What are the 100 best albums of the 2010s according to critics?

Kendrick Lamar wins — followed by St. Vincent and Nick Cave

In the age of Spotify and Apple Music, discovering new music is like drinking at the proverbial fire hydrant. It is impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of new music being released — so tools to navigate the flow are essential. Spotify’s recommendation engine constantly surprises me with the accuracy of its suggestions. But it can only work with the data I give it, the music I’ve chosen to play. What about serendipity — the thrill of finding something brilliant off your beaten path?

That’s where this series comes in. This is the first of a series of stories looking at (and listening to) the music of the 2010s. In this story, I focus on the critics’ perspective as aggregated from two meta-sites, Album of the Year and Metacritic. In future stories, I’ll look at fan ratings and compare them to the critics.

AOTY and Metacritic aggregate music reviews from many online sources to generate meta-scores for each album. Although they access many of the same sources, there are also significant differences. For example, Ten Freedom Summers by Wadada Leo Smith (2012) was number 1 on Metacritic but didn’t crack the AOTY top 100. Conversely, Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell (2010) was number 4 on AOTY…