February 21, 2025 9:49AM

The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far

With 25 years of this century in the books, here are the records that have defined our times

By ROLLING STONE

In the 21st century, music became more universal, immediate, and accessible than ever before. On Jan. 1, 2000, the average cost of a CD was about $18, which meant if you wanted to legally own 250 albums, it would set you back about $4,500. Napster existed and it was pretty obvious even back then that the $18 CD era was over, but even the most optimistic pro-downloading zealot couldn’t have imagined a world where every album ever recorded could go on a little computer in your pocket.

A change in cultural consumption that sweeping is bound to be an enormous mixed bag. Yet, amid all the technological shifts we’ve seen in the past 25 years (CD burning, the iPod, file sharing, streaming), the album-centric long-form listening experience has stayed at the center of music. Early in this century, the album was alleged to be dying at the hands of single-track downloading. Today, a new LP by a beloved artist needs to be meaningful and good enough to inaugurate a new Era, lest it be deemed a flop, album release dates are awaited with countdown clocks, and people willingly pay $40 for a new “vinyls” of records they already have for free.

The biggest artists have often been the most radical innovators. Consider the journeys of two superstars with four albums on this list: Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. In the mid-2000s, they existed in the hit-driven, radio-dominated worlds of mainstream R&B and country, respectively. By the 2010s, Swift was renovating the Top 40 with the feelings-forward synth-pop of 1989, and Beyoncé had invented her own musical, personal, and political world of experience with Lemonade. By the 2020s, they’d moved on to even more idiosyncratic statements like Swift’s woodsy-folk pandemic classic Folklore and Bey’s genre-studies masterstrokes Renaissance and Cowboy Carter.

You see similar stories of genius ambition throughout our list — from Radiohead dissolving alt rock with Kid A to SZA reimagining chill R&B as her own confessional playground with CTRL and SOS to Lady Gaga turning mega-pop into a Warholian gallery space with The Fame Monster to Bad Bunny taking reggaeton from the club to the astral plane on YHLQMDLG and Un Verano Sin Ti and to Kendrick Lamar coming out of Compton with good kid, m.A.A.d city, a rap record as rich as any novel. Those are just a few of the biggest big-name examples.

In compiling our top 250 albums of the quarter-century, we wanted to show as much of the scope of this story as possible. So when given the choice between including multiple albums by an artist and finding room for a record that added something important or interesting to the list, we almost always took the second option. Still, this is a list of albums, not artists, and certain heavy hitters just put out too many amazing LPs to deny. We’re lucky to have all this music to keep us motivated and challenged and sane. There might not be too much to be optimistic about in 2025, but the mountain of good records will always keep growing.

From Rolling Stone US

After a near-unparalleled run of classic solo debut albums, the late Nineties found the Wu-Tang Clan slightly adrift. Second albums by GZA, Method Man, and Raekwon had their hits but felt inconsistent at best and directionless at worst. Supreme Clientele, released in 2000, shattered that notion, with Ghost’s aggressive, stream-of-consciousness flows laced over RZA and his sonic disciples’ soul-and funk-inspired beats. Ghostface rhymes every line like it’s his last, even if his lyrics rely as much on absurdist assonance as literalism. (“Scotty Wotty copper tipped me/Big microphone hippie/Hit Poughkeepsie/Crispy chicken birds/Fur up a stone, Richie,” he rhymes on “Nutmeg.”) Five other Wu members make appearances, but Ghost dominates them all, never sounding more confident than he did here. —J.N.

Mitski makes music to be lonely to — together. And never has she done so so achingly than with Puberty 2, her 2016 breakout album. Love, loss, identity, and desperation: It all thrums through her fourth record, the one that opened the door for legions of singer-songwriters with a bent toward the introspective. Take the absolutely eviscerating “Your Best American Girl,” which tangles with identity and romance in equal measure. And then there’s “Happy,” a glitched-out mourning session that belies its title. Her voice here is truly singular. Honeyed and deep, her lyrics somehow intensely personal yet wholly relatable. —B.E.

After establishing herself as country’s premier roughhouser on albums like Kerosene and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Miranda Lambert went glam for 2014’s sparkly Platinum. “What doesn’t kill you only makes you blonder,” she sang on the title track, choosing to deal with life’s challenges with hair and makeup rather than gunpowder and lead. What’s most remarkable about Platinum, however, was how the album reflected nearly every facet of Lambert’s musical upbringing, from Western swing (“All That’s Left,” with the Time Jumpers) to woozy radio country (“Smokin’ and Drinkin’,” with Little Big Town). The gorgeous “Automatic” combined it all, a nostalgic retelling of Lambert’s childhood that found the sweet spot between singer-songwriter honesty and country-pop polish. —J.H.

One of the most fun parts of revisiting Kanye West’s 2004 debut after everything that has happened since is hearing the artist in an earnest, human mode — an insecure MC, eagerly relating his backstory and excitedly landing mid-tier punchlines. The College Dropout works despite this because as a producer he was already, with apologies to the Neptunes, galactically better than pretty much anyone else alive. Tracks like “All Falls Down” and “Through the Wire” show his compositional skills already fully formed, weaving pitch-shifted samples and live instrumentation together into songs that shimmer with an unlikely emotional brightness. Where else was there to go but up? How else do tragedies begin? —C.P.

James Murphy had the New York hipsters laughing out loud and dancing their asses off at the same time with early LCD Soundsystem electro-clash classics like “Losing My Edge” and “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” With Sound of Silver, he took it to a whole new level, sharpening his band’s grooves and his sense of irony on tunes like “North American Scum” and “Time to Get Away,” while infusing LCD’s high-end synth throb with a real sense of unguarded heart on “Someone Great” and “All My Friends,” deep songs about reckoning with life passing by and regrets piling up as you’re coolest years fade in the rearview. —J.D.

Daddy Yankee felt like he didn’t have a choice. When he started working on Barrio Fino, he’d been grinding away in Puerto Rico’s underground reggaeton for years. He’d started as a 16-year-old kid, and though he’d built recognition across the island, he needed a break. So, he channeled all his ambition and experiences into an album that captured exactly where he came from. (The LP’s biggest song, the commercial smash “Gasolina,” actually came from a line he hears someone shouting outside his apartment.) Barrio Fino burst into the mainstream, broke barriers, and charted a wildly global path for reggaeton that only keeps expanding. —J.L.

After the success of his 1999 debut, The Slim Shady LP, one-man white riot Eminem returned as the all-conquering, highly technical, bleached-blond enemy of Liz Cheney, Will Smith, boy bands, insane clowns, and his own mother. However, the man behind the media circus also had a cinematic level of emotional richness, whether embodying a crazed fan’s descent into madness (“Stan”), venting about his turn on the fame carousel (“The Way I Am”), or indulging in a deranged horrorcore fantasy about killing his wife (“Kim”). Love him or hate him, he’s a master of capturing unchecked rage with gold-medal levels of athletic assonance: “Whatever happened to catchin’ a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin’/And gettin’ your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?” —C.W.

Released amid the muck of mid-2010s bro country, Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music was a revolutionary and reverent record. Steeped in tradition, yet reverberating with a cosmic twang, it transcended the Nashville establishment, which soon course-corrected to coast in its wake. But its resonances were also hard-worn and existential. Simpson was a struggling songwriter in his mid-30s when he made Metamodern, and the album is filled with jaded cynicism (“Living the Dream”), odes to self-destruction (“Life of Sin”), stoned musings (“Turtles All the Way Down”), and sobering revelations (“It Ain’t All Flowers”). But Simpson never loses his grip on some semblance of hope, whether he’s covering Eighties New Wavers When in Rome (“The Promise”) or searching for the end of that long white line. —J. Blistein

Hot Fuss was like the drama club’s answer to the cool kids’ early-2000s indie party, and if you think that’s pejorative, that’s on you. The Las Vegas band’s smash debut threaded arena-sized ambition and out-of-this-world pop chops with strains of New Wave, glam, and post- and dance-punk to create some of the most indelible music of the early 21st century. “Mr. Brightside” has become the load-bearing classic, followed closely by “Somebody Told Me” and “All These Things That I’ve Done.” But Hot Fuss is stacked top to bottom, from the propulsive rock stomp of “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” through the languid synth pomp of closer “Everything Will Be Alright.” —J. Blistein

Chappell Roan’s debut album was a blessing: The singer had been dropped from her first label contract in 2020 and left to figure things out herself as a solo artist for a few years. Written mostly with producer-songwriter Daniel Nigro (see Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour), Roan’s first full-length project is a fun and raw collection about breakups, makeups, first dates, failure and, of course, the Midwest. Roan’s chameleonic talents know no bounds: She’s a campy cheerleader on one song (“Hot to Go!”) and a Billy Joel-esque piano woman on another (“Coffee”). The album’s real potential would be fulfilled in the year following its release, as old singles like 2020’s “Pink Pony Club” finally get the mass attention they deserved — and so would Roan herself. —B.S.

Kacey Musgraves was feeling the glow of new love when she wrote the songs that would appear on her 2018 masterpiece. A dramatic shift away from the relatively unadorned country of her previous releases, Golden Hour brought in producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian for a sound that was lush, warm, and expansive to complement her gifts for wit and melody. She sings optimistically about patience, a miraculous world, solitude, and storms passing, limiting the tart kiss offs to one perfect disco-country tune. It was gorgeous and heartbreaking, or as she’d sing, “happy and sad at the same time.” Musgraves’ love ultimately didn’t last, but Golden Hour can still refill your cup whenever you need it. —J.F.

After Olivia Rodrigo’s heartsick ballad “Drivers License” transformed her from a largely unknown Disney teen to a full-blown pop star, the plans for Sour changed: Instead of an EP, she’d release a full-length debut. No pressure. Only Sour defied expectations and made it abundantly clear there was a lot more where “Drivers License” came from. She channeled her heartbreak into pop-punk fury on cuts like “Good 4 U” and “Brutal,” then dialed it back down for slow-burning stunners like “Traitor,” “Deja Vu,” and “Happier.” The album won her three Grammys. But most importantly, it proved that Rodrigo was no one-hit wonder. This was a visionary singer-songwriter who was just getting started. —A.M.

With his official debut album, Frank Ocean gave us a Sign O’ the Times for the Tumblr era. He set the tone with the falsetto-soul poetry of the hit “Thinkin Bout You,” and went on to deliver a lavishly unfolding dispatch on his myriad hurts and hungers amid the rich-kid decadence of L.A., matching diaristic honesty with the narrative detail of a great novelist — whether he was turning a taxi cab into a confession booth on “Bad Religion,” delivering an epic poem to a stripper girlfriend on the lysergic nine-minute “Pyramids,” or spelunking addictions’ depths on “Crack Rock.” Channel Orange immediately changed the stakes for R&B intimacy and got Ocean tagged as a voice of his generation. —J.D.

Beyoncé’s long-anticipated Renaissance was her first album since Lemonade, six years earlier, but it was worth the wait. She made it an expert music historian’s tour of Black dance sounds, traveling through so much cultural history in every beat, touching on generations of club culture. Inspired by her late Uncle Johnny (“He was my godmother,” she said) and his love for classic disco, Renaissance is a densely layered tribute to the Black and queer pioneers of dance music, from the piano-driven house of “Break My Soul” to the funk of “Cuff It.” Renaissance is Queen Bey at her most joyful, with enough power to unite every alien superstar in the club. —R.S.

Taylor Swift brought all of her musical passions together on Red, the album where she proved herself beyond doubt as one of the great songwriters of any generation. Everyone figured Red was her career-defining triumph; as we now know, she was just getting started. But she shows off her flair for country twang (“Red”) and pop flash (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”), with rock moves (“State of Grace”) and dubstep drops (“I Knew You Were Trouble”) and disco (“22”) and acoustic weepers (“Begin Again”) and clouds-in-my-coffee guitar melodrama (“Holy Ground”). “All Too Well” remains her most powerful heartbreaker, turning a lost scarf into a Proustian emotional overload. Nine years later, she’d hit Number One with the 10-minute version. —R.S.

Brat is Charli XCX’s pièce de résistance, catapulting her to A-list stardom after a decade full of avant-garde projects that pushed pop’s creative boundaries. Brat explodes with cool-girl energy, but look deeper and you’ll find brutal, universal confessions of angst, anxiousness, and paranoia. The album balances that dichotomy brilliantly; she goes from delivering 2024’s biggest rave anthem in “365” to coming to terms with her imposter syndrome on “I Might Say Something Stupid.” On “Girl, So Confusing,” Charli sings to an unnamed pop star about not being sure if they’re friends. Lorde responded with a viral and epic remix (included on Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat), remarking that the two linking up would mean “the internet will go crazy.” She got that right. —W.A.

The trademark bravado in Bad Bunny’s delivery — interrupted by those oddly melancholy undertones — are now an implicit component of the Latin-pop DNA, but when this sprawling second solo album came out, it sounded incredibly fresh and invigorating. An hourlong party record, it finds Benito dealing in sexually explicit trap and existential reggaeton, but he reaches out for extra color on the Nintendofied bossa of “Si Veo a Tu Mamá” and the bhangra echoes of the euphoric “Safaera,” with Jowell and Randy, and Ñengo Flow. On the fragile ending track, “<3,” he threatens to retire, sickened by the toxicity of fame. Two years later, he would release his defining masterpiece, Un Verano Sin Ti. —E.L.

A hip-hop Molotov aimed at white supremacy, a neo-soul rumination on the American experience, a nu-jazz-funk odyssey reaching to Black music’s past and future, a personal statement of a conflicted Los Angeles rap star painted with experimental textures and pop smarts, a G-funk poetry slam that dives headfirst into the riot goin’ on: To Pimp a Butterfly remains one of the richest texts of the 21st century. Performances by virtuosic bassist Thundercat and explosive saxophonist Kamasi Washington changed the course of contemporary jazz, and “Alright” — both politically prescient and addictive — became the anthem chanted in the streets during Black Lives Matter protests. —C.W.

It seems almost too natural a pairing in retrospect: Two prodigiously gifted and giftedly prodigious left-field hip-hop cult geniuses who operated on the fringes of the mainstream coming together to prove that the sum is greater than the whole of the parts. MF Doom’s sui generis wordplay and mind-bending use of the English language is at its peak here. (“When the smoke clear you can see the sky again/There will be the chopped off heads of leviathan,” he rhymes on “Strange Ways.”). And Madlib, the reclusive beatmaker who masterly flips and warps soul and funk samples alongside hysterical found sound, finds his ultimate muse. The album sessions were, as Doom said, “like a telepathy thing. There wasn’t a lot of talking.”–J.N.

There are very few artists who can say they changed pop music, but Billie Eilish can make any claim she likes about her breakout album, 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Dark, broody, and just a little bit more than batshit, Eilish brought a new kind of swagger to the mainstream along with her producer-bro Finneas — one that’s had its ripples for years to come as other artists tried their hand at the avant-garde. From Invisalign slurps, to The Office samples, to a delicious gothic throb, this album ushered in a whole new generation of misfits with a taste for the macabre. —B.E.

Hoping for a radio-friendly alt-country record, the band’s original label rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, only to have Wilco stream it for free and then sign to a sister label, which made it a hit. Rightly dubbed the American Kid A, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sets Jeff Tweedy’s beautifully muted songcraft to arrangements that blend the expected roots-rock flavors with the hums, squawks, and beeps of krautrock. Even as Tweedy grappled with mental damage control (“There is something wrong with me/My mind is filled with radio cures/Electronica surgical words,” he sings on “Radio Cure”), he and Wilco broke free of the roots-rock pasture and showed the thrillingly eccentric places rock & roll could venture in the new century. —D.B.

SZA’s Ctrl has made legions of fans feel seen with quirky and heart-quivering meditations on growing up, bucking any notion that intimacy and privacy are one and the same. Live and direct from her adult-adolescence, smack in the middle of knowing what’s best for you and habitually choosing what may be worst, SZA immediately dispelled any sense that she was here to be a conventional R&B star too, ushering in the era where the genre is constantly remade in its wielder’s image. With Ctrl, SZA introduced herself as a Nineties kid raised on alt rock, hip-hop, and more — here to be everything and nothing at all. —M.C.

So, you’re Lil Wayne in 2008. You’ve spent the past year or two calling yourself the best rapper alive, and proving it on mixtapes and leaked studio sessions that sparkle with uncontainable wit and lyrical insanity. Now it’s time to somehow top that legendary run with a big-budget album. Do you falter? No way. You call the hottest producers (Swizz Beatz, Cool and Dre, a pre-disgrace Kanye West) and some up-and-comers; you make a syrupy-sweet pop hit (“Lollipop”) and a song about getting arrested in a hot way (“Mrs. Officer”); you watch the platinum sales roll in; and you keep it moving. Years later, he’d tell Rolling Stone he barely even remembered which one was Tha Carter III, but the world sure did. —S.V.L.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a New York punk-rock dream come true, three kids bashing out their own style of sex-crazed garage kicks. They crashed into the doldrums of the early-2000s rock scene, turning it into a wild-ass party. Lead singer Karen O prowled the stage in ripped fishnets and smeared lipstick, a fearsome demon girl-child with a feral yowl. The YYYs became a worldwide sensation with their debut, Fever to Tell, with the savage strut of “Y Control” (“I wish I could buy back the woman you stole”) and “Black Tongue.” Their pained love ballad “Maps” has become a timeless classic, with Karen pleading “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” over Nick Zinner’s mutant guitar and Brian Chase’s thundering drums. —R.S.

Amy Winehouse was an artist who performed with overflowing charisma and personality, spinning intoxicating — and at times intoxicated — stories of torrid affairs (“You Know I’m No Good”) and resigned heartbreak (“Love Is a Losing Game” and “Tears Dry on Their Own”). Her unmistakable timbre was one of the most instantly recognizable sounds in modern music, and she had indomitable ability as a songwriter to get you on her side, like on the unraveling breakup classic “Back to Black” and the Motown-inspired “Rehab.” Winehouse performed pain and loss in both her voice and writing as though she was locked in a boxing ring with it. She’d always get her hits in — and she’d put on a damn good show, too. —L.P.

On her even-better follow-up to her already record-breaking debut, Lorde invited listeners into the party that ended her teens, and even let them stay into the revealing dawn. The result was a pulsating album fraught with the heartbreak and exhilaration of entering adulthood, as it jumps from tear-soaked taxi rides to drug-filled dance floors. But when Lorde finally confronts herself in the morning-after light and accepts the pop star poet she is, she taps into Melodrama’s enduring magic. Even with all the head-spinning emotions, the album booms with big enough pop production to carry the heft — and make you want to dance as you cry. —M.G.

David Bowie knew he was dying from liver cancer when he started recording Blackstar in early 2015 with longtime producer Tony Visconti. Working alongside a group of New York-based jazz musicians led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin, he crafted what Visconti called a “parting gift” to fans. The haunting “Lazarus” (“Look up here, I’m in Heaven/I’ve got scars that can’t be healed”) is the emotional high point, while the 10-minute title track is a staggering fusion of prog rock and avant-garde jazz that stands up with any of Bowie’s best Seventies work. Fans had a mere weekend to process the album before news hit that Monday that Bowie died. It was one of the greatest final acts in rock history. —A. Greene

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Drake overshared his way to the very top of the pop pantheon on his second album, blurring the line between rap swagger and R&B sensitivity, between bragging and wallowing, as he brought a whole new level of gilded self-indulgence to hip-hop. Drizzy crews up with fellow Toronto sad-boy the Weeknd and links up with Rihanna for the hauntingly sweet title track, and leaves a heartbroken drunk dial for the ages with “Marvin’s Room.” The album’s luxe, cavernous sound (sculpted alongside executive producer 40 along with a host of A-list guest stars) and Drake’s ability to compact many moods — arrogance, sadness, tenderness, and self-pity — into one oceanic mass of emotional mush put him in his own unique lane. As the 2010s progressed, it’d turn into a superhighway. —J.D.

Rosalía was just a college student, studying flamenco vocal interpretation in Barcelona, when she started working on her radical breakthrough album El Mal Querer. Inspired by the 13th-century Occitan novel Flamenca, Rosalía shaped the project as a woman’s journey from toxic, twisted love into independence, all while braiding together modern sounds with flamenco traditions. Bulería and palmas collide with hip-hop beats and even a Justin Timberlake interpolation, forging a stunning, unique sound in the process. She presented the album as her graduating thesis — and then shared it with the world, bringing flamenco charging into the future and establishing herself as an inventive, unapologetic pop auteur. —J.L.

By 2016, Rihanna was largely unrivaled in her consistency as a hitmaker. But it took Anti for her to shine as a true capital “A” album artist. She made the ascension without sacrificing the defining markers of her greatness. The wider, genre-spanning vision Rihanna conceptualizes on “Consideration,” with SZA, takes shape as rock on “Desperado” and “Woo,” then wallows in the blues on “Higher.” “Work” and “Needed Me” unquestionably shifted pop music on its axis, while “Kiss It Better” and “Love on the Brain” marked a pivotal evolution for the artist as a vocalist. If Rihanna never releases an album again, she at least will have concluded her discography with one of the most masterful, self-assured records in modern music history. —L.P.

With The Fame, Lady Gaga manifested stardom. On The Fame Monster, she began to live it. Released as a companion eight-song LP to her debut, Gaga delivered a dance-pop, dark analysis of love and life as a celebrity. Fame Monster was also a visual project that delivered extravagant, era-defining visuals that matched her over-the-top lyrics: She laid with a corpse in “Bad Romance,” colluded and killed with Beyoncé in “Telephone,” and had the Catholic church yelling “blasphemy!” with “Alejandro.” (Remember her swallowing a rosary?) If The Fame introduced Gaga as a star, Fame Monster cemented her as one of the premier pop artists of her whole generation. —T.M.

Bob Dylan has been a man of many surprises, but he really shocked everyone with Love and Theft, the ragged masterpiece he dropped on Sept. 11, 2001. At 60, Dylan growled in the voice of a grizzled drifter who’d visited every nook and cranny in America, and gotten chased out of them all. But he’d never sounded so ominous, or so steeped in the folkways of American song, with Delta blues, ragtime, country, rockabilly, and corny vaudeville jokes. Dylan made it all sound as if this time there really was no direction home, snarling, “These memories I got, they can strangle a man.” It’s one of his greatest, from the doomed romance “Mississippi” to the restless farewell “Sugar Baby.” —R.S.

Missy Elliott’s fourth album is an avant-freak blowout, even by her standards, as the Virginia queen vrooms to the wildest corners of her imagination. “Work It” gets the party started with absurdist Timbaland beats and a Blondie synth-pop sample. Elliott chants “I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it,” before running her voice backwards for the hook. All over Under Construction, she aims for the playful spirit of old-school rap, as in “Back in the Day,” with Jay-Z. Elliott flosses with her friends (Beyoncé, Method Man, TLC), talks dirty, mourns her girl Aaliyah, sings an R&B slow jam that goes “Pussy don’t fail me now,” and ends up with the most comprehensive album of her amazing career. —R.S.

In an era of shiny pop and rap, the vintage soul power of Adele’s second album touched a deep nerve, going on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide and win six Grammys. The dusky thunder in her voice and the been-done-wrong emotional firepower of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” and “Rumour Has It” haven’t dimmed a bit. Adele’s stunning vocal performances mixed queenly composure and raw power, whether she was playing off a sumptuous groove on “I’ll Be Waiting” or shutting things down with the grand piano ballad closer “Someone Like You.” Working with co-writers and producers like Greg Kurstin, Ryan Tedder, and Rick Rubin, she created a burnished R&B sound that harks back to Sixties soul and mid-20th century jazz yet felt utterly present in our own moment.—J.D.

Where were you at midnight on Dec. 13, 2013, when Beyoncé posted “Surprise!” on Instagram and released her 14-song, 17-video, self-titled, sexy masterpiece straight to iTunes without a hint of warning? The album featured a more avant-garde musical approach, and a who’s who of contributors —including husband Jay-Z, Timbaland, Sia, Pharrell, Justin Timberlake, the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — all of whom have in common the ability to keep a very big secret. Beyoncé was not only critically acclaimed but a massive commercial success, changing the music industry and showing off what a creatively adventurous genius Bey is. It is, in a word, flawless. —L.T.

Norman Fucking Rockwell! introduced the world to a new Lana Del Rey. With her sixth album, Del Rey departed from the orchestral, dark-pop sounds and toxic love-idealizing lyrics of the records that made her a cult favorite. Instead, the star opted for introspective storytelling (“And if this is it/I had a ball”) and a nuanced look at the American dream, spinning Rockwell’s art perspective on its head. The album’s flowy, experimental sounds also introduced her synergistic partnership with Jack Antonoff, which continues to thrive today. Among its many stunning qualities, the album has Seventies tinges, a Sublime cover, and the iconic line “Goddamn, man-child/You fucked me so good that I almost said ’I love you.’” —T.M.

If Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” gave us the quintessential guitar riff of the 20th century, the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” did the same for this century. Recorded on vintage equipment with nary a production frill, Elephant’s opening salvo — that metronomic, deadpan bass line that’s been played on iPods and reverberated through stadiums, from the king of England to the hounds of hell — did more than just remind the world of the eternal appeal of rock’s basic elements. The album created a kind of blueprint for authenticity in the digital age. The Detroit duo’s minimalist grit presaged the success of garage-rock revivalists from the Black Keys to the Arctic Monkeys, showing how to channel the past without descending into nostalgia. —S.G.

After delays and dramas with her previous album, 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple started recording The Idler Wheel in secret, years before it was released. Working with her touring drummer Charley Drayton, she went for a minimalist production style, emphasizing unusual percussion tools like kettledrums, even hitting her thighs and stomping on the floor. What emerged was a kind of freewheeling cabaret jazz, at once voraciously honest (“I don’t feel anything until I smash it up,” she warns on “Daredevil”) and cleverly abstract (“I’m amorous but out of reach/A still life drawing of a peach,” she sang on “Valentine”). By challenging traditional song structures and chumming the deepest recesses of her inner life, Apple made a daring masterpiece that still felt accessible. —A.W.

“What Off the Wall is to [Michael Jackson], The Blueprint is to me,” Jay-Z told Rap Radar in 2017. Bolstered by impeccable beats from Kanye West, Just Blaze, Timbaland, and others, The Blueprint features so many quotable lines it ought to have its own section in the Library of Congress: “I know you love me like cooked food,” “Can’t leave rap alone, the game needs me,” “Smarten up, Nas.” And two decades before Kendrick Lamar flamed Drake in their colossal battle, “The Takeover” made the topic of Jay-Z vs. Nas the subject of conversation in every barbershop and on every message board, as Jay’s ageless diss brought newfound excitement to the craft. —W.D.

After his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo spent nearly five years making the radically innovative Voodoo. The Virginia soul visionary ignored all the pop trends of the day, going for slow-motion sex-mystic R&B that demanded close attention, with ballads like the slow-burning, Prince-channeling hit “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” As he testifies in “Chicken Grease,” “I’m like that old bucket of Crisco sitting on top of the stove.” D’Angelo collaborated with kindred spirits from the Soulquarian scene, including co-producers DJ Premier and Raphael Saadiq, and the Roots’ Questlove as drummer and all-around co-conspirator, digging deep into the ancient grooves of Marvin Gaye and Al Green for a future-facing statement that gets more influential every year. —R.S.

With their rich-kid ragamuffin style and their outrageously fun neo-New Wave tunes, the Strokes gave the rock scene a much-needed hotness infusion, riding a huge wave of hype into their debut LP. All their moves were thrifted — from Lou Reed, Tom Petty, the Cars, Television, the Psychedelic Furs, and others, but they mixed and matched with a whiz-kid genius that felt meticulous and offhanded at the same time. From “Last Night” to “Soma” to “Hard to Explain” to “Trying Your Luck,” their Is This It bounced by without a single un-catchy song on the track list, placing it among the finest New York guitar records ever made. Is This It played a huge part in jump-starting a whole “rock is back” cool-band avalanche in the 2000s. —J.D.

When Bad Bunny was making Un Verano Sin Ti, he wanted to capture his memories of heat-splashed summers in Puerto Rico and translate that nostalgia — and his deep love for the island — into song. He succeeded: There are warm sunsets on the dreamy melody of “Otro Atardecer,” and there is post-beach revelry in the mambo lines of “Después de la Playa.” But not even he expected just how much this risky, politically charged album would change music history: Un Verano Sin Ti became the most-streamed album globally in 2022, and the first Spanish-language LP nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys. Beyond the accolades and the records, however, Un Verano Sin Ti was made for Puerto Rico. When he toured the album, he’d close out his concerts with “El Apagón,” where he touches on the colonial forces that contribute to struggles in Puerto Rico while celebrating every aspect of his homeland’s culture. —J.L.

The grandest, most gloriously indulgent hip-hop album in history, Kanye West’s magnum opus will likely never be topped in size, ambition, scale or — especially — budget: What other albums can boast Elton John, Charlie Wilson, and Alicia Keys on background vocals? From its provocative cover art by fine artist George Condo to its moody-yet-arena-sized co-production by Mike Dean and Jeff Bhasker, MBDTF is equal parts decadent and reflective, and its list of highlights may be as long as its credits: the scene-stealing breakout moment for young Nicki Minaj (“Monster”), the head-banging recontextualization of King Crimson sample (“Power”), the transformation of indie-folkie Bon Iver from insular sensitivo to celebratory party starter (“Lost In the World”), and the world’s most sorrowful three-minute vocoder solo (“Runaway”). —C.W.

SZA kept the world waiting five years for SOS, after her groundbreaking 2017 debut CTRL. Expectations were high, but nobody was prepared for the musical and emotional power of SOS. Solána Rowe proved herself one of the most fearlessly original artists in the game, exploring heartbreak, loneliness, and the struggle for self-determination, in her cathartic R&B confessions. She defies all genre cliches, mixing hip-hop and rock with soul-deep ballads like “Snooze.” She even tries a country-style murder ballad in “Kill Bill,” which blew up into one of the era’s most startling Number One hits. These songs are full of complex poetic emotion, from intimate pain (“I don’t wanna be your girlfriend / I’m just tryna be your person”) to declarations like “Now that I’ve ruined everything I’m so fucking free.” “I don’t even give a fuck about cohesion,” she told Rolling Stone. “If you sound like you, your shit’s going to be cohesive. Period.” But SOS is the album where SZA proved she can do it all.–R.S.

Over a decade since its 2012 release, Kendrick Lamar’s major-label debut is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. It’s a conceptual masterwork in which the protagonist, painfully aware of his vulnerability, navigates threats from neighborhood gangs, law enforcement, and even himself. “Kendrick a.k.a. Compton’s human sacrifice,” he cries out. He imagines himself as a wayward son of the city determined to survive, conveying his youthful dalliances with alcohol and opiates in densely lyrical and metaphorical verse as well as crooned harmonies. A phalanx of guests, from rap vocalists Pharrell Williams and MC Eiht to backing singers like Anna Wise, helps Lamar create a complex and operatic coming-of-age tale that invites repeated listening. No matter how much he’s changed since, Lamar’s reputation will always depend on whether he’s living up to the ambition of that “good kid” navigating a city in chaos. —M.R.

“All I do is try, try, try,” Taylor Swift sings on the unexpectedly Mazzy Star-like “Mirrorball,” one of the many high points of her very best album. But Folklore sounds anything but effortful, the work of an artist who’s not aiming to please anyone but herself. With help from the National’s Aaron Dessner and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, Swift locked in during lockdown, telling her wittiest and most haunting tales, creating crystalline miniatures that sometimes spiral toward the sky. In all, the album points the way to the next segment of an already long career, as she leans into the sultry lower end of her singing voice and steps away from autobiography into pure fiction, particularly in the interlaced high-school-confidential narrative of “Cardigan,” “August” (with its sublime “meet me behind the mall” chorus), and “Betty.” The Bon Iver collaboration “Exile” was, by far, her best duet, while the exquisitely melancholic “The 1” is an album opener for the ages. —B.H.

OutKast spent the Nineties shattering their own creative records, each album deeper and more daring than the last. As the clock turned to the new millennium, they pulled off their most stunning act of liberation with Stankonia — the wildest, most out-there hip-hop blockbuster ever made. “B.O.B.” hotwires drum-and-bass, gospel, and a Jimi Hendrix-style guitar solo; “Ms. Jackson” is instant-classic soul with an eye on forever; even the cruder moments, like “We Luv Deez Hoez,” keep all that high-flying genius grounded firmly on Earth. André 3000’s outrageous evolution away from any concept of style or genre was a big part of what made Stankonia so vital. Within a few years, Big Boi’s and André’s visions had diverged too far to coexist; this is the last time their visions truly connected on a single CD, yielding a masterpiece that few have topped since. —S.V.L.

Frank Ocean spent four years crafting his audaciously personal avant-soul statement Blonde. After his stellar debut Channel Orange, he owed Def Jam one more album, so he fulfilled his contract with the visual project Endless—but then dropped Blonde as a surprise just a few hours later. It’s more than a radically experimental follow-up—it’s a glimpse into his soul. Ocean broods over pained memories in futuristic R&B trips like “Ivy” and “Nikes.” Blonde has a slow-burning electro-pulse, full of dream-like guitar, tapping into the psychedelic spirit of Marvin Gaye and Brian Wilson. He samples some of his heroes—Stevie Wonder, Elliott Smith, the Beatles—while collaborating with others like André 3000 and Beyoncé, who sings on “Pink + White.” “Boys do cry,” Ocean said at the time, “but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.” Blonde summons all that lost emotion—an introspective artist mourning the past, yet finding himself in the music.–R.S.

When Kid A dropped in October 2000, Bill Clinton was president, the Twin Towers were standing, Donald Trump was a washed-up real estate huckster, and the internet still held the promise of educating young minds and uniting mankind. But the 11 tracks Radiohead assembled for their fourth album — utilizing sequencers, drum machines, vintage synthesizers, strings, and a brass section — foresaw a darker 21st century, one marked by fear, loneliness, dislocation, and technological advancements that only divide us further. (In other words, they knew exactly where we were headed.) Fans were initially baffled by dense, abstract songs like “Everything in Its Right Place,” “Idioteque,” and “The National Anthem.” Within a few years, many were calling it their favorite Radiohead album. And 25 years later, there’s near-universal sentiment that Kid A is not only a towering achievement by the greatest band of its time, but also a warning call that went completely unheeded. —A. Greene

Since the release of her self-titled fifth album in 2013, each Beyoncé volume has leveled up in some way — yet Lemonade bests them all in storytelling, revelation, and cultural resonance. In all she’s accomplished, she has yet to meet the world as vulnerably as she does here, laying bare the trauma of her very famous husband’s infidelity to their marriage and the empire they built upon it. Still, the shock and intrigue from that ends up trailing far behind the defining ethos Beyoncé constructs from her despair. It starts with intricate songs that span time and genre, from the sugary, Soulja Boy-sampling reggae of “Hold Up” to the hard rock “Don’t Hurt Yourself” with Jack White to the country yarn “Daddy Lessons.” From there, Lemonade is foundational to the wide arc of studied genius we’ve come to expect from Beyoncé in subsequent years: For instance, the disrespect she and the Chicks faced performing “Daddy Lessons” at the 2016 Country Music Awards informed her hard pivot South eight years later on Cowboy Carter. Perhaps Lemonade incentivized the utter excellence of every work that followed because of its stunning losses at the 2017 Grammys — her third time losing Album of the Year, with another loss to come. For many, that night crystalized that being the best as a Black woman might never be enough. Yet, she continued to be just that.Lemonade has always been is more than just an album. It’s a music film as layered, gorgeous, and haunting as a canonical drama, a matrix of generational heartbreak, a celebration of legacy, and a hand-drawn map to the intersections of many Black women’s interpersonal and political lives. That last aspect was especially palpable when “Freedom” became Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign theme. In 2016, the defiance and Black radical aesthetic of Lemonade’s hit single “Formation” was so bold that some police unions spitefully called for a boycott of Beyoncé — Lemonade soundtracked a shifting world, and rocked it too. While valid concerns exist as to whether she actually lives out the values of the social iconography she’s channeled or fundamentally contradicts them, the merits of Beyoncé’s artistry are undeniable. Put simply, Lemonade solidified her status among the best musicians of all time. —M.C.

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