Best 2020s Albums: 20 Albums That Have Shaped The Decade

19: The War On Drugs: ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’ (2021)

A stellar representation of The War On Drugs’ ability to seamlessly blend heartland rock, Americana and indie rock, the band’s fifth album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, shimmers with sonic beauty. “From a songwriting point of view, I was set on having everything be concise and clear,” frontman Adam Granduciel told Pitchfork. “I wanted to cut as much fat as possible. I wanted things to have an arc and be dynamic.” Streamlining the songwriter’s introspective and existential lyrics with jangling 80s-style guitar riffs, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is one of the most ambitious records among the best 2020s albums, combining Granduciel’s calm and winsome voice with atmospheric and meandering soft-rock grooves.

Must hear: I Don’t Live Here Anymore

18: 100 Gecs: ‘10,000 Gecs’ (2023)

Mind-warpingly weird and frequently perplexing, 10,000 Gecs is a genre-defying leap into hyperpop excess, redrawing the genre’s sonic boundaries by flirting with elements of punk, alt-rock and even metal. “We love all the things that we put into it,” 100 Gecs co-founder Laura Les told The FADER. “We love nu-metal and we love ska. We put a lot of love into making each of the things. We’re not half-assing any of it.” One of the best 2020s albums, 10,000 Gecs is a frenetic mish-mash of outlandish musical ideas, quirky digressions and backbreakingly fast tempos, hurling itself into the chaos of sheer creative abandon and emerging magnificently in spite of its rebellious disregard for convention.

Must hear: Dumbest Girl Alive

17: Hurray For The Riff Raff: ‘The Past Is Still Alive’ (2024)

Deeply autobiographical, Hurray For The Riff Raff’s eighth studio album, The Past Is Still Alive, finds Alynda Segarra looking back to reconcile with the mistakes of youth in order to come to terms with bereavement. “I feel like this album really saved me,” they told Uncut. “I think each one does. They all come at just the right time.” As a work of dark Americana full of folky textures and remarkable country-rock arrangements, there’s a mythic scope to the record that lends an unbearably traumatic weight to Segarra’s tales of suicidal tic-tac-toe games (Alibi) and prodigal daughters of the opioid crisis (Snake Plant). Spinge-tingling and hauntingly beautiful in equal measure, The Past Is Still Alive is a richly poetic work of catharsis.

Must hear: Alibi

16: PinkPantheress: ‘Heaven Knows’ (2023)

Proving that TikTok fame doesn’t always fizzle out, PinkPantheress’ debut studio album, Heaven Knows, cannily showcases the British trailblazer’s ability to bridge underground aesthetics with mainstream appeal, as evidenced by Boy’s A Liar Pt.2, her breakout single with Ice Spice. Transforming nostalgia for 90s 2-Step and early-2000s pop into bite-sized, Gen Z-friendly gems, PinkPantheress’ take on drum’n’bass-inspired hyperpop is often moody and deeply introspective, with musings on romance and heartbreak that reach truly melancholic depths. “The theme is about love, loss and life,” PinkPantheress told The Guardian. “I wanted it to feel like, at any point, the listener could start having memories of a loved one or someone that they’ve lost. Overall, I wanted to make everyone feel a bit depleted and sad.” With lyrics that clash jarringly with its often uplifting, danceable hooks, Heaven Knows is a wonderfully varied and hypnotically atmospheric debut that shows just how groundbreaking PinkPantheress truly is.

Must hear: Boy’s A Liar Pt.2

15: Paramore: ‘This Is Why’ (2023)

Dripping with sarcasm and casting a cynical eye over the world at large, Paramore’s sixth album, This Is Why, sees bandmates Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro move further from their early emo-punk sound to embrace angular art-rock guitar riffs and quirk-filled power-pop. Across a collection of lively tracks written and recorded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the album teems with playful lockdown gripes, as Williams squares her feelings of social alienation and personal inadequacy with the crises then sweeping the world at large. “I tried lyrically to express what was going on internally for me as a human being living on this Earth in this time,” Williams told Entertainment Weekly. “The album reflects something of what all of us are experiencing currently and the anxiety of it.”

Must hear: This Is Why

14: Run The Jewels: ‘RTJ4’ (2020)

For more than 20 years, Killer Mike and El-P have both commanded respect as golden-voiced treasures of the alt-rap scene. But it’s together as Run The Jewels – specifically with their fourth album, 2020’s RTJ4 – that the duo have made their mark on mainstream consciousness. Released just two weeks after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent rise of the Black Lives Matters movement meant, RTJ4 became a beacon of protest during a turbulent period of social unrest. “I’m happy that this time we landed right on time so our music can be the soundtrack to progress – and that’s what it feels like,” Killer Mike told NME. With songs such as Walking In The Snow decrying police brutality, and the album’s lead single, Oh La La, offering a timely critique of capitalism and systemic greed, RTJ4 became a cultural coup d’état that immediately earned its place among the best 2020s albums.

Must hear: Ooh La La (featuring Greg Nice and DJ Premier)

13: Béyonce: ‘Renaissance’ (2022)

A love letter to infectious disco grooves and pulsing house beats, Beyoncé’s Renaissance was a zeitgeist-busting phenomenon. Paying tribute to the Black and queer pioneers of the post-70s dance era, it’s a thumpingly euphoric album structured like a late-night DJ mix, its 16 tracks flowing together like a celebratory homage to a bygone age of mirrorballs and warehouse parties. “Creating this album allowed me a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world,” Beyoncé explained on Instagram. “It allowed me to feel free and adventurous in a time when little else was moving.” Turning Queen Bey from R&B icon to club-dwelling diva, Renaissance ranks among the best 2020s albums for honouring dance music’s roots while also pushing ahead with empowering lyrics that evangelised the transformative power of self-liberation.

Must hear: Cuff It

12: Kendrick Lamar: ‘Mr Morale & The Big Steppers’ (2022)

Few albums can instantly be considered cultural milestones, but Mr Morale & The Big Steppers is one of them. Kendrick Lamar’s fifth studio album saw the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper emerge from a five-year absence on typically self-reflective form, fully embracing his role as the spokesperson of a generation. “I’ve had rewards for my other albums in different ways, whether it was accolades, whether it was the Pulitzer, whether it was the Grammys,” Lamar told W magazine. “This one is the reward for humanity for me.” Thanks to the bullshit-skewering verbosity of N95 and the domestic slanging match of We Cry Together, Lamar’s hip-hop masterclass garnered him a fourth consecutive Grammy Award nomination for Album Of The Year.

Must hear: N95

11: Fiona Apple: ‘Fetch The Bolt Cutters’ (2020)

Released during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fiona Apple’s masterful work of escapology, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, sliced open our quarantine bubbles. Unleashing a litany of quirky piano ballads that ponder social isolation over clattering percussion, the album couldn’t have been more timely, with Apple’s stir-crazy vocal tics offering us a window into breaking free from social isolation. “If I can be like a surrogate of the catharsis, if maybe you can get that feeling from listening to it happen, that’s just the highest goal of any art that I can think of,” Apple said in an interview with NPR. Of course, Fetch The Bolt Cutters also dealt in weightier themes of feminist guilt, the strictures of misogyny, the stranglehold of past memories and wrestling with one’s own mental health, gifting us a soundtrack to the COVID era that mirrored lockdown’s chaotic and unpredictable rollout.

Must hear: I Want You To Love Me

10: Turnstile: ‘Glow On’ (2021)

A genre-fluid gateway into hardcore punk for younger listeners, Turnstile’s Glow On deserves to be heralded as a modern rock classic among the best 2020s albums. Not only is the album flawlessly produced by Mike Elizondo (Linkin Park, Twenty One Pilots) but it is also a vibrantly eclectic affair, with smatterings of grungy assaults, pop-leaning emo, heavy hints of rap-rock and cowbell-bashing punk-funk all thrown in. “It’s going against the norms or bounds of hardcore,” Turnstile vocalist Brendan Yates told The Line Of Best Fit, “but at the same time I think that branching out and blossoming as individuals perfectly fits within what hardcore is.” Drifting into aquatic dream-pop (Underwater Boi) as well as brawny samba screamo (Don’t Play) and thrashing anthems (Blackout, Holiday), Glow On finds Yates ripping up the alt-rock playbook and fashioning something completely new.

Must hear: Blackout

9: Vampire Weekend: ‘Only God Was Above Us’ (2024)

A mature commentary on the gentrified limboland of New York City, Only God Was Above Us finds Vampire Weekend examining the spiritual vacuum of millennial hipsters. As if exorcising the ghostly remnants of graffiti-strewn subway cars, the album takes aim at political apathy, exchanging youthful cynicism for zen-like acceptance. “I could frame this album as being about the journey out of pessimism,” Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig said in an interview with Blackbird Spyplane. “It starts with a cluster of songs that have a degree of anxiety, or complaint, or questioning to them, and then there’s a shift halfway through.” Blending frenzied piano-jazz, 90s hip-hop grooves and Afropop guitar hooks with baroque strings, droning distortion and Lower East Side brass, Only God Was Above Us is a true masterpiece that balances nostalgia with experimentation to celebrate the precarious destiny of a city – and a generation – caught between eras.

Must hear: Capricorn

8: Jessie Ware: ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’ (2020)

Jessie Ware’s playfully coquettish fourth album, What’s Your Pleasure?, is a flirty and seductive dance-pop record, passionately imbued with elements of smooth soul and nu-disco grooves. Like some of the other contenders among the best 2020s albums, its release, in June 2020, offered fans a fun and energetic reprieve from pandemic-related woes, Ware serenading listeners with a cascade of dreamy synth-funk and house-inspired beats. “I think people need distraction at the moment,” the singer told Billboard magazine, “and that’s the beauty of dance and disco – it can provide euphoria.” Supremely confident and bursting with passion, What’s Your Pleasure? is one of the decade’s most gratifying delights.

Must hear: What’s Your Pleasure?

7: Silk Sonic: ‘An Evening With Silk Sonic’ (2021)

This retro-soul team-up from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, recording as Silk Sonic, saw the supremely talented twosome turn their hands to 70s-inspired funk and Philly soul. Indulging in lush and timeless R&B grooves and sophisticated harmonies, An Evening With Silk Sonic is an elegant highlight among the best 2020s albums, giving listeners a much-needed pick-me-up after struggling through the dismal isolation of successive lockdowns. “A good song can bring people together,” Mars told Rolling Stone magazine. “So that was our mindset with the whole album. If it makes us feel good, and resonates with us, that’s gonna be infectious and make other people feel good – and that’s our jobs as entertainers.”

Must hear: Leave The Door Open

6: Black Midi: ‘Hellfire’ (2022)

An intense work of avant-prog swimming with vaudevillian excess, Black Midi’s jazz-rock freakout Hellfire is not only one of the best 2020s albums but, strangely enough, it’s also the London-based trio’s most accessible record yet. “It’s a significant step in the right direction for us where we feel much more comfortable with what we’re doing,” singer Geordie Greep told The Ringer. “It’s much more melodic, there’s a lot more kind of storytelling and stuff and it’s a bit more varied in sound.” With Greep’s absurd character studies verging on the operatic, like set pieces from a deranged Broadway play, Hellfire’s knotty mix of intense art-rock and noisy dissonance collides with everything from flamenco to cabaret, taking listeners on an outrageously imaginative journey into the wildest corners of the imagination.

Must hear: Welcome to Hell

5: Mac Miller: ‘Circles’ (2020)

Two years after Mac Miller’s tragic passing, his posthumously released sixth album, Circles, was a sobering reminder of the prolific rapper’s undeniable talents. Released in January 2020, as the follow-up to 2018’s Swimming the album was painstakingly completed by producer Jon Brion, resulting in a diverse, psychedelic-tinged collection of songs ranging from the laidback introspection of Good News to the future bass vibes of Blue World. “It made me so sad he was gone,” Brion told Vulture of Miller’s passing. “It’s one of those moments, like, Oh my God, he’s even better than I thought. And I already thought the world of him.” A shoo-in among the best albums of 2023, Circles finds Mac Miller’s lyrical drawl perfectly meshing with dreamy jazz-rap rhythms and neo-soul reverie, strengthening the enduring afterglow of the late rapper’s unparalleled artistry.

Must hear: Good News

4: Little Simz: ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ (2021)

One of the best albums of 2021, and arguably one of the greatest UK hip-hop albums of all time, Little Simz’s fourth record, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, is a fierce and powerful blend of galvanising neo-soul and nostalgic jazz rap. “This album has really allowed me to explore my creativity,” Simz said in an interview with London’s Evening Standard. “I’ve been into so many spaces, so many textures and genres. I was listening to Motown stuff but also real rap – 90s New York hip-hop, which is what I grew up with.” From anthems of female empowerment (Woman) to tribal Afrobeats-style shakedowns (Fear No Man), Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is nothing less than a modern classic among the best 2020s albums.

Must hear: Woman

3: Charli XCX: ‘brat’ (2024)

As if popping an umbrella into our cocktail glasses, Charli XCX’s head-spinning sixth album, brat, is a giddy rush of electroclash, hyperpop and lashings of indie sleazebaggery. Easily one of the best 2020s albums, the record promoted Charli to boss girl of 2024’s “brat summer”, a season of racy gaucherie and turbocharged party vibes that defined the cultural zeitgeist. “It is honest, blunt and a little bit volatile. That’s Brat,” Charli explained. “Think Courtney Love in the 90s, Amy Winehouse in the early aughts, and Ke$ha in the 2010s.” Über-fashionable and uncompromisingly brusque, brat arrived like a tray of Jägerbombs on an already-sticky dancefloor, blinding us with speedy EDM and nostalgically channelling a mid-2000s era of flip phones and boho-style fishnets.

Must hear: 360

2: Black Country, New Road: ‘Ants From Up There’ (2022)

A sprawling masterpiece that stands as one of the best albums of 2022, Ants Up There, Black Country, New Road’s fusion of art-rock and chamber pop, is a positively life-affirming listen. With frontman Isaac Wood’s cryptic lyrics shining a light on the album’s misty-eyed arrangements, the group created a cathartic and gutsy outpouring of poetic self-expression that explores themes of alienation and existential longing amid the fallout of COVID-19. “The album itself is meant to be enjoyed as a whole,” drummer Charlie Wayne told Under The Radar. “It’s meant to be conceptually consistent.” With its melancholic beauty, Ants From Up There comes across as a bittersweet therapy session that mirrors the uncertainty and upheaval of the times in which it was made.

Must hear: Concorde

1: Dua Lipa: ‘Future Nostalgia’ (2020)

Arriving in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dua Lipa’s second studio album, Future Nostalgia, gave furloughed fans and locked-down listeners a reason to rejoice. Insatiably fun and gleefully escapist, it was a dance-pop party bonanza with 70s-era disco influences (Love Again) and lashings of funky house grooves. “What I wanted to do with this album was to break out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to make music that felt like it could sit alongside some of my favourite classic pop songs, while still feeling fresh and uniquely mine,” Lipa told London newspaper Metro. From unrelenting electro-pop (Physical) to funky hip-swingers (Break My Heart), Future Nostalgia is simply sensational, and more than deserves to top our list of the best 2020s albums.

Must hear: Don’t Start Now

Check out the best 2020s songs.

Original article: 16 January 2024

Updated: 8 January 2025