The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far

The White Stripes blazed out of Detroit Punk City with their color-coded/brother-sister mythology, droll whimsy, playful irony, and minimalist garage-blues stomp. Meg White pounded like Maureen Tucker by way of Dave Grohl. Jack White brayed and winked and stole from everywhere — Led Zeppelin, Country Joe and the Fish, Jim Croce. On their third album, they delivered acoustic sweetness worthy of Big Star’s “Thirteen” on “We’re Going to Be Friends,” and primal violence worthy of the Stooges on “I Think I Smell a Rat,” and blew up into real-life rock stars with the rocket-fuel riff and Lego video of “Fell in Love With a Girl.” —J.D.

On their fourth album in as many years, One Direction crystallized their placement in the highest tier of pop’s pantheon. It’s a feat accomplished by the soft-rock ballad “Fireproof” alone, but there was a perfected harmonic synergy among the group’s five vocalists — an electric connection bolstered by thunderous, stadium-ready pop rock. “Stockholm Syndrome,” “Clouds,” and “No Control” take off at 300 miles per hour, an edge of blazing seduction in each performance. Four is built on an astonishing victory lap of impassioned ballads, from “18” and “Night Changes” to “Fool’s Gold” and “Spaces.” They’re all rooted in the kind of love and heartache that only exists in romance films and One Direction songs. —L.P.

When Nicki Minaj’s highly anticipated debut was released near the end of 2010, its shifts between flashy hashtag flows like “Roman’s Revenge” and soft synthwave romances such as “Right Thru Me” jarred and divided hip-hop heads. Nearly 15 years later, and with Minaj’s reputation as one of the most important rappers of her era secure, Pink Friday is easier to comprehend. She introduces a new paradigm where women are unafraid to fully express themselves, whether that’s belting emotional pop hooks on “Moment for Life” or lyrically ripping apart unnamed rivals on “Did It on ‘Em.” “I’m fighting for the girls that never thought they could win,” she professes on the opening track, “I’m the Best.” “All my bad bitches, I can see your halo.” —M.R.

Centuries from now, when you look up the word “rebirth” in the dictionary, there will be a Polaroid of a woman cut off at the eyes, wearing red lipstick and a seagulls sweatshirt. Taylor Swift’s fifth album, 1989, was the moment she started over. She completely abandoned country and made her first genuine pop album, enlisting her new bud (Jack Antonoff, among other producers) and her new playground (New York City) to create shiny synth magic. Tracks like “Blank Space,” “Style,” and “Shake It Off” became Swift classics, and when she revisited them 9 years later on 1989 (Taylor’s Version), they remained timeless. —A.M.

PJ Harvey name-checks New York City a lot on her fifth album, but if you listen closely, the record’s real setting is a dramatic, war-torn, post-apocalyptic world where whores hustle and hustlers whore, and the only sensible emotions are anxiety and love. “This world all gone to war, all I need is you tonight,” she sings cautiously and succinctly on “One Line.” Each song presents its own tempest: a violent burst of passion on “This Is Love,” searching for lost innocence (“Good Fortune”), feeling trapped in love (the Thom Yorke duet “The Mess We’re In”), the promise of hope (“We Float”). Harvey’s seismic ardor sometimes feels overwhelming, but it’s the mystery and the moment that matters. —K.G.

While the Strokes were defining New York’s garage-rock revival, Interpol were defining urban ennui. Paul Banks’ croon, monotone and moody, floats over Daniel Kessler’s echo-laden arpeggios and Carlos Dengler’s icy bass lines. Bright Lights captured the weird tension of post-9/11 Manhattan, moving from restraint to release, cool detachment (“Obstacle 1”) to intense necessity (“PDA”). Kessler’s high-end melodies weaving through Dengler’s propulsive low-end runs created a sonic portrait of isolation that evoked their heroes Joy Division and the Cure without copping to them. —S.G.

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many artists were postponing their releases, Phoebe Bridgers forged ahead and dropped her second album. We’re glad she did: for many, Punisher became a soundtrack to those turbulent, isolated times, a tractor beam that helped us escape. And if John Mayer described her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, as the “arrival of a giant,” Punisher solidified her stance as one of the strongest songwriters of her generation. Come for the late-night trips to the drugstore and nautical-themed birthday parties. Stay for that brutal, guttural scream on “I Know the End.” —A.M.

Nobody was ready for American Idiot when the rock opera about life in George W. Bush’s America dropped in the fall of 2004. Prior to the release, Green Day were seen by many as Nineties pop-punk burnouts a decade past their Dookie peak. But American Idiot — which takes aim at the military-industrial complex, corporate greed, suburban malaise, and even reality TV — connected with a new generation of teenagers and turned Green Day into a stadium-rock band rivaled only by the likes of U2. It sold 23 million records worldwide, was turned into a Broadway play, earned Green Day a Best Rock Album Grammy, and proved that reports of rock’s death in the age of Napster were grossly exaggerated. —A. Greene

Styles’ soft-rock debut and its theatrical follow-up, Fine Line, were just stepping stones toward his breakthrough Harry’s House. It’s a record that indulges in an adoration for music that revels in its weird idiosyncrasies. “Daydreaming” references the funk and R&B of the Brothers Johnson, while “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” carries the eccentricity of Japanese city pop. Styles paints a portrait of domesticity with a similar embrace on cuts like “Matilda” and “Keep Driving,” or even the more curious “Cinema.” They’re songs that feel tangibly lived in and intimate. He goes big, too. “As It Was” and “Satellite” are explosive pop numbers with endless replay value. As it turned out, blocking the outside noise made sizable room for Styles’ glorious mess of things. —L.P. 

Keep your Platinum plaques, Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album was certified Pulitzer. Comparatively uncomplicated compared to Compton opera good kid, m.A.A.d city or the pan-genre existential history lesson To Pimp a Butterfly, Damn. is nonetheless Lamar’s best-selling album, a tornado of his most technical rapping, his most trap-centric beats and his most personal musings on life as a rap superstar, Fox News talking point, tirelessly driven artist, family man, insecure human and terrified voice of a generation. It’s all in his DNA and Lamar — self-describing as an “anti-social extrovert” —is not afraid to gaze into the microscope.–C.W.

It’s easy to get lost in the swirl of Björk’s Vespertine. Each song is its own lenticular explosion of found sounds, cinematic strings, and breathy confessions of love, which Björk meticulously constructed with the thinnest instruments she could find (decks of cards, harps, music boxes) alongside producers like Matmos and the Notwist’s Console. There’s urgency in the blossoming strings of “Hidden Place,” which could double as a James Bond theme, gloopy sounds on “Heirloom,” and uncoiling snaky strings on “Unison.” The closest thing to a pop-song moment is when she sings, “I love him, I love him, I love him,” on “Pagan Poetry.” Mostly Vespertine is an alternate universe you absorb more than listen to, the avant-garde at its most appealing. —K.G.

In her 2015 memoir, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein wrote that with The Woods, the band “started big and we carved smallness and detail out of a broader canvas.” The Woods is full of big, loud, muscular songs; their new-found rockstar swagger mixed with their brilliant raw and rage-filled lyrics make for a sonically and thematically darker experience. Take the incredible one-two-three punch of “Jumpers,” “Modern Girl,” and “Entertain.” Or the “Let’s Call It Love” into “Night Light” 15-minute extravaganza. It would be 10 years before the band came back together for No Cities to Love. And sure, The Woods would have been a perfectly good capstone, but lucky for us, there was more great music to come. —L.T.

The Parisian robot invaders became full-on pop stars and trailblazers with Discovery. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo channeled Eighties and Seventies nostalgia for everything from 10cc to Van Halen through their signature filter house sound, shellacking on enough talk-box whimsy to bury Peter Frampton alive. The vocoder nostalgia of “One More Time” and “Digital Love” became an early template for two decades of Auto-Tune hits, while “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and “Crescendolls” were dance-floor slapstick of the finest. Funny, funky, and often strangely poignant, Discovery could have just been a winky good time, but now it stands tall as one of the finest dance-music long-players ever made. —J.D.

Lana Del Rey’s major-label debut is a cinematic feat of glamorous world-building that feels as relevant in today’s popscape as it did when it was first released. From the baroque crooning on “Video Games” to the storytelling prowess of “National Anthem” to the anthemic “Summertime Sadness” (which memorably soundtracked Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and has notched nearly 2 billion Spotify streams), Born to Die stacked up soon-to-be-iconic songs and laid out a blueprint for stars to follow in Del Rey’s wake. Billie Eilish joined Del Rey during her Coachella headlining set, calling her “the voice of a generation,” and it isn’t hard to see why. Born to Die is a Nineties kid’s greatest-hits record, ultimate mood board fodder, and a masterclass in staying power. —W.A.

On Thank U, Next, Ariana Grande refused to perform her pain for the sake of pop spectacle. She knew the world would be watching to see how she would package the trauma she experienced following the death of her close friend Mac Miller and the disintegration of her highly publicized engagement. The therapeutic hit “Thank U, Next” and the trap-influenced pop dream “7 Rings” marked the inception of a defining pop phenomenon. Grande distilled her grief into the heart-wrenching ballads “Ghostin” and “Needy,” then positioned both next to Herculean pop efforts “NASA” and “In My Head.” Just as impressively, she subverted expectations in moments like the ‘NSync flip on “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored.” All this defined her as one of pop’s most compelling stars. —L.P.

Bruce Springsteen spent much of the Nineties struggling to find his songwriting voice due to shifting musical tastes and the absence of his longtime backing group the E Street Band. But when the Twin Towers fell shortly after the conclusion of an E Street Band reunion tour, Springsteen suddenly started writing stark, powerful songs about the tragedy like “Empty Sky,” “Into the Fire,” and “The Rising.” Working with Pearl Jam producer Brendan O’Brien, he crafted them into an album that channeled the collective grief of the nation, and proved he had much more to offer rock fans than memories of his own glory days. It was the start of an entirely new chapter of his career. —A. Greene

“I wanted it to be difficult,” M.I.A. said of her second album. “I get really pissed off, and want to do anything but make easy music.” Kala wasn’t easy, but it was both far-ranging and pissed off, a magnum opus that speaks truth to power while sounding like it was made all over the world, which was sort of true. The Anglo-Sri-Lankan rapper recorded in Australia, Trinidad, Jamaica, India, and Angola, working with collaborators from Timbaland to Afrikan Boy to the South Indian drummers who played the urmi on the awesomely percolating “Bird Flu.” There was even a smash hit: “Paper Planes,” which prodded capitalism (and anti-immigrant hysteria) amid cash-register chimes, gunshots, and a Clash sample. Who the hell else could have pulled that off, let alone thought of it? Nobody. —C.H. 

The magnum opus not just of J Dilla’s prodigious catalog but all instrumental hip-hop. While its creation story is up for debate — including how much the gifted producer recorded in his hospital room prior to his death at age 32 of lupus — the results are indisputable: a near-perfect, endlessly listenable compendium of beats influenced mainly by the producer’s love of Motown and 1970s soul and funk. Dilla died three days after the album’s release, giving it a warped, tragic mystique to the producer’s already-mythical reputation. With nearly all the 31 tracks under two minutes, Dilla showcases both his musical peripateticism and joyous restlessness for an album that fans still find new meanings in nearly two decades later. —J.N.

With its expansive sonic palette and myriad influences, AM stands unmatched as Arctic Monkeys’ capital-R Rock Record. It’s not just the maximum riffage on “Do I Wanna Know” or the Sabbath-worshiping “Arabella,” it’s the tributaries that lead to everyone from Lou Reed (“Mad Sounds”) and Aaliyah (“R U Mine?”), to Dr. Dre (“Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High”) and Elton John (“No. 1 Party Anthem”). All of this upholds Alex Turner’s picaresque narrative of heartache and yearning, at times fantastical, often rendered with the vivid realism that’s long defined some of his best songwriting. AM proves once more that there’s nothing more rock & roll than insatiable desire, abject loneliness, and loud guitars. —J. Blistein

In 2006, production team the Neptunes laced the Thornton brothers with a weird, groovy, outright confounding collection of beats like “Keys Open Doors” and “Ride Around Shining.” The duo took advantage of the one-of-one production, with Pusha ruthless enough to rhyme “Fuckin’ with college bitches with innocent looks like Mya/Corrupt they mind, turn ’em to liars,” Malice flashy enough to ask, “Mink on the floor, make you hot, don’t it?“ while they’re both vulnerable enough to admit that the drug game came with “Nightmares.” It’s one of the most holistic depictions of the fast life, over a sound bed just as addictive as the project’s major theme. —A. Gee 

Radiohead invented a new kind of surprise album drop for In Rainbows, announcing it just a few days in advance. No label, no single — just a pay-whatever-you-want download. But the music was the real revelation: Radiohead at their warmest and most expansive, thriving on their collective energy. They reworked songs they’d been fleshing out live for a couple of years, with jagged guitar trips like “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” or the tambourine jam “Reckoner.” Yet the love songs have an R&B lilt, as Thom Yorke pours his heart into ballads like “All I Need.” In Rainbows is the most they’ve ever sounded like five lifelong mates throwing crazy ideas at each other, in a mind-melding communal groove. For many fans, it’s the band’s peak. —R.S.

Heralded (and marketed) as Jay-Z’s “retirement album” — notwithstanding the five subsequent albums, one live album and, well, you get the idea — The Black Album finds Hova victory-lapping his way through a gritty and celebratory biopic of his life. “God forgive me for my brash delivery/But I remember vividly what these streets did to me,” he rhymes on “What More Can I Say?” Assembling the Avengers of super-producers (Kanye West, Neptunes, Timbaland, Just Blaze, and Rick Rubin, among others) alongside a sweet cameo from his mom on “December 4th,” Jay’s blend of nostalgia and ruggedness helped further solidify his place in the pantheon. When most rappers fade out by album three, Jay’s eighth LP remains one of his best. —Jason Newman

Hayley Williams’ signature roar (and tangerine-colored hair) pierced through dude-filled mall emo like a firework. As the record label Fueled by Ramen created mainstream giants out of Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco, Paramore came in to take the crown with Riot! Packed with confident, booming pop-punk staples like “That’s What You Get” and “Misery Business,” the razor-sharp LP convinced the world that a girl-fronted emo pop-rock band was in it for the long haul — and bound to become one of the biggest bands of the past two decades. No one predicted their future better than Paramore themselves as they used their second album to belt out, “We were born for this!” —M.G.

The last true blockbuster of the CD era is a sprawling R&B album packed with wall-shaking bangers, heart-ripping ballads, and top-tier collaborators like Lil Jon, Stevie Wonder, and the Neptunes. It’s a commanding showcase of the Atlanta-repping singer’s versatility — and his bravery. “It takes guts to talk about the stuff I talk about on this album,” Usher told Rolling Stone in 2003. “I’ve had trials and tribulations. I have all that shit to pull from.” While the dance-floor-defining Crunk & B megasmash “Yeah!” might be a bit too amped-up to be heart-to-heart fodder, tracks like the world-torching slow jam “Burn” and the bittersweet Alicia Keys duet, “My Boo,” find the cracks in Usher’s pop-heavyweight facade and dive in. —M.J.

On this masterpiece of emotionally charged electro-pop, the Swedish singer crafted a futuristic sound with real human flaws. On “Dancing on My Own,” four-on-the-floor drums pound beneath arcade synths before that chorus hits like a defibrillator to the chest — “I’m in the corner, watching you kiss her” — suddenly we’re all alone together on the dance floor, praying “Call Your Girlfriend” comes on next. Every aspect of this album wants to shatter the stereotype that dance pop can’t go deep. On “Indestructible,” Robyn builds a fortress of strings and synths just to tell us about the cracks in its foundation. Even the frantic banger “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do” burns like an anxiety attack by way of rave. —S.G.