MUSIC

The Top 10 Most Influential Albums of the 2010s

These albums not only shaped the past decade: they'll determine what music will be in the coming one.

Photo by: Kelvin Lutan / Unsplash

Music has never been extricable from culture, but in the 2010s, it became crystal clear that music has the ability to shatter norms and reshape the world.

Take a moment and think back to the albums that changed your life over the past decade. Most likely, they altered your worldview on a fundamental level, reshaping the way you saw yourself and your life. Some albums are capable of doing that on a massive scale, and that's what this list is intended to highlight: Albums that managed to shift the way people saw music, culture, and themselves, and that paved the way for what music might become.

10. Kendrick Lamar — To Pimp A Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar - Alrightwww.youtube.com

Poet and firebrand Kendrick Lamar creates music that's both timeless and entirely of its time. To Pimp A Butterfly was Kendrick at his most inspired and radioactive. It cut into the pain and rage and hope of an era and a community and a person, and collapsed time into a tangle of sound and memory that reviewers and listeners will be playing and attempting to understand for decades.

It made an indelible impact, becoming a juggernaut and an easy name-drop, but fortunately, To Pimp A Butterfly searingly addresses all the trappings of fame, shallow understanding, and commodification that follow it, retaining an indomitable inner life.

9. BTS — Map of the Soul: Persona

BTS (방탄소년단) MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA 'Persona' Comeback Trailerwww.youtube.com

The 2010s were the era that K-pop entered the global theatre, and nobody dominated more than BTS. Their album Map of the Soul: Persona may not have been critically lauded, but it was legendary in the hearts and minds of their fans.

Map of the Soul: Persona was glittery boy-band pop, pristine and starry-eyed. Rolling Stone described it as "harmless" and "impregnable," but BTS fans are not harmless, and neither is K-pop, but what this band is is unavoidable, pervasive, and larger-than-life. To ignore the impact of BTS would be to miss a massive portion of the 2010s and to remain blind to what the 2020s will hold, which is a far more globalized music industry that, no matter what, will always, always have its beloved boy bands.

8. Carly Rae Jepsen — E•MO•TION

Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Mewww.youtube.com

Jepsen's seminal debut album gained her a cult of devoted fans and spread a wide-eyed sense of pop optimism across the 2010s. Just what about E•MO•TION was so singular, so moving, so unforgettable? As Jia Tolentino wrote, "Carly Rae Jepsen is a pop artist zeroed in on love's totipotency: the glance, the kaleidoscope-confetti-spinning instant, the first bit of nothing that contains it all." As one Twitter user insinuated, "Carly Rae Jepsen's E•MO•TION is for all the gays in a healthy relationship for the first time."

Electric Lit argued that with E•MO•TION, Jepsen ushered in a "queer renaissance," one that exists because her music occupies a familiar feeling: "the struggle to express a desire that isn't supposed to exist." From the raw ecstasy of "Run Away With Me" to the dreamy chaos of "LA Hallucinations," Jepsen's music is desperate to bridge the gap between the self and others, to leave behind loneliness, to cut straight to the feeling; and in that, it left an indelible impact for those who were there to experience its majesty.

7. Lana Del Rey — Born To Die

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com

Lana Del Rey is, rightfully, credited with ushering in the wave of sad-girl pop that is still going strong, thanks to artists like Halsey, Billie Eilish, and of course, Del Rey herself. The artist formerly known as Lizzy Grant emerged onto the scene as a cyborgian, hyper-manufactured industry plant refracted through a vintage DIY filter, and now she's one of the voices of her generation, whispering platitudes on America and sex and sadness in the same breath.

Born To Die was Del Rey at her most manufactured, her most glittery, her must luxurious and opulent and depressed, and it's beautiful in its decay. Its kitschy Americana held no bars, and from its nihilistic title track to the sultry "Blue Jeans"to the weird glamour of "Off To the Races," it effectively spawned an entire generation of flower-crowned teens who are now sad Trump-hating adults.

6. Lady Gaga — Born This Way

Lady Gaga - Born This Waywww.youtube.com

Lady Gaga might not have the clout she did at the beginning of the 2010s, but back in the day, Gaga was a wild card and game-changer, crushing norms, changing fashion, and standing up for the LGBTQ+ community. She was proudly weird and always daring, and she created a whole space for weird pop stars after her. She blended drag, burlesque, and shock-factor performance with genuinely catchy pop, and created a new blueprint for stardom in the process.

Born This Way was arguably her crown jewel, the point where she blossomed into the true freak she'd been waiting to become. It had the ecstatic "You and I" and "Edge of Glory." It marked an era where pop music became inextricable from its visual component and political implications—not that it ever really was.

5. Lizzo — Cuz I Love You

Lizzo - Truth Hurts (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Most likely, Lizzo will be even bigger in the 2020s; after all, she only just released her major label debut album. But Lizzo has already changed the game, creating space for a type of beauty and confidence that pop stars before her have only played at or insinuated. From her refusal to tolerate inadequate men to her willingness to rock thongs at baseball games and her decision to pay tribute to the great women who paved the way for her, at this point, Lizzo might be our best hope for the future.

Cuz I Love You synthesized the hits Lizzo had been building up for years, twining them into a euphoric testament to self-love in spite of a world that teaches you to hate yourself. From the celebratory "Good As Hell" to the buoyant mic-drop that is "Truth Hurts," the album is a gift to us all.

4. Lil Nas X — 7 (EP)

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road (Official Movie) ft. Billy Ray Cyruswww.youtube.com

Lil Nas X's fantastic "Old Town Road" was the perfect conflagration of factors that hit at exactly the right time. It was also supremely, unbelievably catchy. Using memes, blurring genres, buying beats off SoundCloud, coming out on Twitter and being open about how he made "Old Town Road" while sleeping on his sister's couch, Lil Nas caught us all in our heartstrings and created a blueprint for music's undeniably post-genre and multimedia future.

X's EP, "7," wasn't a high-quality work so much as it was a cultural flashpoint, an inspiration that no doubt has marketing executives scrambling to replicate it.

3. Billie Eilish — when we all fall asleep, where do we go?

Billie Eilish - bad guywww.youtube.com

Billie Eilish is changing the game in terms of what pop music can sound like and how pop stars should act. Any producer who attempts to drag pop songs into clear-cut and old-fashioned forms involving high notes and beat drops will find themselves challenged by the innovative, glitchy, challenging tunes that Eilish creates with her brother in their childhood home. Her refusal to fit into gender norms and her insistence on standing up for things like climate make her emblematic of what a future of Gen-Z stars might look like.

when we all fall asleep, where do we go? is a peculiar album. A lot of its songs don't even try for radio play, and some are so sad they can take your breath away. Some are barely whispers, like the moody "when the party's over," while others are cracked and angry and challenging, like the smash hit "bad guy," but all of it's undeniably unforgettable and boundary-breaking.

2. Kanye West — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West - Runaway (Full-length Film)www.youtube.com

Provocative, raw, and almost bloody with emotion, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy continues to reverberate nearly 10 years after it was released. West's album is full of unexpected dips into guitar solos and alien sounds that draw it into new dimensions; it's peppered with cheesy lines, dirty jokes, and shockingly confessional lyrics; and no matter how far West has gone into Christianity, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an enduring ode to the devils we all know.

Its best songs, "All Of the Lights," "Devil In A New Dress" and "Runaway," explore what West has always been working through—the ragged edge where sin meets faith, and where success meets corruption. MBDTF sinks its teeth into the rough, infected parts of the world and creates something great out of them. Though we might not see West exploring this territory again, his work sparked an entire generation of artists looking to dive into the world he created.

1. Beyoncé — Lemonade

Beyoncé - Formationwww.youtube.com

Beyoncé's brilliant Lemonade has yet to be surpassed, even as other artists try to mirror her surprise video-drop format. Lemonade mixed poetry, visuals, and beautiful, kaleidoscopic music to form a treatise on freedom, love, black women's power, and of course, Jay-Z. It made an indelible impact on all the music that came after it, setting the standard for what a truly creative release could look and sound like.

From the harmony-laden "Pray You Catch Me" to the gritty Jack White duet "Don't Hurt Yourself" to the triumphant, anthemic "Freedom," Lemonade changed everything. We can only hope we'll see more like it in the 2020s.

BTS at the American Music Awards

By Featureflash Photo Agency

Congratulations–you've survived 2019

We've been through haunting commercials, traumatically bad movies, and the fall of a favorite childhood author. But through it all, there's been Spotify, judging our music tastes like a disapproving boomer. And yet, we persisted. In alphabetical order, these are the top 50 musical lifelines of the 2010s. In the top 25 are the likes of BTS, Bon Iver, Kendrick Lamar, and Childish Gambino. Among the bottom 25 are FKA twigs, Tayor Swift, Julien Baker, and Charli XCX. Notably absent is anything by Ed Sheeran or Justin Bieber, because we don't believe bad listening habits should be encouraged. Happy listening in 2020!

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MUSIC

Albums That Made You Want to Join a Cult in 2019

From the self-care cult of Lizzo to Lingua Ignota's cult of vengeful women.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

2019 saw a lot of fabulous releases, but which ones will stand the test of time?

While some albums are critically acclaimed but then rapidly fade into obscurity, others are so good that they could easily inspire cults. The albums on this list may not have been the year's most highly acclaimed, but they are the most likely to inspire (if they haven't already) massive cultural shifts and changes that will persist long into the 1920s.

1. Lingua Ignota — Caligula

Lingua Ignota's raging, heavy, monstrous Caligula mixes harsh noise with effects and lyrics that blend liturgical services with murderous impulses. It's a howl of rage that damns all abusers to eternal hell and suffering; and, at a time when women are getting tired of the inaction that accompanied #MeToo, Caligula could easily inspire a cult of women to take to the streets and take back what was taken from them.

LINGUA IGNOTA - DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR (official audio)www.youtube.com

2. Lizzo — Cuz I Love You

The cult of Lizzo is already in full swing, and it looks like it's only going to continue to grow. Lizzo already has tremendous sway, and her lyrics are ubiquitous in Instagram captions and in politicians' Twitter feeds. As many of us resolve to get over self-hate and turn over a new leaf in 2020, Lizzo will certainly only gain notoriety and acclaim. It's easy to imagine a massive group of Twerking, face mask-using, body-positive Lizzo fans and imitators snapping selfies, going viral, and starting the defining cult of the next decade.

Lizzo - Cuz I Love You (Official Video)www.youtube.com

3. 100 gecs — 1000 gecs

100 gecs didn't mean for their album to go viral, but their absurd, chaotic collection of angsty electronica has sparked a revival movement for ex-scene kids who moved out of their small towns into big cities and immediately gravitated to the local noise venue. Like the best memes, the duo's meme-inspired album toes the line between hyper-seriousness and total parody, and ultimately it hits the perfect level of absurdity for what's going to be a very chaotic decade.

100 gecs - money machine (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com

4. Tyler, the Creator — Igor

The Igor wigs were one of this Halloween's most popular costumes, and it's likely that Tyler, the Creator and his Igor alter-ego aren't going away anytime soon. Tyler, the Creator was already powerful enough to inspire Frank Ocean to start his music career, and Igor was a master-class in the art of transformation—and really, who wouldn't follow him to the edges of the Earth?

IGOR'S THEMEwww.youtube.com

5. BTS — Map of the Soul, Persona

The BTS ARMY is already a kind of cult, and the group's powers are continuing to escalate. They're even going to ring in 2020 as special guests on New Years' Rockin' Eve in Times Square. If BTS asked their fans to do anything or cancel anyone, there's no real doubt of what would result, and in the 2020s as algorithms become the center of warfare, the ability to instantly get something trending is a unique and formidable superpower.

BTS (방탄소년단) 'DNA' Official MVwww.youtube.com

6. Kanye West — Jesus Is King

This one is contestable, because cult experts have reviewed Kanye West's Sunday Services movement and have determined that it doesn't really have the signs of an actual cult. It's just really, really born-again Christian. Whether you think Christianity itself is a cult is another discussion (but also, it is).

Kanye West - Jesus is King - Sunday Service Experience (The Forum - 11.03.19)www.youtube.com

7. Better Oblivion Community Center — Better Oblivion Community Center

Earlier this year, Phoebe Bridgers (emo-folk queen of the late 2010s) and Conor Oberst (emo-folk king of the 2000s) came together to create a cult-inspired emo-folk band about apathy, drunk nights out, and togetherness. They're definitely trying to recruit you, though it's not clear if BOCC practices any specific ideology or if they're just real sad about everything but still excited to hang out.

Better Oblivion Community Center - Dylan Thomaswww.youtube.com

What artists or albums would you follow all the way to Jonestown?

Unless you've been living without wifi, television, or any access to the world at large for the past several years, you probably have at least dabbled in the world of K-Pop by now.

K-Pop, simply put, is Korean pop music. But in reality, it's so much more than that. It's an art form, a spectacle, a phenomenon, and a multi-billion dollar industry. K-Pop groups eat, sleep, and breathe their craft, dancing more skillfully than just about any western group and releasing pop songs so catchy that you don't need to speak Korean to get the words stuck in your head. But with so many K-Pop groups out there, is it possible to say which group is the absolute best? Well, we'll leave that up to you. Vote below for your favorite K-Pop group!

EXO

EXO is made up of nine members: Xiumin, Suho, Lay, Baekhyun, Chen, Chanyeol, D.O., Kai and Sehun. SM Entertainment formed EXO in 2011 and debuted in 2012. Their music is a mix of hip-hop, rap, EDM, and R&B, and they release music in Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese.

BLACKPINK

This incredible South Korean girl group was formed by YG Entertainment, debuting in 2016 with single album Square One, which included "Whistle," their first number one hit. The group is comprised of Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa.

BTS

Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook form perhaps the most popular K-Pop group: Bangtan Boys AKA BTS. This 7 member group formed in Seoul in 2013, and have since gone on to help popularize K-Pop across the world.

MONSTA X

MONSTA X is composed of seven members: Shownu, Wonho, Minhyuk, Kihyun, Hyungwon, Joohoney[2], and I.M.

From South Korea and assembled by Starship Entertainment, the boy band was formed through the 2015 reality show No.Mercy.

TWICE

This group of talented musicians was formed in South Korea by JYP Entertainment through the 2015 reality show Sixteen. The nine members of the group are Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu. The group debuted on October 20, 2015, with The Story Begins.

TVXQ (DBSK)

This duo, whose name stands for Tong Vfang Xien Qi, is comprised of U-Know Yunho and Max Changmin. They offer a wide multicultural appeal, releasing songs in many different languages. They are known as Tohoshinki for their Japanese releases, and are sometimes referred to as DBSK, an abbreviation of their Korean name Dong Bang Shin Ki which roughly translates to "Rising Gods of the East."

GOT7

Got7 is a South Korean boy band formed by JYP Entertainment, composed of JB, Mark, Jackson, Jinyoung, Youngjae, BamBam, and Yugyeom. They've been around since January 2014 when they released their first EP, Got It? They're known for their incredible stage performances which incorporate martial arts.

SEVENTEEN

Members of this boy band—which debuted in 2015 with Pledis Entertainment—are Woozi, Wonwoo, Vernon, Mingyu, Jun, Hoshi, The8, Joshua, Jeonghan, Dino, S.Coups, and Seungkwan. This group is known for self-producing, as many of the members are actively involved in songwriting, choreographing, and producing their own work.

TXT 

Tomorrow X Together (TXT) is a South Korean boy band formed by Big Hit Entertainment. The group consists of 5 members: Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Huening Kai.

CULTURE

Is It Just Me, or Is The Hollywood Reporter's BTS Article Really Xenophobic?

The piece reads as a smug, condescending view of Korean culture through a patently white, Western lens.

Jordan Strauss/AP/Shutterstock

This morning, The Hollywood Reporter released their much-hyped BTS feature story written by Seth Abramovitch, a senior writer who flew out to South Korea to interview the band.

Trigger Warning: Su*c*de

But while an in-person profile on the world's most popular musical group sounds like a surefire hit, upon reading the article I couldn't help but feel that THR pushed a highly problematic, xenophobic view of South Korea and the K-POP industry as a whole.

Now, upfront, I want to give Abramovitch the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he set out to write anything intentionally malicious. But at the same time, his article bleeds Western superiority and invokes a sense of "otherness" in discussing Korea that struck me as ridiculously misguided. The fact that those sentiments were likely subconscious makes them all the more worthy of discussion.

Throughout his piece, Abramovitch alternates between being an ill-prepared outsider ("I admit to being a little fuzzy on some of the finer points of BTS history, like where they came from, why they are so appealing to so many millions or even what BTS stands for") and a biting social critic ("Since its origins in the 1990s, K-pop has been part Motown, part Hunger Games.") The resulting piece reads as a smug, condescending view of Korean culture through a patently white, Western lens.

This is the first line of the BTS article: "The restaurant is called Dotgogi, which means either Sesame Meat or Aged Pork, depending on which online translator I consult." In a profile piece, the first sentence sets the mood. Here, Abramovitch opens with the "otherness" of a Korean word and the possibility of two different translations. This feels like lazy shorthand to convey an implicitly xenophobic sentiment about being in a strange land unlike his own (his being the Western world, where everything is "normal").

Abramovitch goes on to introduce BTS as "the first group since The Beatles...to score three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart in less than a year," before tacking on, "a feat that's all the more astounding considering their songs are mostly in Korean." Again, this strikes me as off-putting. We live in a global society where most people have access to media from all around the world. Nobody bats an eye when a song with Spanish lyrics tops the charts or a LatinX performer enters the public eye. What exactly makes it so much more astounding when the group in question is Asian?

Abramovitch continues to paint the BTS boys as simultaneously affable and fake. He suggests that everyone is carefree and open ("You'd think they were just seven college buddies catching up over a meal") but only up until he starts asking pressing questions about politics. "Indeed, whenever the conversation turns to anything controversial — or just slightly provocative — their answers have all the spontaneity of a Disney animatronic figure," writes Abramovitch. "For instance, when asked if they have any reservations about resuming their tour in America during such a politically fraught period, a switch seems to flip in RM's brain."

This language, again, seems to draw upon racist, xenophobic sentiments about Asians as robots, when, in fact, a lot of Western artists would likely answer politically fraught questions in the same way. That's not being dishonest, and it's not because they live "in a bubble," as Abramovitch writes. It's because many artists with wide global appeal like BTS see their primary job as bringing joy to fans, and alienating any of them, even the ones they may personally disagree with, is not in line with their ethos as performers.

Once again, my goal here isn't to nitpick the writing, but rather to point out how these biases, while probably subconscious, negatively inform the piece as a whole. Throughout the piece, Abramovitch's goal seems less about understanding BTS and their feelings on any particular topic and more about placing them within the context of a Korean industry that Abramovitch sees as problematic.

In fairness, there are a number of issues in the K-POP industry, especially in regards to the way that some companies treat their performers. But at the same time, plenty of Western music labels mistreat their performers, too, and it feels weird to see a white, Western writer paint it as a distinctly Korean issue. The abuse of artists by major companies is an issue well-worth discussing, but the conversation should always include the context of capitalist structures everywhere that seem to incentivize said abuse.

Moreover, in his attempt to explain the evils of the K-POP industry, Abramovitch passively dredges up the death of Jonghyun, a beloved K-POP star from the group SHINee who lost his battle with depression in 2017. Here, Abramovitch writes especially tactlessly, not even referring to Jonghyun by name. "In 2017, the industry drew intense scrutiny after a member of SHINee...took his own life," he writes before excerpting Jonghyun's final note. This feels incredibly disrespectful, especially in light of how the media tends to treat beloved Western artists who've lost similar battles to depression. It would be unimaginable to read an article that referenced beloved comedy icon Robin Williams, who brought joy to so many lives, only as "a movie actor who took his own life." Why, then, is it okay to treat a beloved K-POP star like Jonghyun that way?

In effect, the THR article ignores Jonghyun's personhood and legacy as a wonderful singer, songwriter, dancer, and human being, instead footnoting a tragedy that deeply affected many people just to fit into an argument that doesn't even necessarily hold up. In fact, while Jonghyun's passing did lead to discussions in South Korea about relieving the pressures of the competitive nature of the K-POP industry, it primarily drew attention to the need for mental health awareness, with Jonghyun's family starting a foundation to help support artists struggling with depression. Many people suffer from depression, and blaming someone's lost battle on any one thing seems, at best, to misunderstand the complexity of mental health issues. More importantly, relegating a human being only to their untimely passing without even mentioning their name seems particularly callous. Jonghyun's family, friends, fans, and loved ones deserve better.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with Abramovitch's article is one of representation. Why would THR send a middle-aged, white writer like Abramovitch, who seems to express something akin to pride in his own lack of understanding of Korean culture, to write about Korean culture? Why did they think anyone needed yet another "middle-aged white guy flounders to understand K-POP" take? That's not even to say they shouldn't have sent a middle-aged white writer, but at least send someone who seems to display an interest in researching the culture beforehand. Instead, at best, this BTS profile reads like a xenophobic "othering" of Korean celebrities. At worst, it's just blatant disrespect.

J-Hope Dior Homme Show Fall Winter 2023

Photo by Laurent VU/SIPA/Shutterstock

Jung Hoseok (J-Hope of BTS) and Becky G just released their new collab, "Chicken Noodle Soup," and it's straight fire.

The song pays major homage to Webstar and Young B's classic hip hop track of the same name, which was the first song J-Hope learned to dance to. In their modern version, the chorus is still in English, but J-Hope raps in Korean and Becky G raps in Spanish. The music video also features 50 dancers of different nationalities, making this one of the most diverse, multicultural collabs ever made. No wonder "Chicken Noodle Soup" is going viral.

j-hope 'Chicken Noodle Soup (feat. Becky G)' MVwww.youtube.com

But the point is: I think it's really important to take a moment to just appreciate J-Hope's hips. Like damn. That boy can move.

Obviously as the dance captain of BTS, J-Hope is an incredible talent. But his hips here are like...next level. Hoseok gyrates with a smooth intensity that probably should be studied by physicists in the name of scientific advancement. He walks like he's literally floating.

Even surrounded by tons of other professional dancers, J-Hope is a beam of dancing light, flowing and flapping like the patron saint of chicken noodle soup. HOW DOES THIS MAN FLOAT?

Okay. I'm done freaking out now. Except no I'm not, because there's also a Chicken Noodle Soup Challenge and now I need to learn the dance, too.

How does J-Hope twist like that? Who gave him those hips? Insane.

Of course, the best part of the #CNSchallenge is that all the BTS boys are going to join in to show their support. In fact, V and Jungkook already dropped their vids.

Get ready for a whole lot more Chicken Noodle Soup, but more importantly, a whole lot more of J-Hope's hips because that's what I'm here for now.