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DECEMBER 21, 2021 10:00AM ET
Rob Sheffield’s Top 20 Albums of 2021
From Adele to Adult Mom, and Bachelor to Lindsey Buckingham
By ROB SHEFFIELD
Rob Sheffield's picks for the best albums of 2021 included the latest from Rauw Alejandro, Adele, Lucy Dacus, and Japanese Breakfast (clockwise from top left).
90th Shooter*; Simon Emmett*; Peter Ash Lee*; Ebru Yildiz*
As a great woman once sang: It’s supposed to be fun, turning 2021. But these were the albums that lifted me up and spun me around and kept me moving, in an amazing year for music. They’re from all over the music map, from pop to rap to post-punk guitars to post-reggaeton disco. Some come from new TikTok kids, others from old-school legends, one is by Lindsey Buckingham. Some look out at the world; others look deep into the heart. But they were all reasons to celebrate in 2021. Here’s to next year.
Olivia Rodrigo Sour
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Olivia Rodrigo, 'Sour'
Stand firm in your refusal to enjoy your youth, Olivia. You have the rest of your damn life to learn to parallel park, but you only get one chance to brutalize all the rules of stardom and make sociopaths cry and visit the White House in Clueless drag and sum up everything that makes right now such a glorious time to be a pop-music fan. “I’m so sick of 17/Where’s my ****ing teenage dream?” are fighting words, yet Olivia Rodrigo lived up to them all year long. She declared war on everything boring about 2021 before the year was a week old, dropping “Driver’s License” in January as her teen-spirit debut. With Sour, she made a flat-out classic on her first try, with each hit another chapter in her ongoing story. “Drivers License” treats cruising past your ex’s house like an epic quest, and when Olivia’s behind the wheel, it is. “Deja Vu” drags a name-three-songs dude over who was the first to get into Billy Joel. I love the way she hears pop music above all else: Just like her idol Taylor Swift, she’ll pillage ideas from anywhere, always writing herself (and her audience) into the story. That’s why any random 30-second stretch of Sour is an unrelentless kick. Stay brutal, O.
taylor swift red
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Taylor Swift, 'Red (Taylor's Version)'
You can’t get rid of it, because you remember it. We’re not talking about her remake of the original album, which was already perfect in 2012, but the hour of songs so great it’s hard to believe she left them lying in a drawer until now. Hey, why settle for a sad girl autumn when you could crown the Sad Girl Century? “All Too Well” used to be Taylor’s best song, except now it’s twice as long and twice as intense, not to mention history’s first 10-minute Number One hit. And she did this to a world already reeling from Evermore. (Help, I’m still in the restaurant from “Right Where You Left Me.”) Taylor redoing her albums isn’t just a power move that breaks every music-biz rule — it’s her all-out assault on the space-time continuum. This is a genius so in love with the future, she’ll tear up her own masterpiece to create something new. The Queen of Never Looking Down, forever.
Lucy Dacus Home Video
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Lucy Dacus, 'Home Video'
If you ever wondered if Lucy Dacus could stretch the emotional intensity of “Night Shift” into a whole album, be careful what you wish for, because Home Video is a heartache and a half. She revisits her lonely teen self, growing up queer in the Virginia suburbs. “VBS” got the most attention, a summer of thwarted hormones with a Slayer-loving boyfriend at Bible camp. But it’s “Triple Dog Dare” that takes me out, with compassion for the confused kid she used to be. She even finds some empathy for the confused adults who got in her way and made the dark feel darker than before.
Adele 30
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Adele, '30'
“I don’t want to live in chaos” — Adele, have you met yourself? She wouldn’t last a weekend anywhere else. Like Adele, I hate learning and growing, and like Adele, I constantly congratulate myself on resolving crises I have merely put off for another three minutes, because like Adele, I foolishly turn to music to fix all my issues. So I relate to every inch of this album. The harder she tries to sound simple and plain, the more she speaks in riddles and codes. The harder she tries to sound mature, the more she reveals the neediness of her exhausting heart. She’s a voice I love to zone in and focus on for an hour, along with millions of other fans, but I don’t think any of us really understand how Adele’s heart works, and neither does she. That’s probably why we keep listening. When she finally uncorks the 15-minute “I Drink Wine,” expect our planet’s vineyards to explode into the sun.
Pink Pantheress To Hell With It
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PinkPantheress, 'To Hell With It'
Of all the year’s many Nineties time-travel trips, nothing hits weirder than Gen Z’s crush on drum and bass, but here we are. PinkPantheress came out of nowhere to blow up into a TikTok star, singing her diary entries (“Did you ever want me? No worries if not”) over snippets of U.K. garage, 2-step, or jungle. In “Last Valentines,” she fantasizes about an erotically charged car crash over a freaking Linkin Park sample. Barely out of her teens, PinkPantheress adores beats from the pop edge of drum and bass (Sweet Female Attitude, Adam F.), but they’re obscurities in the U.S. of A., where the genre never had a pop edge. Her music is full of sleek, shiny surfaces that sparkle for 80 or 90 seconds and then fizzle out, but that’s long enough for her to light the burnt match and stick a flag on it. And nobody knows her real name, which is awesome. Something about this musical language has turned out to be so fresh and perfect for right now. As with Joni Mitchell or Kate Bush or Arthur Russell, the kids hear something in drum and bass that previous generations missed — turns out it was PinkPantheress.
Bachelor Doomin Sun
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Bachelor, 'Doomin' Sun'
The indie-rock superhero duo of the year, starring two of the sharpest songwriters around, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte and Palehound’s Ellen Kempner. The guitars slither in Elliott Smith–Mary Timony mode, while both women whisper and growl about twisted love. They know this emotional turf, as they proved on Palehound’s Black Friday or Jay Som’s Everybody Works. Best of all: “Sand Angel,” where you dream about somebody you miss, then grind your teeth all night, knowing you won’t fall back to sleep.
Jazmine Sullivan Heaux Tales
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Jazmine Sullivan, 'Heaux Tales'
Breakup songs that draw blood. Jazmine always holds off until she’s got a whole album of keepers, and it was worth the wait for the soul testimony of Heaux Tales. In “Lost Ones,” she consoles an ex she did wrong, guiding him through his grief and begging him, “Try not to love no one.” But in “Pick Up Your Feelings,” she just gets him off the lease and throws him out.
Adult Mom Driver
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Adult Mom, 'Driver'
Adult Mom’s Stevie Knipe has been out here for years as one of indie rock’s great bedroom storytellers, with gems like Sometimes Bad Happens and Momentary Lapse of Happily. But Driver is a real breakthrough. As an obsessive fan of both R.E.M. and Taylor Swift, Knipe combines the best of both, as if hearing “Nightswimming” and “You Belong With Me” as part of the same queer-punk underdog story. The songs are full of tenderness and rage, even in lines like “The only thing I’ve done this month is drink beer and masturbate and ignore phone calls from you.” “Dancing” has the perfect credo for marching into next year with your head held high: “I’m dancing to the song I crashed my car to.”
The Hold Steady Open Door Policy
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The Hold Steady, 'Open Door Policy'
A new peak for God’s favorite Brooklyn bar band: Open Door Policy is not only the Hold Steady’s first album to debut in the Top 10 (watch out, BTS!), but it’s also their best in 15 years, full of hard-boiled rock & roll noirs. Craig Finn sings about loners, losers, Kiss fans turned crust punks, the nurse in rehab who has “Eruption” as her ring tone. But there’s wild humor in the grooves of “Heavy Covenant,” “Lanyards,” and “Unpleasant Breakfast,” as he confesses, “I no longer see romance in these ghosts/This coffee’s cold, this toast is gross.” Pick hit: “Hanover Camera,” the year’s nastiest Steely Dan song.
Mdou Moctar Afrique Victime
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Mdou Moctar, 'Afrique Victim'
The late, great Greg Tate described his band Burnt Sugar as “drowning the room in the music of African ascent.” Mdou Moctar is all about that ascent, a Tuareg guitar hero from Niger with a psychedelic twist on the Saharan desert rock style of assouf. The year’s most exhilarating guitar-jam album, infused by both traditional desert music and Eddie Van Halen fandom — when the band hits a groove four minutes into “Afrique Victime,” and then speeds up, you know Moctar isn’t bringing it in for a landing any time soon. The politically charged lyrics are in the Tamashek language, yet the rage translates.
Billie Eilish Happier Than Ever
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Billie Eilish, 'Happier Than Ever'
Billie leaves a few of her past selves behind — some go quietly, others have to get kicked downstairs. Most people would have been content if she’d just stayed in the role of America’s wacky, green-haired kid sister. But instead, Billie fights to grow up on her own terms. The sophomore album she evokes, in a weird way, is Sade’s Promise — another artist who rode in with a ready-made style that would have been easy to repeat, but came back with a sequel that refused to go for the obvious and reached deeper. Even in a year full of tough breakup talk, “Happier Than Ever” stands out, especially when she yells, “I’d never treat me this ****ty/ You made me hate this city!”
Polo G Hall of Fame
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Polo G, 'Hall of Fame'
The Chicago rap kingpin hit the top with Hall of Fame, going Number One with “Rapstar,” counting his money over a ukulele hook. He tries to cope with fame and riches, drowning his sorrows in his Rolls-Royce Wraith — “because that’s where stars cope” — but he’s all alone. (“Only bitch I give a conversation to is Siri” — good one.) The peak: “Broken Guitars,” where he flaunts a rock-star fantasy (“I got bands on me like Aerosmith, that’s why I walk this way”) with headbanger power chords.
Magdalena Bay Mercurial World
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Magdalena Bay, 'Mercurial World'
This bizarro L.A. electro-pop duo deliver the perfect recipe for this year: dysfunctional gadgets, zany artistic concepts, retro video games, shameless paranoia. Magdalena Bay made a splash with a stream of TikToks and videos, culminating in Mercurial World. Mica Tenenbaum whispers like a lovesick robot blowing her fuses, while Matt Lewin cranks the distorted synths. They’ll try anything once, even sincerity — “Chaeri” is a bittersweet regret for a messy human friendship, where she tells herself, “Better crucified than alone.”
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Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, 'Carnage'
Nick Cave calls on his trusty sidekick Warren Ellis to respond to the “communal catastrophe” of the past couple years — give Nick Cave a catastrophe and he’ll give you a song. Carnage is quieter than the dark knight’s cathartic trilogy of Push the Sky Away, The Skeleton Tree, and Ghosteen. He steps into the avalanche of 2021 like a man who’s seen too many apocalypses to take them personally, but chooses to feel the world’s pain anyway. The best line is one of the simplest: “Everything is ordinary until it’s not.” Ellis had a fruitful year — he cut She Walks in Beauty, playing behind Marianne Faithfull while she recites Romantic poetry (Keats’ “To Autumn” FTW). He also wrote the excellent Nina Simone’s Gum, an entire book about treasuring a sacred piece of gum that Miss Simone once chewed.
Duran Duran Future Past
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Duran Duran, 'Future Past'
If you can name another 1980s band who made a goddamn 15th album anywhere near this great, I’ll eat my “Save a Prayer” 12-inch picture disc. Duran Duran make a ferociously forward-facing statement on Future Past, 40 years after they seduced the planet with their art-glam punk-disco eyeliner agenda. The original New Romantics rampage all over the music world, with cameos from Giorgio Moroder, Tove Lo, Mark Ronson, Blur guitar god Graham Coxon, Japanese punks Chai, and London rapper Ivorian Doll. “Hammerhead” is a synth-funk showdown with an emotional crisis, cleverly disguised as an ode to shark sex. The surprise highlight: “Falling,” with Bowie piano man Mike Garson. DD ace the Pretend It’s a Debut test — if Future Past were the first shot from some new pop upstarts, people would hail it as the sound of tomorrow. And rightly. Wild boys always shine.
Laura Stevenson Laura Stevenson
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Laura Stevenson, 'Laura Stevenson'
Laura Stevenson has already written a slew of great tunes, but her 30-something guitar journal is on a whole new level: the indie-rock equivalent of a road trip with a slight acquaintance who turns into an awkwardly close friend within an hour. She does for the Spinanes what Silk Sonic do for the Spinners. The clincher: “Don’t Think About Me,” a slice of Softies-worthy sad-core about how it feels to live haunted by memories you share with the wrong person. “The kettle cools? That’s just the thing we repeat when we can’t sleep, because we hope it’s true.” But the album is full of kettles that never cool down.
Rauw Alejandro Vice Versa
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Rauw Alejandro, 'Vice Versa'
I took a solemn blood oath many years ago to never, ever use the word “reinvention,” but I gotta admit I’m slightly tempted. Because Rauw Alejandro makes this whole party bounce with a joyfully experimental spirit, doing a 180 from the straight-up reggaeton of his debut Afrodisiaco. Every song hits the “What the hell is going on here?” button, from the drum-and-bass breaks of “¿Cuando Fue?” to the New Order–worthy goth beats of “Desenfacao.” Rip it up and start again.
japanese breakfast jubilee
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Japanese Breakfast, 'Jubilee'
Michelle Zauner has always been an eloquent poet of grief, with Psychopomp and Soft Sounds From Another Planet, not to mention her memoir about her mother’s death, Crying in H-Mart. But Jubilee cranks the synth glitz for her most upbeat music yet, with the droid lust of “Sit” (“Hear my name in your mouth and I’m done for”) and the Steve Reich electronics of “Posing in Bondage.”
Turnstile Glow On
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Turnstile, 'Glow On'
Punk rock — what a concept. These Baltimore hardcore troupers deliver a guilelessly uplifting album of giant-hearted rockness. Given the state of our musical and other conditions, it’s natural to brace yourself for the part where the Turnstile boys hedge their bets on the “I believe in holding on to life” thing, but they never flinch. Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes sounds right at home, as do the go-go beats and Sly Stone chants. If you give Glow On 35 minutes of your day, the emotional return-on-investment is off the charts: proof positive that whoever you are, you’re not the only one.
Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham
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Lindsey Buckingham, 'Lindsey Buckingham'
One of my favorite things to happen in this here year of 2021: Lindsey Buckingham celebrates his excellent new album with an online “Ask Me Anything” interlude. For the first time, he meets his rabid new audience of Gen Z fans who know his whole musical history as expertly as he does. So he requests a translation. “I appreciate you all calling me bestie, but I’m curious, where does it come from?” Something about that dialogue just sparks joy. Pop devotion has never been so cross-tribal, so multi-generational, so free from stylistic or cultural or historical strictures. In a way, that’s what Lindsey’s career is all about, and you can hear that in the cracked glory of a song like “On the Wrong Side.” It has the sublimely nervous twitch of Go Insane or his Tusk solo tracks (“I Know I’m Not Wrong” forever), with the same simulated Christine-and-Stevie back-up femme-vox of yesteryear, even though the fact that they’re not here is kinda the point, and even with 72 years of rock & roll madness in his heart, all this man asks for is one sweet song to lay him down in the tall grass and let him do his stuff. So true, bestie.
In This Article: Adele, Adult Mom, Billie Eilish, Duran Duran, Japanese Breakfast, Jazmine Sullivan, Lindsey Buckingham, Lucy Dacus, Mdou Moctar, Nick Cave, Olivia Rodrigo, PinkPantheress, Polo G, Rauw Alejandro, Taylor Swift, The Hold Steady, Turnstile