The Best Albums of 2021

Jem Aswad's Top 10

1. Tyler, the Creator, 'Call Me If You Get Lost' 

Tyler’s outsized, controversial personality has often obscured what a unique, innovative, multifaceted and prolific artist he is. Not only has he released six albums over the past ten years, his music is just half the story: More than virtually any other rapper, his videos and visuals are an essential component of his gloriously bonkers vision. Whether it’s song structure or video concepts (one might think, “OK, what is he saying in this video where he’s first rapping in a cornfield, then flexing on top of a car with ludicrously huge tires, and then falling through the sky, all in 90 seconds?”), it’s surrealist art of the highest order. But “Call Me If You Get Lost” is all of that and his most cohesive album to date, a giant step up from its predecessor “Igor,” which may be the strangest album ever to win a Grammy for best rap album.

2. PinkPantheress, 'To Hell With It'

In these ADD-addled times, an album that lasts for 18 minutes and 36 seconds and still contains 10 discrete, fully realized songs is an art unto itself. With “To Hell With It,” 20-year-old Brit sensation Pink Pantheress has offhandedly created a compressed masterpiece, shaping bits of influences and songs nearly older than she is (drum n’ bass, Paramore, Lily Allen, Linkin Park) into something entirely new — and over before you know it. Unlike rapper Tierra Whack — who created her own masterpiece of 15 one-minute-long songs with “Whack World” three years ago, seemingly as a process of reduction — PinkPantheress created hers via as a process of expansion, honing her craft on TikTok and taking her song-snippets beyond that platform’s parameters to create 90-120-second songs that barely have a wasted moment and leave the listener sated but still seeking more. And make no mistake, they’re real pop songs, with indelible hooks and melodies that could have come from a pop anthem in the late ‘60s, the mid-‘90s or last year (see the expertly Autotuned “Just for Me”). While not all of the songs are great, PinkPantheress is like a micro Charli XCX, casually sculpting pop into exciting new shapes.

3. Adia Victoria, 'A Southern Gothic'

This South Carolina-born, Nashville-based singer has been bubbling under for a few years, but with this, her third album, she has truly come of age. Executive-produced by T Bone Burnett and featuring Jason Isbell and Margo Price, this perfectly titled album veers between rock, country, blues, soul and even flashes of gospel, bringing so many swampy sounds of the South (along with an unexpected flash of Portishead on “Far From Dixie”) into a diverse but cohesive setting for Victoria’s tales of troubled minds, revenge and loves gone wrong. Her subtle, sultry delivery, never rising above room volume, often belies the words of a person on the brink: When she sings “First I was sad, and then I was blue / And now I’m so mad I don’t know what I might do,” her calm delivery is leagues scarier than a shriek. “A Southern Gothic” plays out like a short story collection, one so evocative you can smell the pines and feel the wet heat rising from the ground.

4. Mdou Moctar, 'Afrique Victime'

Anyone paying attention knows that some of the greatest rock music in recent years has come out of the Western Sahara, in the “desert blues” style pioneered by Ali Farka Toure and moved into new directions by Tinarwen, Songhoy Blues and Mdou Moctar. An astonishing, self-taught guitarist, he’s been releasing albums for the past dozen years but this one presents him and his smoking-hot band (featuring fellow guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane) in their best light to date, where their stellar musicianship combines with grooves so powerful it’s enough to make you think there’s still some life in the wizening art form known as rock ‘n’ roll.

5. Arlo Parks, 'Collapsed in Sunbeams'

Arlo Parks is the kind of artist who almost could have been created in a test tube for a certain type of music fan: a 20-year-old singer-songwriter raised in London to Nigerian/Chadian-French parents; songs with personal yet universal lyrics steeped in R&B and alt-rock but anchored in singer-songwriter tradition; cosigns from Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers and even Michelle Obama; an album title taken from a Zadie Smith short story; two songs produced by Adele collaborator Paul Epworth. Yet the album lives up to that billing with an intimacy, immediacy and human-ness that makes it one of those albums that’s like a soul-refreshing visit with a friend — it seems all but inevitable that Parks will be one of the breakthrough artists of 2021.

6. Yebba, 'Dawn'  

Yebba — a.k.a. Abbey Smith — is a prodigiously talented 26-year-old singer who’s been buzzing for so long it’s hard to believe “Dawn” is her debut album. She’s already won a Grammy (for a 2019 collaboration with PJ Morton) and over the past five years has duetted with Drake, Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran and had three featured songs on Mark Ronson’s stellar “Late Night Feelings” album; the Grammy-winning Amy Winehouse/Lady Gaga collaborator also produced many of the songs on “Dawn.” Her A-list track record is no accident: Yebba is one of the most powerful and versatile singers to come along in many years, with a range and array of styles so wide that several songs sound like they were performed by different singers. She occupies a musical terrain somewhere between pop, R&B and, at times, ‘70s jazz fusion, She brings a different style and approach to nearly every song, veering from brassy wail to folky prim (“October Sky”), from Adele-sized power (“Love Came Down”) to breathy sultriness (“Distance”). She can also vamp with a jazz singer’s dexterity, speckling the songs with “Whee-oohs” and “Whoo-hoos” and “Ayee-yeahs” that make for some of the album’s strongest hooks and could easily become a trademark. Yet she’s not just showing off: Each of her voices suits the emotion of the songs, and she can slip between vulnerable and sassy, anguished and aggressive in seconds.

7. Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, 'Superwolves'

The track records of Bonnie “Prince” Billy — a.k.a. former Palace frontman Will Oldham — and guitarist-singer Matt Sweeney reach back some 30 years and create a dense discographical tangle that takes as long to read as most of the albums take to listen to. Yet all of Oldham’s work bears his trademark high, breathy voice and folk-inflected songwriting, and Sweeney’s diverse resume (frontman for ‘90s indie band Chavez who’s played with Iggy Pop, Adele, Tinarwen, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond) is proof of his deeply versatile playing. This sort-of sequel to their 2005 album “Superwolf” is the duo’s best work to date, a collection of deeply resonant songs based in Oldham’s folk-leaning melodies and often bizarre lyrics embellished with gorgeous guitar arrangements that range from rock to country, and even some dashes of Malian music.

8. Arooj Aftab, 'Vulture Prince'

An album born of mourning, “Vulture Prince” finds this Pakistani-born, Brooklyn-based singer-musician occupying a place somewhere between classical, jazz and the Urdu ghazals of her home country. Mostly spare, quiet and played on acoustic instruments — except for a brief foray into reggae and English lyrics on “Last Night” — Aftab’s beautiful, haunting melodies evoke sadness, love, longing and many other emotions, and the deceptive complexity of compositions and arrangements reveals her Berklee School of Music training and background as a film composer. Yet most of the songs on “Vulture Prince” are unique to any culture; Aftab may be the least-known of the 2022 best new artist Grammy nominees, but she’s certainly among the most notable.

9. Summer Walker, 'Still Over It'

This album’s much-publicized narrative isn’t just part of its lyrics but its music and its very creation, since many of its songs are about Walker’s rocky relationship with producer London on Da Track, who not only helmed many of the songs here, but has a son with Walker. And as harrowing as the lyrics can be, the creative friction actually comes just as much from a sense of contrast as it does from anger and heartbreak: Its counterintuitively romantic-sounding R&B so loaded with sweet, echo-drenched harmonies that it can feel like an hour in the sauna or a giant slice of double-chocolate cake, until you focus on her raw, wrenching lyrics about heartbreak, betrayal and sentiments like “If I had you back, all I’d wanna do is fuck, get drunk, take drugs,” and “I wanna start with your mama, she shoulda whooped your ass.” It’s a jarring contrast that’s resonating in a deeply emotionally jarring time.

10. Sault, 'Nine'

This mysterious British collective has somehow released five albums of innovative, angular R&B in just over two and a half years, all of which deliver Black-centric, anti-racist messaging over deceptively alluring sounds. They’ve also made an art out of anonymity — the collective is helmed by songwriter/producer Inflo and a few collaborators, and that’s basically all we know. Unexpectedly, “Nine” initially evokes the stripped-down sound of the group’s debut, “5,” much more than the lush, at times dance-oriented vibe of their last two (both of which were titled “Untitled”); the remarkably versatile group also offers up several previously unexplored styles as well as new variations on older ones. How they manage to keep such a low profile — let alone pay for five not-cheap-to-record, full-length albums in two years when they’re giving away a large percentage of their recorded music — is perhaps the biggest mystery of all. But as with all things Sault, the point isn’t who or how; it’s what and why.

Honorable mentions that could well have made the top 10 on a different day:  Amindi, “Nice”; Bomba Estereo, “Deja”; Idles, “Crawler”; Bruno Mars-Anderson .Paak, “An Evening With Silk Sonic”; Tems, “If Orange Was a Place.”

Chris Willman's Top 10

1. Allison Russell, 'Outside Child'

Musical memoirs don’t come any braver or better than Russell’s solo debut, the finest album of 2021. No other record this year matched the combination of emotional potency, melodic fluency, social significance and heartrending beauty. Russell grew up in a household where she was subject to the worst possible kinds of abuse, but what’s unspeakable becomes singable as the artist writes not just about trauma but all the things that gave her shelter from the storm and ultimately gave her the power to escape — from protective urban neighborhoods to the warmth of a first lover’s bed to, ultimately, the power of music itself to literally save a life. You don’t even have to comprehend what Russell is singing about to enjoy this music’s craft or catharsis; she’s been winning over fans as an opening act on tours this year without necessarily having to engulf every audience in the full measure of her dark and triumphant journey. But for those who dive in, there’s  thrilling truth in how “Outside Child” uses its more harrowing turns to arrive at an ultimately joyful noise.

2. Brandi Carlile, 'In These Silent Days'

If you require any proof that Carlile is as gifted a singer as we’ve got right now, one listen to her seventh album should suffice. The figurative voice that she’s found as a lyricist stands out as well, of course, with a sense of compassion and healing you’re hard-pressed to find in much other popular music nowadays, grounded by cutting insights and self-lacerating confessions that make the music sound as shook as it is woke. But, yes, you will also keep coming back around to marveling over the literal voice, too, as Carlile effortlessly glides between octaves while somehow still sounding completely conversational — the relatable, everyday diva we didn’t know we needed until she showed up. In the Grammy-nominated single “Right on Time,” she sounds like a classic octave-spanning diva, but on a Who-styled rocker like “Broken Horses,” she’s suddenly Roger Daltrey. These thrilling passages would count as show-off moments for almost anyone else, but for Carlile, who only takes the notes where they need to go to hit the gut and the heart, it’s just another day at the oratorical office.

3. Billie Eilish, 'Happier Than Ever'

In the opening lines of her second album, Eilish sings: “I’m getting older / I think I’m aging well.” At the not-so-advanced age of 19, is she being ironic? Probably, but it sure is true. If the slightest doubt remained after her debut about whether she was a fluke or a keeper, it’s rightly settled here, in an album that feels more intimate than the first one, and the first one was pretty intimate. “Happier Than Ever” has a few explosive moments — the second half of the title track, which is basically a screamo wall of distortion, definitely counts — but there’s tension to even her lowest simmer, which is the balance that defines and elevates her. She and her brother Finneas offers plenty of fresh wrinkles amid the well-established hush, like “Billie Bossa Nova,” a delicious stylistic detour that offers exactly what the title promises, and brilliantly. Has any teenager ever offered a meditation on mortality as haunting and gorgeous as “Everybody Dies”? Even when the songs are waxing cynical about the effects of fame, or of predatory and/or lazy men, they never feel remotely jaded. That’s because Eilish really seems more deeply and madly in love than ever… with music. Maybe she and Finneas intended the album title to be a little snarky, but it’s an apt description of how you might really feel, as someone who was rooting for them to beat any sophomore jinx.

4. Liz Phair, 'Soberish'

Remember the great female alt-rock scare of the mid-1990s? Well, some of those artists are still scarily wonderful in 2021. And no singer-songwriter in her 50s right now upped the ante on an already estimable catalog to the extent that Phair did with her first new album in 11 years. With her OG producer Brad Wood back in tow for the first time since the 20th century, there is a return, occasionally at least, to that original indie-trio sound… and also, incidentally, a load of pop hooks the Matrix would be proud of, wherever they are now. But there’s also a very healthy amount of experimentation in both sound and song structure, on top of those reassuringly familiar patterns. What unites it all is Phair’s undying candor about romance, divorce and grown-up hookups… and, as the amusing title promises, the pros and cons of clear-headedness in dealing with everything life and love throw our way. She’s mature enough to know better about what starting afresh with a potential new conquest may mean, and young enough not to care; It’s to our benefit that Phair wavers a lot over the course of these songs on whether romantic love is an invigorating drug or a buzzkill. “Soberish,” delectably, has it both ways.

5. Adele, '30'

The unsatisfying spectacle of Adele talking about her divorce with Oprah was instantly wiped about when we got to hear her sing about it, fruitfully and at length, on “30.” It’s an album that met the breach of her disunion with enough wrenching, life-and-death drama to leave us completely spent by the time its hour was up, then ready to immediately reinvest — because, besides being that exhausting, it was also that good. A few lighter-hearted songs in the middle of the album about potentially moving past her split and hitting the singles scene give us a hint of what Adele-on-the-rebound might be like. But the real rebound, for now, is in Adele as an artist, who’s followed up the weakest of her four albums, the water-treading “25,” with her best. Although this is at times the rawest and most sobering of the records she’s made to date, it also manages conversely to be the most fun, in its emotionally rattling fashion, as Adele mixes it up with an array of producers and stylistic pastiches and arrives at something that has a sense of play to go with all the sadness and self-laceration. If it feels a little more enjoyably messy than her distilled-to-perfection previous albums, that’s altogether fitting for a trip through a divorce court of the mind.

6. Little Simz, 'Sometimes I Might Be Introvert'

“Why the desperate need for applause?” Little Simz asks on “Standing Ovation.” Is that any way to kick off a hip-hop album? The idea of rapper-as-introvert might seem like a foreign one, so it’s appropriate that it is a Brit who’s letting a slight sense of reserve trump the genre’s braggadocio, in declaring that she’s not always a woman of so many words. But the rhymes do spill out, profusely and somewhat brilliantly — “I bottle up and then spill it in verses,” as she says — over the course of an hour-plus collection that has Little Simz questioning all kinds of tropes about what it is she’s expected to represent, be it based in race, gender or Myers-Briggs type. It’s her fourth album, but many Americans are just getting to know her, thanks to some extroverted critical praise. Her longtime producer, Inflo, has been having a heck of a year (see his own Sault project, and several songs on Adele’s album, both represented elsewhere in these top 10s), but he’s never better at pushing sonic pleasures than he is working with the endlessly fascinating Little Simz. At the end of the album, you may feel a desperate need to applaud.

7. Olivia Rodrigo, 'Sour'

If Rodrigo is this strong in her first very first at-bat at 18, how mighty might her superpowers be when she’s 30, and will she use them for good or evil? These are the scary things that keep some of us awake at night. But if it’s spooky how well-developed her song sense already is (with a steady assist from Dan Nigro, of course), the glory of “Sour” is how unabashedly teenage it is. Maybe that goes without saying for a singer-songwriter who was just 17 when she made this album. But a lot of adolescent singers are in a hurry to establish their maturity, so it’s a happy thing to report that Rodrigo doubles down on acting her age at various points throughout “Sour,” providing some of the best woe-is-youth laments this side of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” Rodrigo gives good pop-punk stridency when she’s playing the IRL role of a young woman wronged and fed-up with her no-account boyfriend or overtaxing job, but her sensitive falsetto is a lovely thing, obviously, too. We’ll take her mad or sad or even — bitter album title notwithstanding — caught up in the sweet rush of youth.

8. St. Vincent, 'Daddy's Home'

If you loved the electronic tension of St. Vincent’s 2017 album “Masseduction,” with its nearly operatic art-rock heights… well, “Daddy’s Home” is something entirely different, but just as wonderful. She’d teased that she’d be exploring ’70s influences like Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone this time around, and you get traces of that along the way — she’s bringing clavinet back — but it’s a slightly subdued, more anxious take on hot funk in the summertime. Is all this 1970s mellowness gold? Well, yes: She and co-producer Jack Antonoff have pulled off the tricky stunt of using instrumentation that’s 100% out of a mid-1970s liner-notes checklist (flutes, electric sitar, Wurlitzer piano) in coming up with a record that really doesn’t sound very “period” at all. But with subject matter that leans toward the heavy stuff— shame, loneliness, death, unfulfilled dreams — why not put an era-specific dress and a blonde wig on it? Don’t be distracted by what you or others might have inferred about the album’s concept from its title: It’s St. Vincent herself who intends to be your sensitive mack daddy.

9. Halsey, 'If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power'

Sometimes you learn about a collaboration in the making that sounds so promising, your first instinct is to completely dial down expectations. But “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” proved to be just about everything you’d hope a collab between Halsey and Reznor/Ross would be, combining the kind of sinister simmer that Nine inch Nails are known for with flagrantly sing-able hooks and stream-of-consciousness rage rivers from Halsey herself. (Or themself — the artist prefers alternating pronouns now.) It’s another case of “beauty and the beast” making for an effective teaming, only maybe it’s Halsey who is the beast here, given all the menacing references to teeth and the avenging goddess Lilith. At times you don’t quite know whether to give Halsey a hug or flee in terror, and the fact that neither impulse — fierceness or vulnerability — becomes the dominant one is part of why “If I Can’t Have Love” is so powerful.

10. Girl in Red, 'If I Could Make It Go Quiet'

It’s our gain that Girl in Red, aka Norwegian singer-songwriter Marie Ulven, has not been able to make whatever might be troubling her go quiet. In the album’s opening song, “Serotonin” — which is, naturally, about the lack thereof — Ulven lays out the voices in her head that she might rather not hear: “I get intrusive thoughts / Like burning my hair off / Like hurting somebody I love / Like, does it ever really stop?” There’s a slightly whimsical edge to this fanfare about mental illness, although she’s hardly treating it as a joke. Neither is she unserious, even when she gets slightly bratty, in the succeeding songs about unrequited or abandoned love. It’s not difficult to see why Taylor Swift gave the album a rare social media endorsement this spring; the line from “Red” to Girl in Red is recognizable, even if Ulven rocks out a bit more. The way she shifts from pop-punkiness to pure loveliness should attract anyone who’s worn out their Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish records, too, for how deftly she threads the needle between insolence and vulnerability.

Some honorable mentions: Topaz Jones, “Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma”; Aimee Mann, “Queens of the Summer Hotel”; Taylor Swift, “Red (Taylor’s Version)”; Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales”; Carly Pearce, “29 (Written in Stone)”; Yebba, “Dawn”; Lil Nas X, “Montero”; Mickey Guyton, “Remember My Name”; Dry Cleaning, “New Long Leg”; Adia Victoria, “A Southern Gothic”; Kacey Musgraves, “Star Crossed”; Yola, “Stand for Myself”; and Madlib, “Sound Ancestors” … among dozens of standouts I would have been pleased to put in a top 10 this year.