Wait, didn’t I already review the 2010s? Indeed I did! See here for my picks for the best albums of the 2010s from that first review. But we’re not quite done, and the reason why involves 2024…

It turns out that 2024 was the 25th year of the millennium. And that is just too rich a symbolic target for me to forgo- the chance to discover the 25 best albums of the first quarter century of a new millennium! I have all the source material I’ll need: I’ve reviewed the 2000s in several venues, did the above-mentioned 2010s review, and have top 20-23 lists for 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023, with the search for 24 for 2024 now underway.

But my 2010s list is a little light comparatively. While my 2000s list from various sources sports around 60 entries, my 2010s review of 52 of the the critic’s top-ranked albums resulted in 34 picks. In order to balance that out a bit decade by decade, I’ve decided to go ahead and review the next tier down of 2010s albums per my original source lists. That will give us 36 more albums to review, which I’ll do in 6 blocks of 6. And hopefully thereby have a few more picks for my aspired Grand Review of 2000-2024!

So far we’ve had: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Got it? Okay, let’s go with part 4!

Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) (Lin Manuel Miranda, 2015)– Without question, Hamilton is a stupendous achievement. It brought a body of contemporary music to theater that had previously been ignored there, and recast both theater and a chunk of American history from the point of view of people of color. As an album, though, the soundtrack is probably less influential. That is to say, it brought hip hop and contemporary soul to theater, but they were already dominating pop music in the teens, and while the musical looms large, this album as such wasn’t musically influential. At least that’s how it seems to me, looking back from almost ten years on…

Pure Heroine (Lorde, 2013)– I had heard “Royals” of course, in 2014 you were actually required by law to listen to that song at least once a week. But I wasn’t otherwise familiar with this album. It turns out that the melodic synths and glitch beats that pervade the rest of the album are pretty pleasing. But the real star, by far, is Lorde’s voice, in both senses of the word. She manages to sound passionate and richly lackadaisical at the same time, and paints vivid pictures of love and life among youth on the outside- due to age, class, values, etc. So it’s a pleasure to listen to, it has depth, and it has cohesion, which is pretty darn good for a debut album from someone who was then in her teens!

Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (M83, 2011)– After a lifetime of skepticism, over the past two plus years, I have been developing some considerable affection for electronic music. More old school house and techno and their immediate offshoots than the more contemporary continental Euro-version, though there are definitely exceptions to that! But French electronic group M83, or at least this album by them, does not seem to be one of those exceptions. It’s just a little too dreamy synthy bleary all-one-tone for my tastes.

Puberty 2 (Mitski, 2013)– The weirdly off metallic beats, double-entente lyrics and vocal melody of the opener had me hooked right off! And then again on track two, which felt like nineties alternative come again. In general, she seems to be on a path that several other female song-writers of the teens were tuned in to- a kind of fusion of nineties guitar rock and electronic music production in a lush pop setting, with complex confessional emotional lyrics. Generally achingly pretty, but very not afraid to get rough and ugly, in fact relishing it. On this album, she makes that mix work from beginning to end.

The Pinkprint (Nicki Minaj, 2014)– I’m more than a little ashamed to say that I wasn’t really familiar with Nicki Minaj beyond the fact of her major cultural footprint, and part of me wanted to find something to dislike here due to her recent embrace of the Magaverse. However, if there’s one thing I’m never dishonest about, it’s what I think of music, and I have to report- I utterly failed! The versatility and verve of the production is amazing, blenderizing multiple aspects of twenty-teens hip-hope, soul, and dance music in a way that feels both effortless and very skillful. No less impressive, though, is her lyrical and vocal range and the variety of personas she writes from. Heartfelt ballads of disappointed love, soul-baring meditations on loss, and sheer bawdy raunch all co-exist here in a way where none of it feels false or out of place. Sorry part of me that wanted her to misstep, but she’s amazing! I can totally see how this album ended up on this list. In fact, I’m insulted on its behalf that it didn’t rank high enough with critics to get on the original batch of 2010s albums I reviewed.

After Laughter (Paramore, 2017)– I can hear a lot of roots here- both the pop and the more quirky new wave side of eighties electro-pop, frequent appearances of polyrhythms that bring the Talking Heads to mind, and some of the confessional rawness of alt nineties female singer songwriters. It’s never less than well-done, fun, and very agreeable. Can you smell the but coming? (Sorry about that, I swear I showered!) But… I’m not sure it adds up to more than that. I don’t hear the sound of this album descending to anything after the teens, being better than the best albums of that decade in a similar vein, or being as great as their (seeming, to my ear) inspirations. Sorry Paramore, I know that’s an insanely high standard, but we’re 24 albums into this review now, and the competition is fierce!

So there we are with batch four of six of the 36 overflow albums for the 2010s that I’m reviewing! From this batch, I would say Pure Heroine, Puberty 2 and The Pinkprint are definite “yeses”. That’s a 50% success rate according to my calculations! Stay tuned to see what awaits us in albums 25-30…