Fifty years ago this week, two of the greatest albums of all time were released. On the same day, no less. Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds both came out on May 16, 1966, and both had an immediate, lasting impact on pop music. The former’s “wild, mercury sound” is rock’s first great double album, while the kaleidoscopic latter inspired the Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds sound as revolutionary and complex as they did 50 years ago, and they’ll continue to be marveled over for another 50 years and beyond.
But what about more recent albums? Will we still be listening to Tame Impala or Sufjan Stevens or Drake a half-century from now? Possibly, but probably not, but the five albums below, all released after 2010, will stand the test of time. They’ll be passed down from generation to generation, the way your parents played Pet Sounds for you as a child. (An important distinction: these aren’t necessarily the best albums from the 2010s, just the ones that potentially sound the most timeless.) I, for one, can’t wait to blast Kendrick Lamar from my flying car, driven by my robot butler.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West
(2010)
2010 will go down as the best year for new music this decade. The list of classic albums is staggering: The Suburbs by Arcade Fire, The Monitor by Titus Andronicus, Teen Dream by Beach House, Plastic Beach by Gorillaz, This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem, Body Talk by Robyn, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty by Big Boi, the Inception soundtrack, obviously. It goes on and on, but the best of the bunch is Kanye West’s clear masterpiece, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s the kind of seamlessly sequenced, stunningly lyrical, breathtakingly ambitious album that you remember where you were the first time you heard it (hell, I even remember where I was when I read Pitchfork’s rare 10.0 review). No one is happier than Kanye West that Kanye West will be remembered in 50 years.
21 by Adele
(2011)
A sign of an album with a long shelf life is its number of hits. Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” might be played in every CVS on the hour, every hour, until forever, but do you know the name of the album it appeared on? Of course not, because it was terrible. (The correct answer is: Save Me, San Francisco, which, jesus.) Adele’s 21, meanwhile, is stacked with heart-tugging hits (no wonder it went 30 times platinum). “Rolling In the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” and “Rumour Has It” were inescapable in 2010 and 2011, and they’ll be unavoidable in 2060 and 2061. As long as breakups and adult contemporary radio stations remain a thing, so, too, will Adele.
good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar
(2012)
Back in 2013, a year after Kendrick Lamar released his Compton confessional good kid, m.A.A.d city, we asked if it’s “finally time” to crown the album a “classic.” Silly us: it was a classic the day it came out. good kid is a vividly remembered autobiography in album form, with Kendrick, a West Coast poet blessed with East Coast sensitivity, meticulously detailing what it’s like to grow up in the unforgiving California city. But why this album, and not To Pimp a Butterfly, Uproxx’s best album of 2015? Honestly, either would have worked, but good kid gets the slight nod because of its hit-single accessibility. Also, “I pray my d*ck get big as the Eiffel Tower/So I can f*ck the world for 72 hours.” That’s hilarious, and I hope people are still singing it in 100 years.
https://twitter.com/TalibKweli/status/732672904933068800
Talib agrees.
channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean
(2012)
“Grandkids, come over to Grandpa Josh and let me tell you a story about a man named Frank Ocean. He was originally part of a rap collective known as Odd Future, whose most famous member, Tyler, the Creator, once paid a fan $30 to eat vomit. But then Ocean released a mature solo album, channel ORANGE, about unrequited love and ‘super rich kids’ that was as stunning as it was personal. It’s a woozy R&B In the Wee Small Hours for millennials. Over the next couple of years, Ocean kept teasing a follow-up album, but it never came out, which only added to channel ORANGE‘s mystical legacy.”
“Cool story, gramps, but can we go back to listening to Macklemore 2.0?”
Blackstar by David Bowie
(2016)
Blackstar was released two days before David Bowie died. It was arguably his best work since 1983’s Let’s Dance on Jan. 8, and the most emotionally stirring album of his long, storied career on Jan. 10. If Bob Dylan had died from his heart condition after making Time Out of Mind? That’s Blackstar. Bowie’s obsessed with his own mortality, and he channels his fascination with the unknown beyond through seven moody, morbid, jazz-y tracks that are unlike anything else in his catalogue. It’s a travesty we’ll never get a new Bowie album, but at least he went out on a high note.
Other albums that just missed the cut: Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel…, Run the Jewels’ Run the Jewels or Run the Jewels 2, and My Bloody Valentine’s m b v.
Are there any other transformative albums that we missed which will truly stand the test of time?
