Hayden's Top Albums of the Decade 10-1

What better way to end the decade than finishing up my albums of the decade list! These next ten albums all have a very special place in my heart and have changed my life forever. Thanks for reading up to this point if you have!

P.S. the top five albums on here are my albums this decade that are certified 10/10 perfect albums.

10. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Surf (2015)

This might be my most controversial pick in this top 50 list cause it’s so obscure. I remember being super excited for this album because it was shortly after I discovered Chance the Rapper and I couldn’t get enough of his stuff. Although this isn’t technically his album, he ends up appearing on a lot of it.

This album popped up pretty much out of nowhere (but was promoted by Chance pretty heavily). It was released for free on iTunes, which was not a normal thing to do at the time. I know that everyone who listened to the album was expecting something like Acid Rap and were probably disappointed to hear that this -- it was in no way close to Acid Rap. But as you can see by the placement of this album, I was pleasantly surprised with how unique and creative this project was.

First off, we have to talk about the guests on this thing, it’s pretty incredible. Obviously Chance is a big part of it but you also have incredible performances by Erykah Badu, DRAM, Quavo, J Cole, Busta Rhymes, KYLE, Big Sean and many more. What is so incredible about this album is how diverse the tracklist is -- every song is so different from each other. There are pure jazz instrumentals, there’s straight soul RnB ballads, there’s hard hitting rap, and gospel inspired grooves. You would think that something this all over the place might be tough to pull off but I truly believe that this album does and more.

This is one of the first albums I want to share with my kids because of how diverse the tracklist is and how beautiful the production is. There is a lot to learn from something that tells you there are different types of music out there, but they can be used to create a singular piece of work that is cohesive and impactful. There it is, Surf starts my top ten of the decade.

9. The Japanese House - Good at Falling (2019)

The Japanese House is one of my favorite artists of all time. This was also probably the most anticipated album I’ve ever waited for my whole life -- but there’s a reason for that. Much like her label mates The 1975, Amber Bain decided to release 4 EP’s to give her fans a taste of what her music is like before releasing her first commercial album. The problem with that is, her first EP came out in 2015! I got into TJH right after I got into The 1975 and it’s been a slippery slope ever since. I had listened to her music for awhile before seeing her open for The 1975 in 2016, but after I saw her performance in real life, it was over for me -- I was obsessed. She only had two EP’s out at that time, but she would release two more in 2016 and 2017. Every EP was drastically different from each other but they were all so perfect to me, I couldn’t get enough.

So obviously, I was the most excited I could be for this album even though it would be two more years before I got it. It didn’t matter though, this album is worth the wait and more, it’s near perfection.

With most of it dealing with Amber’s recent breakup with fellow artist Marika Hackman, this might be the best breakup album I’ve ever heard. The songs so beautifully (and sadly) encapsulate heartbreak and falling out of love. Each song flows perfectly into the next, the production is catchy, the lyrics are incredibly hard hitting and honest. It’s hard to find an album that gets so stuck in your head, but is also so meaningful, that’s what makes this one so special.

Amber absolutely nailed it with this album, it’s such a great debut record. She just continues honing in her skills and getting better as a musician and I couldn't be more excited to hear what she has coming in the future.

8. James Blake - The Colour in Anything (2016)

Another sleeper pick of an album that didn’t get a lot of critical praise. I believe that this is James Blake’s most creative album to date and though the production can get a bit experimental at some points, it still manages to get stuck in my head. The themes of this album are a bit more abstract than those of his previous album on this list Assume Form, but each song has beautiful lyricism and Blakes high pitched voice is absolutely dreamy in contrast with the electronic production.

Although this album can get pretty experimental, it also features the most beautiful striped back ballads that Blake has ever released. Songs like “F.O.R.E.V.E.R,” “Waves Know Shores,” and one of my favorite songs of the decade, “Meet You in the Maze” are very simple tunes but manage to hit hard every time they come on. On the song “Meet You in the Maze,” Blake sings acapella in the chorus…”All those songs that came before you/ They were once awaiting/ Music can’t be everything” in distorted vocals. It’s one of the best closing tracks to an album this decade -- no doubt.

This album also features some funky grooves on it as well (in true James Blake style). Songs like “Radio Silence,” “Timeless,” and I Need a Forest Fire” are extremely catchy songs -- I can still remember the first time I ever heard “I Need a Forest Fire…” I was laying in my freshman dorm room bed half awake, listening to the album for the first time. I must have dozed off because I remember waking up to Bon Iver “HOAH” in my ears. At first I was terrified because it was so abrupt, but as I heard the song for the first time, my mind was blown… I hadn’t heard anything like it at that point. I think you know a song is special when you can recall the exact first time you ever heard it.

This album isn’t going to be for everyone… it’s definitely a patient listen, but if your willing to dive deep into the lyrics and experimental production, I promise it pays off.

7. The Beths - Future Me Hates Me (2018)

While making this list, it kind of surprised me how far up this album got on my list, I truly think it’s one of the best indie rock albums I’ve ever heard.

Hailing from New Zealand… I found The Beths one day while I was scrolling through Bandcamp. I heard the song “Happy Unhappy” and was completely hooked. This song (and the whole album honestly has everything) has everything: amazing instrumentation and production, some of the best pop lyrics of the decade, very good vocal delivery with great backup vocals from the rest of the band, and a concise tracklist that never gets old.

One thing I love about the band is lead singer Elizabeth Stokes doesn’t shy away from her New Zealand accent when she’s singing. It makes the music a bit more interesting than any other indie record because it’s not something I hear much as an American (especially in music). Stokes comes across as vulnerable but confident in her songwriting and performance, which I see a lot of myself in and really helped me connect with this album.

I think the future is very bright for this band, this was their first commercial album and was done with I'm sure limited resources, so it’s safe to say I might be the most excited to hear whatever they have coming out in the near future.

6. Caroline Polachek - Pang (2019)

One of the newest albums on my list, but I am super confident in putting it in my top ten of the decade. I couldn’t have been more excited when I heard that the former lead singer of the band Chairlift, Caroline Polachek was going to start releasing music under her own name earlier this year.

I got really into her former band’s last album (album #11 on the list) but they disbanded shortly after its release in 2016. I was left with it, and their two earlier albums which was enough for me for awhile, but I needed some more of Polchek’s incredible voice in my ears. Then one day, she released the song “Door” as the first single of this album and I couldn’t have been happier. The production was a lot more electronic and abstract than anything she had done with Chairlift, and the songwriting was unconventional, but super catchy. Polachek would released four more singles after “Door” and they just kept making me more and more excited for this record.

In the end, Pang is a 14 track, 47 minute album with zero wasted space. It flows absolutely perfect with no features and no interludes (which Polachek joking boasts about). There are pop bangers like “Hit Me Where It Hurts,” and “Ocean of Tears,” emotional ballads like “Caroline Shut Up,” and “Parachute,” but she also includes an unconventional structured song like “New Normal” early on in the tracklist.

Polachek’s performance on this album is incredible. She shows off her iconic voice on almost every song, and also includes some vocal layering and backing throughout the project as well. Her high pitched wails that are most prominent in the songs “Door,” “Caroline Shut Up,” and “Parachute” are something I look forward to hearing when I start the song, she uses them much like Kid Cudi uses “hums” in his music to create beautiful melodies.

I really can’t say enough about this album, it truly is one of the best pop records I’ve ever heard and will end up (almost positively) as my favorite album this year. If you know me I’ve probably already recommended this album to you but if you haven’t heard it yet… Please do!!!

5. The 1975 - I like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it (2016)

Y’all were probably waiting to see when this album would show up on the list… well, here it is. There’s no secret that The 1975 is my favorite band in the world, but this album is the most beautiful pop record I’ve ever heard. Ever. And for that reason alone, it deserves top ten of the decade, but I will include other reasoning here as well.

This album might actually be the most consistent album The 1975 have released to date, don’t get me wrong, the songs are all unique and have a mix between guitar centered melodies and electronic beats but it is consistently bonafide p o p throughout. On their other albums, there is usually some rock and RnB inspired tracks. It came at a time where fans of the band didn’t really know what direction the band was going to go in after their widely successful debut. Most people were surprised to see them move in such a pop direction, especially after they made direct references that “they don’t make pop music” beforehand (it was obviously sarcastic at the time but not totally blatant).

A lot of people weren’t too happy with this direction and kind of fell off the train early on, but a lot of other people hopped on when they heard this new sound. This album jumpshot The 1975 onto the popular music scene and I quickly saw them become way more recognized than ever before.

But now, for the reasons I love this album so much: there really isn’t anything not to like about it for me personally. The instrumentation is both catchy and is used so perfectly to contribute to Matty’s lyrics -- nothing is wasted. I think lyrically, this is their best album to date as well. It’s a very romantic album and doesn’t have as much to say about the world as their latest album does, but I think it’s a bit more accessible to a new college student (like I was when it came out). Matty is also very personal on this thing, he dives into his struggle with drug use, the death of his grandmother, he’s mothers post natal depression, and a bunch of other stuff.

There really isn’t anything on this album that doesn’t work for me. I can truly say that this album has changed my life immensely and I’ll forever be grateful for The 1975.

4. JPEGMAFIA - Veteran (2018)

PEGGY! This is one of the most fun albums on the list and has changed my life recently. Similar to Brockhampton, I found JPEGMAFIA in a time where I wasn’t into most Hip-Hop out there. But this thing is unlike anything going on in Hip-Hop now or ever really.

When I first heard this thing… I didn’t know what to think. I was different for sure, but I couldn’t figure out if it was good or not for like a month. I kept coming back to the album though, and each time I found something different that I loved about it, and one day, it clicked. This album is amazing, from its glitchy production, to its absurd lyrics, to its in your face performance, this album came at just the right time for me.

Veteran makes me feel like I can conquer the world, like I can run through a wall. I hadn’t really found any music that had that effect on me until that moment. I want to say that this album is my personality in music form but that might be a stretch… It’s sporadic, it’s ironic, and overall, it’s hilarious.

Peggy’s lyrics are the main reason why I think he’s the best Hip Hop artist in the game right now. He calls out everything from Alt Righters, to Neo Liberals, to Morrisey on this thing. I love how honest and open Peggy is, if you do something that pisses him off, he’s going to call you out for it -- that’s something I wish I was better at doing to this day. This album helped get me back into Hip Hop in 2018, and for that I will forever be grateful for that.

3. Mac Miller - Faces (2014)

This is obviously one of the most special projects on the list for me, and due to outside circumstances, it’s also one of the toughest listens on here.

I was a pretty big Mac Miller fan as a kid, and jumped on his bandwagon pretty early in his career. I remember my sister driving me to middle school and blasting “Kool Aid and Frozen Pizza” through the speakers. That being said, I didn’t listen to him much in in high school, I’m not sure why, but he just kind of fell out of the rotation.

That all changed when I was going through datpiff one night and saw Faces. I quickly downloaded it to find out this was a 24(!) track mixtape that Mac pretty much dropped out of nowhere. Nowadays, I’m not the biggest fan of long tracklists, but this thing is absolutely amazing for it. There isn’t one song that sounds similar to another, they’re all unique in their own way. This is Mac’s most jazz inspired project as well, with a lot of sampling and real instrumentation. I never get bored listening to this -- in fact, I find something new about it with almost every listen, I think that’s a positive of having such a long project.

I remember sending the mixtape to one of my close friends that night (who wasn’t a big Mac fan) and once we both connected to it so much, it was over. We couldn’t get enough, it was constantly in the rotation when we were in the car together… we created a whole universe because of this album. We listened to this project on the way to pick up our dates to prom, a memory I wish to have until the day I die. I can’t quite explain how important this mixtape was to my high school experience and overall growth as a person, but this is a project I can’t wait to share with my kids when they are ready for it.

After Mac’s death, this album took on a whole new meaning for me. There are so many drug use references on here and ODing is prominent in a lot of songs. At the time, it didn’t seem so serious to me, but it now obviously felt like a cry for help. I never met Mac Miller, the closest I ever got to even having him know I exist was when he retweeted a picture of me dressed as him for halloween. But with that being said, I think you can build a connection with artists through their music, and Mac’s death was one that still affects me to this day. I would not have that same connection if not for this mixtape. Rest in Peace.

2. Childish Gambino - Because the Internet (2013)

Finally, the album that defined my high school experience! I really wasn’t the biggest Gambino fan up until this point. Let’s be honest, his mixtapes and Camp were pretty cheesy (yes I still listen to them sometimes) and I hadn’t really listened to Royalty before getting into this album.

But my friends on the other hand, Gambino was like their god. So, with that being said, they were just a little but ready for this album to be released. One of them sent me the album the day before it was released via leak, and I still remember that listen through till this day. I was alone in my house, blasting it through the speakers and by the end, I was speechless. This was unlike anything Gambino had done up until this point in his career. In a way it was a bit of a concept album, but the production on this thing was glitchy and catchy at the same time, and lyrically, Gambino had grown from a nerdy dude will bars full of cheesy metaphors, to someone who was saying important things about society, through the perspective of a character he had brought to life himself.

Because The Internet is an experimental album, but it’s somehow also, Gambino’s most replay-able album to date. There is a mix of hard hitting bangers like “Crawl,” “Worldstar,” and Life: The Biggest Troll.” But there’s also soulful ballads like “Urn,” and “Flight Of The Navigator.” There are great guest appearances on this thing from Chance the Rapper and Jhene Aiko but it’s mostly filled with Gambino himself, which was nice for consistency.

I still blows my mind that Gambino didn’t get much critical acclaim for this album, that came with his next major album release Awaken, My Love! While I think that album is amazing, it just doesn’t come close to the brilliance of Because The Internet.

My final thought here is about seeing this album live in concert at the Cuthbert Amphitheater in Eugene, Oregon. At the time, I hadn’t been to many concerts, but since then I've been to countless. I can confidently say that concert was the best concert I have ever been to. Everything was perfect, the atmosphere of an outdoor concert in Eugene right in the midst of springtime, the energy of the crowd was something I miss feeling to this day, and Gambino performance was powerful… no backtracking, just pure vocals. That concert helped cement this as one of my favorite albums ever, and puts it at number two of my decades list.

Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked at Me (2017)

I could write an entire essay on this album, but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. All the albums on this list have changed my life in one way or another, but I can confidently say that none are even close to how much this album did.

Like I said with my number 21 album on this list Now Only, Phil Elverum lost his wife, Geneviève Castrée, due to a battle with pancreatic cancer. She died just months after giving birth to their first child. Phil started writing this album (not knowing that he would actually release it to the public one day) as soon as 11 days after she died. It makes the album that much more powerful to hear Phil talk about what he’s going through, so close to the traumatic event. While there’s no way I could ever know what it feels like to lose the love of my life or the mother to my child, this album somehow allows you to connect with some of those same feelings.

Elverum is able to do this because of how honest and blunt he is through the whole thing. He never hides what he wants to say, he just says it. On the opening track “Death is Real,” Phil cries out at the end of the song about the long sleep, “It’s dumb, And I don’t want to learn anything from this, I love you.” It’s almost like he’s having trouble staying on topic because of all the thoughts rushing through his head at this time.

Unlike Now Only, and with the exception of the songs “Ravens,” and “Soria Moria” (my favorite track on the album), most of the songs here are pretty short and to the point. Elverum knows what he wants to say, but unlike a lot of his discography, he can’t ramble on about it for ten minutes at a time. On a lot of songs, they come to an abrupt end, and leave the listener with lines that leave them in an emotional wreck. On the song “Seaweed,” Phil ends it with talking about pouring his wife’s ashes onto a chair on a mountain facing the sunset. To end the song, Phil tells his wife that he doesn’t think of that dust as her, he finishes with, “You are the sunset.” On the shortest song on the album “My Chasm,” Phil talks about the struggle with wanting to share stories about his wife with the people around him, but knowing that it makes them uncomfortable. He ends the song with this, “The loss in my life is a chasm I take into town, and I don’t want to close it, look at me, death is real.” These endings are what make this album the most hard hitting for me. He gets through songs sharing details with listeners that he really shouldn’t have to be doing -- it gets them invested in their relationship, and then he leaves them with these one liners that they can think about for hours afterwards.

A lot of people have a hard time listening to this album and for that reason, a lot of people say this album isn’t music because it’s not “entertaining.” While I agree that “entertaining” is not a word that should be used to describe this album, I don’t think that is what should be used to consider something music. There are beautiful lyrics (although there isn’t much rhyming) and instrumentation (although very minimal) and how Phil makes melodies out of some of these lyrics is amazing enough for me to say how incredible this music is.

This album changed how I think about the world, how I think about love, mortality, parenting, loss, and so much more. Sometimes I feel guilty, because I’m one of the rare people who can listen to this album on repeat. I’ve gotten to memorize the words that Phil had such a hard time writing down.. Words that I can’t relate to on almost any level. But as I realize this, this album is something I can go to when I’m feeling down, to know that someone has gone through something as terrible as this, helps me feel a little bit of solace in my own troubles. I know, I feel terrible writing that sentence down, but it really is something that I can feel while listening to this.

While I know I just said that, I would trade that feeling in a heart beat for this album to never exist. I wish that the circumstances that led to this album never happened. But the sad reality of life (and death) is, it did happen. And Phil was brave enough to share these intimate details with his audience. It’s something that I will take with me for the rest of my life, I gained so much respect for Phil after hearing this album, and while I have gotten the opportunity to thank him in person for doing that, there is nothing I could do to possibly show him how much it means to me. So once again, thank you Phil, I hope you are doing well.