Tag: Mitski

The Best Albums of the 2010s

Arcade Fire, Japandroids, The National and St. Vincent make up some of my 10 favorites of the decade

I liked a lot of music before this decade, but the 2010s was the decade I actually started listening to it. This was the decade I developed a taste and really drilled down on what I liked. In the 2010s I saw just under 200 concerts (I have a running list). The previous decade I could count on two hands the number of shows I’d seen. This was the decade I got an iPod Classic, and I’ve made sure that device outlived when Apple ultimately discontinued it.

Though on many top 10 lists I’ve seen, some don’t even have a single rock record on them. Music is diverse and distinctive in a way movies and TV are less so. And maybe in the next decade I’ll be able to expand my horizons to genres I only dabbled with this decade.

So you’ll forgive me for not listing each of the most important pop, rap, country and metal stars of recent memory. You don’t need to come to me to read about why Kendrick Lamar is so great. Rather, these are the 50 albums and artists (I only picked one album per artist/band) that meant the most to me this decade, the ones that constantly soundtracked my life these last 10 years.

Continue reading “The Best Albums of the 2010s”

The Best Albums of 2018

“I’m so glad I came but I can’t wait to leave,” St. Vincent sings on “Slow Disco.” In two different remixed versions of her ghostly, neon-tinged anthem originally heard on last year’s “Masseduction,” she reveals both the rousing elation and haunting melancholy of the same line. My favorite version though is this year’s “Fast Slow Disco,” along with the accompanying music video. Annie Clark moshes among a rambunctious, sweaty mass of burly men dressed in leather and bondage in a gay club. She conveys a liberating celebration while acknowledging how fleeting the sensation can be. “Don’t it beat a slow dance to death?”

This is one of the songs that spoke to me the most this year, along with the arresting contrast of party rhythms and aggressive beats in the explosively topical “This is America” by Childish Gambino, and the enormous, rising wave when I heard Lady Gaga belt out “Shallow” in “A Star is Born.”

But “Fast Slow Disco” in particular made me think of my own concert going and listening this year. I still can’t think of a better feeling than hearing great music at a live show, but I’ve started to notice some of my fatigue. I listened to less new music this year, and I’m starting to be more selective in what concerts I spend my time and money. It could just be this year in music, in which the most important albums of the year were far more divided among critics, and the culture gravitated toward these often meme-worthy tracks and videos more so than a single artist or album.

Or it could be a sign of how my listening might look going forward. So this year, you’ll find a lot of my old favorites, all organized alphabetically, with the exception of my one big new discovery this year.  Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2018”