Photo by Jennifer Church

The best albums of the 2010s as chosen by music critics AND fans

Kendrick Lamar rules, Swans fly, Run The Jewels sparkle.

David Burgess
Nov 7 · 2 min read

In my last two stories, I looked at the top 100 albums of the 2010s. Firstly from the perspective of music critics, then from the fans’ perspective. Now comes the really exciting part — combining the two lists to find the best albums as chosen by critics AND fans.

There is a high degree of divergence between the critics and fans. There are only twenty-seven albums in common between the two top 100s. As with previous critic, fan combinations, I ranked these (from 1 to 27) according to the positions in their respective source lists, then sorted based on the sum of the rankings. Voila! The combined critics’ and fans’ list of the best albums of the 2010s.

Best albums of the 2010s as chosen by critics and fans

Critics and fans both voted To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar as the best album. Opinions were also close on the second choice, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West. There were some big differences of opinion though. Swans’ challenging post-rock opus, The Seer, was number 13 with the fans but only just made it into the critics’ top 100. Interestingly, another dense and intense album, Sunbather by Deafheaven was the opposite — 11 with the critics and 97 with fans. Given the unanimity on To Pimp a Butterfly, it was surprising that Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN. barely scraped into the fans’ top 100 at 99 while rating number 4 with critics.

Only three artists have multiple entries in the list. Kendrick Lamar leads with three. Swans and Run The Jewels each have two.

Artists with more than one entry

The twenty-seven albums on the list seem to me to be a good representation of the decade. Hip hop and arty, white auteurs dominate, with eight and seven entries respectively. The rest is a mix of soul/R&B artists and bands covering a range of styles.

Missing are any of the mega-selling artists of the decade — Adele, Drake, Rihanna and so on. None of the artists on this list make it into the top 10 best selling artists of the period. I’ll look at sales in another story. But it does point to big differences between music consumers and music fans.

David Burgess

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Corporate financial advisor, bass player, music and film geek, and nature lover. Advocate, educator, consultant for business as a force for good.

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