best of 2021, pt. 1
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted — at one point during the pandemic I was somehow getting to Inbox Zero and writing this once a week and now I have a massive amount of unread emails but one thing I have kept up with is my list of Best Albums of the Year, so — in no particular order — and with the understanding that yes All Too Well (Ten Minute Version) is obviously the best song of the year, here are a few of my favorite albums, second half coming next Sunday!
Claud: Super Monster
It’s no secret that I’m mostly a pop girl and this album is pure pop, even when they’re singing about heartbreak. As NME put it, “The honesty and authenticity of these situations gives the album its emotional resonance, but Claud has the bona fide pop ear to back it up.”
Favorite lyric: I mean, nothing beats the level of confidence Claud has while responding to a straight dude who called them a bitch: “Mr. Bitch, that's Mr. Bitch to you.”
Julien Baker: Little Oblivions
To be honest, before this album I had mostly known Julien Baker from her role in the band boygenius — but the strength Julien has in her voice drew me in from the beginning (she also happens to be the only indoor concert I went to this year!). She’s brutally honest in her storytelling. As Vox puts it, “The album pushes her production beyond stripped-down sound into new, exciting places, while maintaining the brutal lyrical honesty of her previous work. It’s the difference between someone quietly delivering the most devastating news you’ve ever heard and the endless wall of noise that springs up in your head when you hear that news.
Favorite lyric: The first verse of Heatwave: Shell of an engine, unexplained/Burst to fire engulfed in flames … I had the shuddering thought: “This was gonna make me late for work.”
Lana del Rey: Chemtrails Over The Country Club
Lana has been slightly problematic lately but I’m still addicted to everything she does. While nothing beats 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, this album is still excellent. While some music I automatically love, there’s something to be said about needing to listen to an album all the way through multiple times to truly understand it, and I certainly had to do that with album opener White Dress, which I didn’t think I liked and then suddenly I did. This album feels very California and back to basics, appropriately ending with a cover of Joni Mitchell. As Pitchfork put it, “Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.”
Favorite Lyrics: From Breaking Up Slowly:
'Cause breakin' up slowly is a hard thing to do/I love you only, but it's makin' me blue/So don't send me flowers like you always do/It's hard to bе lonely, but it's the right thing to do
Lana Del Rey: Blue Banisters
I was honestly so relieved when Lana Del Rey’s promised album out for “revenge” against her critics never happened, and this one did instead. It’s even more pared back than Chemtrails was — and while, sadly for me, it was without the pop prowess of the one and only Jack Antonoff, it’s quietly beautiful in its own way — and far more autobiographical, with Variety pointing out that it’s “imbued with an urgency to reclaim her own narrative, anchoring it in the here and now.”
Favorite lyric: From Violets to Roses:
You made me trade my violets for roses/You tried to take all the pink off my toes, and/God knows the only mistake that a man can make/Is tryna make a woman change
Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil…The Art of Starting Over
Demi is also sometimes problematic, but I just thought this album was so brave and thought it deserved a lot more recognition than it got. Demi’s not only one of the best vocalists of our generation but they’re a fantastic songwriter and it takes a lot of guts to literally write a song about overdosing and the pain that caused the people around them. Pitchfork notes that the lyrics are “depressing” in Melon Cake — literally about how she was only allowed to eat watermelons on her birthday, but notes: “isn’t that what so many of us do to survive? We attempt to reframe our traumas as lessons learned; we use humor as a defense mechanism; we move on because dwelling in guilt or shame furthers the destructive spiral.”
Favorite lyric: From Dancing With The Devil:
Twisted reality, hopeless insanity//I told you I was okay, but I was lying
Julia Michaels: Not In Chronological Order
Julia has always been a fabulous songwriter and her first full length album does not disappoint. She’s specifically brilliant in turning her passing thoughts into blockbuster songs — such as All Your Exes, where she muses about a world with no exes — and this album takes her vulnerability to a new level, especially in “That’s The Kind of Woman,” where she wishes she was more confident. But every single song, as NME notes, “is anchored by Michaels’ distinctive one-liners.”
Favorite Lyric: The aforementioned All Your Exes:
I wanna live in a world where there's no exes at all//Like you were waiting for me to be the first thing you fall for
Olivia Rodrigo: SOUR
I, like the rest of the world, am so happy Olivia Rodrigo is in my life, though still a bit mad that she’s not touring arenas and I was unable to get concert tickets. The first song off of SOUR, Brutal, is actually just like Lana Del Rey’s White Dress for me — I really didn’t like it the first time I listened and it grew on me so so much. While I don’t love that it hurt Joshua Bassett and that her fans went after him, man I just love how vulnerable and “brutal” Olivia’s lyrics are. She’s a Gen-Z queen and I just can’t wait for more. And I don’t hate that Taylor Swift is one of her biggest influences. As Pitchfork notes, “Of Rodrigo’s many influences, she’s most obviously styled herself after Taylor Swift, whose work she praises often and emphatically. Like her idol, Rodrigo treats emotional turmoil like jet fuel, and laces her lyrics with specifics”
Favorite Lyric: From Brutal!
I’m so sick of seventeen/Where’s my fucking teenage dream? If someone tells me one more time/”Enjoy your youth,” I’m gonna cry
Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee
This album is exactly what its title says it is, a joyful jubilee. I had appreciated Japanese Breakfast before this year, but reading Michelle Zauner’s memoir, Crying At H Mart,” made me so much more connected to her music. While her past albums have been about grief, the production and the optimism in Zauner’s voice are all about moving forward — though there are moments of setbacks. As Pitchfork puts it, “It’s an exuberant listen that feels of the moment and also steeped in classic indie sensibilities, packed with Zauner’s sharp observations and frank desires.”
Favorite Lyric: I love her takedown of privileged men in Savage Good Boy
I want to make the money 'til there's no more to be made/And we will be so wealthy, I'm absolved from questioning/That all my bad behavior was just a necessary strain/They're the stakes in the race to win
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever
I’ve loved Billie from the very beginning, and there’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t like coming from her voice. While this album is (obviously) her most mature yet, coping with trauma and heartbreak, her sassy confidence still breaks through, which is what first drew me to her. But she also goes further musically than she has before, showing that she can belt just as well as any of the other main pop girls on the scene in the title track. As The Times points out, “Her voice (perhaps the loudest it’s ever been on record) rises to meet the drama, and she unleashes a disarmingly earnest torrent of bottled-up grievances .. For a fleeting moment, she has given away all her secrets, and she sounds invigoratingly unburdened.”
Favorite Lyric: Obviously from Happier Than Ever:
I don’t relate to you/I don’t relate to you, no/’Cause I’d never treat me this shitty/You made me hate this city