keeps its listeners’ attention can never be too dour or too unserious for its own good. Toxicity is the rare record that keeps its foot pinned to the gas without ever talking down to its audience, speaking the foregone realities of global conflict into such vivid detail that it won’t come as a surprise if it remains just as relevant in the decades to come. —Natalie Marlin

15. ANOHNI and The Johnsons: I Am a Bird Now (2005)

A quarter of a century into the decade, we find ourselves faced with a hopelessness that overwhelms—the fear that any progress towards equity for all will be stripped back beyond repair, the doom that comes with knowing that precious lives could come at the cost of hatred from a select few. And then, suddenly, there are works of art that pull us away from the brink of that spiral with the sheer feeling they exude, with the wonder that they even exist. Most records showcasing the once-in-a-lifetime voice of ANOHNI fall into this category, with the Mercury Prize-winning I Am A Bird Now standing as her most beloved achievement with the Johnsons. In its exploration of transness, intense tragedy, and unflinching efforts to stare death straight in the face, even those with the hardest of hearts would find it difficult to reach that final declaration of “And the bird girls go to heaven / I’m a bird girl / And bird girls can fly” without shedding a few delicate tears. Few voices can claim to be of their generation, but ANOHNI’s voice bears such a weight beautifully, injecting pulsing life into a soundtrack for both the struggle and, hopefully, the celebration. —Elise Soutar

14. OutKast: Stankonia (2000)

When Outkast’s Stankonia arrived on Halloween 2000, André 3000 and Big Boi were outcasts no more. Ubiquitous hits like “Ms. Jackson” and “So Fresh, So Clean” launched the Atlanta rap duo to astounding new levels of fame. Their fourth record wasn’t just a simple retread of old ideas, though. Its first proper song, “Gasoline Dreams,” was the group’s most overtly political track yet, with Dre’s incendiary hook backed by industrial, noisy drums. The Rage Against the Machine-inspired “B.O.B” cranked up the BPM, injecting their typically laid-back, pocket-heavy beats with a hyperactive bolt of energy akin to a child after a successful night of trick-or-treating. Given that Stankonia went Platinum five times over in the United States, the rappers probably felt like that child themselves. —Grant Sharples

13. SOPHIE: OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES (2018)

The emotional weight of SOPHIE’s maximalism is almost too much to bear now. In the years since the groundbreaking experimental pop musician’s tragic passing, her sole studio record has come to embody a new form altogether—a vessel for a kind of transfeminine hyper-expressiveness, a body and being whose seemingly familiar chemical makeup of bubblegum bass and club music is so radically altered that it becomes greater than its boundaries can hold, an overflowing of self. By inverting, eroding, exaggerating, or otherwise completely blowing out traditional pop and electronic structures, SOPHIE arranges with a palette all her own. Songs as thundering as “Faceshopping” or “Immaterial” feel as if they contain as many sentiments and outlooks at once—elation, apprehension, corporeal anxiety, longing, and disarming vulnerability—while more abstract cuts like “Pretending” find shape in constructing narratives of self-actualization using a language all their own, outside limiting norms entirely. OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES is a record defined by its own active reshaping of the landscape—like the restless seismic shifts that close “Whole New World / Pretend World.” For all the overt references and imitators that have come in SOPHIE’s wake, no one can ever replicate the idiosyncratic ways she altered the terrain with just a single album. —Natalie Marlin

12. Moodymann: Forevernevermore (2000)

A recent reissue of Black Mahogani has put more people onto Moodymann in the last week than the past couple of years alone. I love that record, but I love Forevernevermore the most. You can make the argument that it’s the best electronic release of the last twenty-five years, and I think you really should. The LP yanks house and techno out of the subterranean and repurposes them both as the true, undeniable pillars of dance music that they’ve always been. Forevernevermore is all songs that Moodymann had put out on white labels but later reformulated to exist as expansive Detroit artifacts. Radio stations that played anything and everything, from Motown to Kraftwerk, informed Moodymann’s taste early, and Forevernevermore is a tribute to that. You can hear rock and roll, prayer, and world music in these all-encompassing collages: Moodymann clips some dialogue from The Mack and puts it into “The Setup”; he incorporates a Curtis Mayfield sample on “[Logo]”; drums from Roots show up in “Meanwhile Back at Home”; Marvin Gaye is celebrated on “Tribute.” A sermon on slavery, built around a preacher yelling “400 years” and Debbie Welch’s spiritual singing, engulfs “The Thief That Stole My Sad Days (Ya Blessin Me).” It might be the most important section of any record on this list. Forevernevermore engages with the centuries and truth and vibrance and gospel of Black art. Everything about it is immediate. —Matt Mitchell

11. Jeff Rosenstock: WORRY. (2016)

While DIY legend Jeff Rosenstock truly has yet to miss, it’s hard not to look at 2016’s WORRY. as something of his magnum opus, if only for the fact that it feels almost preternaturally prescient in hindsight. After all, one of the first lines on the record (in the excellent gutpunch that is “We Begged 2 Explode”) is “Laura said to me, ‘This decade’s gonna be fucked”—and just three weeks after the album’s release, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. In the bite-sized ballad-turned-thrasher “HELLLLHOOOOLE,” he screams “They would pluck us from the lives we’re living / With no fucks given and profit from the pain / Forcing you and I to feel like children / Cause if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be too scared to say that / ‘We don’t wanna live inside a hellhole.’” WORRY. encapsulates all of the hopes and fears and rages and tragedies and joys of being alive in the 21st century, a time capsule sent to the future depicting life as we know it now. Rosenstock writes from the fault line where personal anxiety meets civic collapse: corporate-branded rebellion (“Festival Song”), the bruise of policing (“The Fuzz”), the internet’s flattening churn (“To Be a Ghost…”), neighborhoods gutted and flipped until even memory feels evicted (“Wave Goodnight to Me,” “Staring Out the Window at Your Old Apartment”). The personal is political, and vice versa—how could it not be? I mean, it’s our world that’s turning into Don DeLillo’s White Noise, our loved ones being trampled by riot squads, our lives becoming defined by callous sequences of binary code, our friends getting kicked out of their homes to make room for tacky renovations. And we should fucking worry. To hell with apathy and compassion fatigue and passivity. Even when the walls are caving in, you can still scream. Even when your body feels useless, your heartbreak still matters. Our humanity is all we have left, and WORRY. is a constant reminder to never abandon it, no matter the cost. —Casey Epstein-Gross

10. Ghostface Killah: Supreme Clientele (2000)

Supreme Clientele wasn’t the first solo Wu-Tang record, but it’s easily the most important one. It followed the great Liquid Swords and even better Only Built 4… Cuban Linx and established Ghostface Killah as the star he’d fought to become. Three years before the album, he was sick with diabetes but had mistaken it for cancer. So he went to a mud hut in Benin and got treatment from a bush doctor, returning to the States with the lyric sheet for Supreme Clientele in hand. Somewhere in there, he served four months at Rikers. That’s how the story goes, at least. Ghostface sounds like he’s scared to live but thrilled to be alive on these songs. He’s the “Black Boy George” on “Stroke of Death,” and RZA’s grime and soul production jumpstarts “Nutmeg” and “One.” His Wu-Tang bandmates Raekwon and GZA show up to rap, and Redman, 60 Second Assassin, and Superb sign on, too. Ghostface’s lyrical feasts influenced Kanye and Schoolboy Q just like Erik B. & Rakim’s influenced him, and Supreme Clientele came out exactly when it needed to: when rap needed a rebirth and Ghostface Killah arrived with the language. —Matt Mitchell

9. Songs: Ohia: The Magnolia Electric Co. (2003)

After releasing a series of excellent, oft-bleak lo-fi indie-rock albums in the late nineties and early 2000s, Jason Molina expanded his ambitions with 2003’s The Magnolia Electric Co.—a rocking Americana epic that paired intimate musings with an expansive soundscape. Over two decades later, the LP remains Molina’s most incisive, offering a devastatingly unfiltered look into a beautiful tortured soul. “Everything you hated me for / Honey there was so much more / I just didn’t get busted,” he opined on the devastating “Just Be Simple” ten years before his demons would eventually catch up to him. But on Magnolia Electric Co., Molina was more than just a tragic figure; he was a brave troubadour unafraid to shy away from all the beauty and tragedy of life. On the bittersweet closer “Hold On Magnolia,” he stared down the abyss and held on to the “last light” he saw. In doing so, he created torch songs for the bruised and battered among us. —Tom Williams

8. Beyoncé: RENAISSANCE (2022)

There’s a moment on the Queens Remix of “BREAK MY SOUL” where Beyoncé, Mother of the House of Renaissance, offers us salvation. Atop a beat that interpolates “Vogue,” Queen B tells us to “Release, repressed, suppressed, regressed, redirect all that anger to me. Give it to me! I’m built for this.” Beyoncé takes all that pressure and returns with the diamond that is RENAISSANCE. Lemonade and COWBOY CARTER showcase Beyoncé the human being, complicated and emotive. But RENAISSANCE is all Beyoncé the Icon: rich, shimmering, expensive, and untouchable. Across the album’s flawless sixteen tracks, she traverses disco, house, ball, Afro-beats, and trap, and she bends each to her will. It’s an ode to black and queer dance music, a display of vocal virtuoso, and the party we deserved after the pandemic. RENAISSANCE is for feeling communal joy, whether it’s in the club, an AMC, the stadium, or on your own. Who else could accomplish that monumental task but Beyoncé? She’s one of one. She was built for this. —Andy Steiner

7. Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (2010)

When Sufjan Stevens wrote The Age of Adz, he had just closed the chapter on his scrapped concept of making an album for each state. After releasing The Avalanche, a compilation of leftovers from Illinois, Stevens had grown tired of his signature folk sound, marked by banjos and trumpets, and wanted to take a new direction. With Adz, Stevens introduced fans to who he really is, with dynamic instrumentations made up by a cacophony of synths, contrasting playfulness with the severity of his words. At the time, it was Stevens’ most personal album yet, delving into his health struggles, both mental and physical. In time, Adz became a classic, winning over fans and critics who initially scrutinized it for not being in the same vein as Illinois. —Tatiana Tenreyro

6. Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me (2010)

Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me was the finest two-hour, harp-driven, three-disc opus of the 2010s. Newsom—still your best possible icebreaker at a dinner party of hipsters, Renaissance Fair staffers, and woodland creatures—released Ys in 2006 to a response that ranged from gleaming to marry-me-I’m-begging-you. But if that sophomore album was a vivid glimpse into her weird little world, this sprawling sequel, conceived in flagrant defiance of conventional logic, is legitimately bananas. It’s like tumbling into her world and getting lost for weeks. Devotees thrilled to Newsom (who produced the record, with Jim O’Rourke intermittently mixing) emptying her quiver of tricks here, and the results are indeed glittering. The title track is a serpentine fairytale of harp, mandolin, piano, and other elfin instruments. A jaunty piano opens the fantastically titled “Good Intentions Paving Company,” which briefly spirals off into diner pop. Best of all is gossamer showstopper “Baby Birch,” which will shut down your world for nine-and-a-half minutes. The album is not for the fainthearted. It’s also not for anyone with a tendency to bristle at resolute self-indulgence. But over the course of the album, a weird thing happens: Her flutters and flourishes become comfortable, even at their saddest, and her babygirl voice takes on a grand assuredness. It’s difficult to imagine another situation in which plinking pixie sounds, recurrent madrigal noises, and radiant folk poetry could be categorically described as honking huge, but for all its girth, Have One On Me is packed with magic. —Jeff Vrabel

5. Kendrick Lamar: DAMN. (2017)

Sure, DAMN. earned plenty of critical plaudits, including the Grammy for Best Rap Album, and sure, it was a commercial behemoth, going triple platinum to become Billboard’s number-one album of 2017. But there’s praise, and then there’s “the first non-classical or jazz recording in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.” That’s one hell of a laurel, and Kendrick Lamar backs it up easily: This is a record possessing nary a wasted moment or second of bloat. It’s not a can-you-top-this display of creative ambition à la To Pimp A Butterfly, or the all-personal-all-the-time introspection of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. It’s just a near-peerless artist at the height of his powers, delivering multilayered lyricism and pulsing beats in a manner that manages to both embrace the history of the form and look toward its future. In other words, timeless. —Alex McLevy

4. Björk: Vespertine (2001)

Homogenic is perhaps the best foil with which to begin describing Vespertine’s raison d’être. A preemptively aggressive record, Homogenic pulses with cataclysmic beats and Björk’s own spin on Icelandic patriotism: a fusion of elemental harshness with the communal spirit of native folk melodies. Its tagline makes the posture plain: “I’m going hunting / I’m the hunter.” By contrast, Vespertine retreats from the rippling cacophonies of the previous work. Whether from the exhaustion of endless touring or the weight of embodying this “hunter” persona, Björk needed withdrawal. What emerges is a radiating refuge—the negative image of Homogenic—wintry and celestial, baroque and tender in temperament. The sonic palette is intimate yet ornate: arctic, terrestrial beats surrounded by strings, music boxes, choirs, clavichords, and harp glissandos. Within this haven, Björk’s voice falters at first—following a secret score as she weaves codas, hesitations, and whispers through otherwise clarion, assertive vocals. Vespertine ultimately settles into a chosen passivity and receptivity. It recognizes, in her words, that “It’s not up to you” and “it’s not meant to be a strife.” Whether internally, interpersonally, or sensually, Björk discovers a paradox: there is agency in some surrenders. —Andrew Ha

3. D’Angelo: Voodoo (2000)

D’Angelo only made three records in his lifetime, but each one was perfect—from his jet-setting debut Brown Sugar to the greatest comeback album ever, Black Messiah. And yet, neither stack up with his middle child Voodoo, the art exhibition that cemented D’Angelo as the kingpin performer of his generation. Voodoo sold 320,000 copies in its first week, leading to an eventual platinum certification in the United States. “Devil’s Pie,” “Send It On,” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” are peak Black music compositions injected with Memphis horns, Southern blues, and timeless, Sly Stone-inspired funk—and Voodoo itself, catapulted by the momentum of hit song “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” is a landmark curation of grooves and eroticism; a record as plentifully tender as it is melodically entrancing. It’s hazy, emphatic, and unforgettable from all edges and delights. A jazz critic called it an “aural aphrodisiac” upon its release twenty-five years ago; it’s hard to argue that songs like “Left & Right” and “The Root” are still anything but. —Matt Mitchell

2. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)

In substituting the bombastic chamber pop of albums past with threadbare acoustic arrangements—where every clatter and stray breath had meaning—Fiona Apple’s fourth album The Idler Wheel watched her wrest creative and personal autonomy back like never before. Howling where she would have once cooed, she birthed her most visceral statement to date, letting songs like “Every Single Night” and “Valentine” pulse with almost too much life. Before 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters could serve as its predecessor’s foil—exploding outward with carefully concentrated rage, learned confidence and a tight-knit band supporting her—The Idler Wheel had to look inward, taking solace in the universes that exist within Apple and truly solidifying her place as one of our greatest working songwriters. —Elise Soutar

1. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001)

There will never be another album that is as genius as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a concept that’s funny to think about now, considering how much was stacked up against the biggest musical marvel of the 21st century. Between their original drummer Ken Coomer quitting in the middle of planning out the album because of his dislike for Wilco’s new sonic direction and their then-label Reprise Records refusing to release the record because it differed so much from Summerteeth, Yankee was seemingly set to fail. But thankfully, Wilco didn’t shelve it and instead shared the album online, gaining a new label and a massive fanbase in the process. Yankee introduces lively strings, drone synths, and delicate yet rousing melodies that match the intimacy of Jeff Tweedy’s words, as he attempts to mend the cracks in his relationship. A few years ago, I wrote for our sister site The A.V. Club about falling in love with Yankee for the first time. Each time I listen to it, I become even more enamored with the record and continue to be in awe of how ahead of its time it was. It’s an album that allowed Wilco’s members to let nothing hold them back and reach the heights of their abilities by finding that creative freedom, uncovering breathtaking beauty through every bump along the way. Even as Tweedy presents himself as an imperfect partner to his wife Sue, you can’t help but become utterly enamored with his sincerity, as he reminds listeners that despite the music he creates having hit perfection by painstaking dedication to his craft, he himself is a deeply flawed human who doesn’t have it all figured out but is learning to put in as much effort into his personal life as he does to his art. That kind of heart behind a record is rare, but it’s that peek into Tweedy’s humanity that ironically turned him into a Midwest legend. —Tatiana Tenreyro