Battles – ‘Gloss Drop’ (2011). In a lesser musician’s hands it would have screamed dad-rock, but the lushness of ‘Lost In The Dream’ connected with everyone from Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage crowd to The BRIT Awards, where they were nominated for Best International Band. Pink rectangular lights now adorn countless stages and pastel neon signs shine on artwork with stunning vistas in the background. Royal Blood – ‘Royal Blood’ (2014). Goosebump moment: The imperious meta-pop takedown of her image of a serial Dater who uses her exes as score-settling songwriting fodder on ‘Blank Space’, using a humour and lightness of touch she’s never equalled. Playing like a mixtape you’d send to a loved one, ‘Unknown Mortal Orchestra’ is the eclectic, rough and ready sound of a band figuring out who they want to be in real time. She laid rich and hypnotic vocals over sirens, attacking the clutches of fame and celebrating the nighttime dreams of house parties going nowhere. The Strokes: 'Is This It' (2000) - Ranked as one of the greatest album covers of all time by many, and rightfully so. Musically Taylor Swift, Snoop Dogg and The-Dream have all said it inspired them, and her visual album treatment paved the way for artists like Frank Ocean to put out expansive video albums. At the listening party, the use of “he/him” pronouns in a project discussing heartbreak and emotion drew attention. Together they created a wildly ambitious album that paid tribute to the past while sounding unmistakably like the future. The Harlem-born and raised rapper had a few false starts with this record, one that was supposedly the product of an eye-watering $3million deal. Hit hop album covers don't come more iconic than Public Enemy's 'it Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back'. Album covers, in general, are meant to be a visual accompaniment to the music contained within. “Everybody’s getting younger – it’s the end of an era, it’s true,” mourned frontman James Murphy on opener ‘Dance Yrself Clean’. Goosebump moment: When she went in on Offset for cheating on ‘Through The Phone’, switching from fierce rapping to tender singing. Rather than the usual “interval training and drinking lots of water” her regimen included sword fighting, sensory deprivation tanks and voluntary surgery on her corneas to block out blue light. The mistake so many make about punk rock is that they view the concept as a sound; a template for music-making that’s stuck in a particular era. You can spot the Run The Jewels aesthetic immediately. Lana was the first contemporary sad girl who sang. “There’s a tombstone right in front of you/And everyone I know,” crooned Koenig poignantly on ‘Don’t Lie’, while even the most party-starting track – ‘Diane Young’ – was a play on dying young. We thought the robots might have abandoned us forever. And in the end, this is where we’re at. ‘Skying’ showed that there was nothing The Horrors couldn’t master. Like this? 10. In their own words: “I think the very notion of the suburbs in the old-fashioned sense – that homogenised sprawl of corporate housing and malls – is like a metaphor for something much bigger.” – Win Butler, The Guardian, November 2010. EH, This Brooklyn band have forged an unmistakable (and oft-imitated) sound but with ‘Wide Awake’ they shook things up. Try this: Halsey – ‘Hopeless Fountain Kingdom’, Tracklist: 1. 11. Artwork: Dan Hillier MN, If 2009’s ‘Primary Colours’ had everyone scratching their heads, then The Horrors’ third album ‘Skying’ confirmed the band as iconic musical chameleons. ‘Nana’. ‘The 1975’ 2. How the hell do you follow ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’? PJ Harvey – ‘Let England Shake’ (2011). Artwork by: John Gorham They lifted that “Mad sounds/In your ears” bit from a song by their early producer Alan Smyth. Its Ritalin-sharp focus is what sets it apart from the rest of West’s oeuvre. Artwork by: Dave Konopka (Battles bassist), 19. SM. It forced the world to pay attention through whirlwind vignettes and an inherently moreish format, cementing her as a fresh, innovative force in rap. The first full solo effort from the man dubbed the driving force of The xx took five years of production and arrived in a rainbow burst of fresh beats and playful patchworked tracks. Album cover of the decade by a mile. Goosebump moment: When Monáe shouts: “We’re gonna start a motherfuckin’ pussy riot!” on ‘Django Jane’. ‘England’ 8. EA. 2 Chainz, 'B.O.A.T.S. Lyrically, the album deals with struggles around heroin addiction, but the music bursts out like pure enlightenment. Even their aesthetic has coloured the last four years of the decade. Unless you happened to live in a very cool Montreal loft at the start of the decade, this was probably the first time you heard his expertly-crafted and irresistibly melodic songs about growing up, falling in love and getting in so much trouble you scare your mum. Bestselling books are notoriously difficult to quantify. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. EH, The Houston rapper assembled an all-star cast to help create his exhilarating and otherworldly third album, named after the now-defunct theme park of the same name. ‘Written on the Forehead’ 12. If her subsequent two albums felt forced – either too acidly preoccupied by the tabloid squall (2017’s ‘Reputation’) or too sprawling (2019’s ‘Lover’) – what staggers now is how effortless ‘1989’ seems. Goosebump moment: Nicki Minaj’s primal scream at the end of her career-best verse on ‘Monster’. As the wait continues for ‘R9’, it stands as a shining example of the bold brilliance RiRi’s DGAF attitude sparks. National Anthem 7. ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful and yet so unaware of it’. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. ‘Bitter Branches 10. ‘Nightmusic’ 12. The Suburbs (Continued). With ‘Channel Orange’, Frank Ocean announced himself as a generational talent. JB. Often ‘The Sprawl’, an image that returns again and again, feels like a dying star, absorbing and destroying everything in its wake as it relentlessly expands. ‘Circumambient’ 6. ‘Liability (Reprise) 11. Happy New Decade! ‘Bon Iver’ remains a gorgeous collection of chamber-pop flecked indie that packs a powerfully emotional punch. What it all amounted to was as good a portrait of what it was like to be staying out too late and getting into trouble in the 2010s as anyone wrote in any medium, with the added bonus that it was also really fun to dance to. 21. Lana wasn’t afraid of much on ‘Born to Die’ – not metaphors of cancer, nor immortal declarations of love, or comparisons with Nabokov’s controversial Lolita. With diverse production, plus slick and honest lyrical themes, ‘Konnichiwa’ proved to be pivotal in the world of grime, and an equally monumental part of British culture. EH, A crack of thunder set the stark and ominous tone for A$AP Rocky’s debut studio album before a sharp quip: “I thought I’d probably die in prison/Expensive taste in women”. John Mayer backs away from the spotlight entirely, his guitar solos on ‘Pyramids’ and ‘White’ his only prominent contribution and he brings Andre 3000 out of semi-retirement to deliver a stand-out verse on ‘Pink Matter’. Carmen 10. The Oxford quintet’s second album landed at a crossroads. In ‘Common Sense’ and ‘Bouff Daddy’ it also had two of the biggest bops of 2017. ‘Vowels = Space and Time’ 7. ‘The Ballad Of Me And My Brain’. It was a new era for Foals, too. It also ushered in a new era of festival headline sets and admiration from some of the world’s biggest stars. Instead, eight years after third album proper ‘Human After All’, they returned to blow our minds. RD, There’s a certain magic to a band that puts out a single ferocious record before calling it quits. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) 16. ‘Fireside’. If this list celebrates the music defining the previous decade, ‘When We All Fall Asleep…’ sets the agenda for the future. On ‘Lemonade’ Beyoncé brazenly addressed her husband’s infidelity, as well as tackling larger themes like race and feminism. A new decade had arrived, the Tories were back, and the nation was reeling from recession. 17. ‘Green Light’ 2. 11. Filled with real-life tales of heartbreak, fragility and the pains of growing up (‘Prom’), even guest spots from the likes of Travis Scott and Kendrick Lamar couldn’t wrestle your focus away from a sensational, heart-on-sleeve performance from SZA. 2012 was a time where people could go viral online just because they were good. This dazzling 2013 mixtape was Chance’s breakthrough moment, with intelligent and affecting sing-song raps about childhood nostalgia, Chicago street violence and, as the title suggests, drugs (“lean all on the square, that’s a fucking rhombus”) playing over jazzy beats and hip-hop samples from the likes of Slum Village and Kanye West. On ‘Bad Religion’, Ocean uses a fictional back-and-forth with a cab driver as a personal therapy session while on ‘Super Rich Kids’, he admonishes the wealthy and privileged. A three-dimensional tour of East London that shines a light on both its potential and limitations, ‘Made in the Manor’ was the moment Kano progressed from being a technically flawless emcee to an artist with something to say about how Britain treats working-class black people. As producer Tony Visconti put it, “His death was no different from his life – a work of art”. Not only did the album bring punk back to the masses with relentless invective but, as on the wonderfully titled ‘Cheer Up London’, it asked the questions we’d end up asking for the rest of the decade. Across a series of glitches and croons, the then-21-year-old proved himself to be both a production whiz and an ace at emotionally rich songwriting. ‘The Glorious Land’ 4. 9. The best album artwork of 2016; Here, we celebrate a decade of amazing album covers from the split-personality 1970s. Goosebump moment: A powerful slice of dialogue before ‘Corn on the Curb’ pretty much sums up the brave intent behind this record: “Everyday bro, we’ve got to stay battling, gotta stay fighting, gotta stay striving, gotta stay dreaming, gotta stay believing, gotta stay scheming.” RB. Goosebump moment: When the title track shifts from a sludgy, steady march into a whirlwind of wild riffs and Ellie’s strained, sharp shrieks. They’d shown hints of something more in songs like ‘Heart Out’, but ‘I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ was the album that expanded their world beyond big choruses, running the gamut from post-rock soundscapes and bangers to mental health-referencing scream-alongs and funk-flecked ‘80s paeans to the effects of cocaine. What he sounds like when he ’ s fourth full-length was a decade of album... Say it was grime ’ s the greatest game-changer we have guitar bands of the personas are consumed guilt. 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