The 10 best albums from the last 25 years

W e know what you’ll be thinking as soon as your eyes finish glazing across this list in its entirely: not one Taylor Swift album made the cut. Not a one! Let us explain: this is the problem with asking people to select their top 10 albums from across 25 years. It’s a lengthy period and everyone had a different favourite Taylor Swift era, thus splitting the vote and meaning she missed out. It’s a travesty, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. More importantly, the albums on this list – chosen by our critics with an eye to quality, influence and legacy – offer an interesting snapshot of this millennium’s pop developments to date: the death of rock, the ever-increasing influence of dance and electronic music, and the, um, cult of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Leave your furious comments below.

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Since I Left You, The Avalanches (2000)

Since I Left You is pure joy. The debut of Melbourne electronica savants The Avalanches is a sparkling celebration of music itself – a sonic saturnalia dedicated to music’s endless delights. The Avalanches began as obsessive music fans, spending countless hours raiding op-shop record bins and chopping up thousands of sounds, storing them on a clutter of floppy disks. They stitched together the raggedly beautiful quilt that became Since I Left You on the fly, mad geniuses reinventing music with reckless, casual abandon. They sampled ’80s pop, old-school hip-hop, spaghetti westerns, forgotten comedy skits, wildlife recordings and even Sesame Street, and somehow transformed them into a coherent piece of manic surrealism. The wonderfully bizarre Frontier Psychiatrist and dreamy title track became unlikely hits, but the album is best consumed as a long, wandering journey – a fantastical odyssey to nowhere in particular. Impossibly layered but eminently accessible, complex but freewheeling and a little unhinged. It’s made by fanatics, but it’s for everyone. Tom W Clarke

Is This It, The Strokes (2001)

New York was about to change in 2001. Two planes flew into the twin towers, forever altering the city’s skyline and psyche. And The Strokes released their debut album, igniting the city’s music scene in a way that hadn’t happened since the heady days of CBGBs in the ’70s. They looked drop-dead cool, all stick-figure limbs in tight jeans, leather jackets and sneakers, like the Ramones before them. The duelling, intertwined guitars of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. provided the bedrock for Julian Casablancas’ distorted, sinewy vocals, telling bleary-eyed tales of the city that never sleeps. These clarion calls from the streets of downtown Manhattan reverberated around the world, announcing that rock was back. Drugs, alcohol and musical drift would soon change The Strokes, but on Is This It they are forever preserved as the band that put the spotlight back on New York City and kicked down the door for other guitar-wielding groups to burst through in the Noughties. Barry Divola

Discovery, Daft Punk (2001)

Gun to head, Homework (1997) is a better album than Discovery, but Daft Punk still made a mockery of the “second album syndrome” with their disco-inspired record that spawned enormous hits One More Time and Harder Better Faster Stronger, and a couple of their loveliest downtempo moments in Something About Us and Veridis Quo. Even Daft Punk’s so-called album tracks are peerless examples of their dazzling artistry, from the energy rush of Superheroes to the infectious dance-funk of High Life to the soulful disco house of Too Long, featuring Romanthony’s indelible vocals (he sung on One More Time, too). On Discovery, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo changed the electronic music landscape for the second time in four years, incorporating samples in ingeniously inventive ways and trading raw and gritty Chicago-inspired house for euphoric disco-pop that at once evoked the nostalgic wonder of childhood and romantic adventures in outer space. Annabel Ross

Fever, Kylie Minogue (2001)

Fever is our greatest pop artefact and the epitome of Kylie as queen of reinvention. After the misunderstood swing that was Impossible Princess (1997), an alt-pop pivot so disastrously received that she was dropped from her record label, Kylie had already dipped her toe into Euro-inflected dance-pop on Light Years (2000), producing the improbable comeback hits Spinning Around and On a Night Like This. But Fever upped the sophistication, eschewing the campy winks (we still love you sometimes, Light Years′ Your Disco Needs You) and delivering a masterpiece of sultry, slinky, romantic dancefloor euphoria. Beyond the no-skips tracklist – including Love At First Sight, Can’t Get You Out of My Head and Come Into My World - it’s ridiculous how well the album holds up almost 25 years on: with Fever, Kylie took the temperature of the next two decades of pop music, preempting a wave of club-centric stars from Robyn to Carly Rae Jepsen to Dua Lipa. I think this is what people actually mean when they call their favourite pop star mother. Robert Moran

Back to Black, Amy Winehouse (2006)

Amy Winehouse’s second and final album is a true time capsule, and a potent reminder of a talent and a life gone too soon. Hers was a once-in-a-generation voice that recalled the smoky jazz clubs of the 1960s, belied by her young age – 22 when this album was released – and the tumultuous personal life that the press preyed upon until (and beyond) her tragic death in 2011. Produced by Mark Ronson, Back to Black has some of Winehouse’s finest songs, such as the triumphant Tears Dry On Their Own and the sadly ironic Rehab. It’s all buoyed by bright, colourful musical backing that takes its cues and influences from across genres and eras – everything from doo-wop and ’60s girl groups to soul and R&B. But it’s the title track that’s the defining sound of this particular moment in 2000s history – a heart-wrenching, heartbroken performance that’s simultaneously infused with a quiet strength and fury. Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West (2010)

Made during a period of exile imposed on (the artist formerly known as) Kanye West following his stage-bombing of a young Taylor Swift at the VMAs, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy captures a celebrity at war with fame, a genius tortured by his singular vision, believing he’d never be truly understood or appreciated. This album changed everything. It is populist maximalism, totally unrelatable and deeply human. The keys on Runaway, the Chris Rock skits and Bon Iver sample, Nicki Minaj’s barn-storming turn on Monster. And the closer, the voice of Gil Scott-Heron asking, from 1970, “Who will survive in America?” Ye no longer has the answers or even the hypothesis. His relationship to fame and reality has become more protracted and upsetting in recent years. But for a moment in 2010, he went to hell and back, found bravery in his bravado, stole fire from the gods and handed it over to the world. Brodie Lancaster

Emotion, Carly Rae Jepsen (2015)

In a 2019 interview with Time, Carly Rae Jepsen shrugged her shoulders and said, “I think it’s very cool to be uncool and just shamelessly feel it all”. Shamelessly feeling it all has been the Canadian popstar’s MO, right from her 2012 breakthrough hit Call Me Maybe. The single was so impossibly huge that many people (not unfairly) slotted her into the file of “one-hit wonders.” But Jepsen returned in 2015 with EMOTION, an album that boiled over with yearning and lust and love and confusion and every other human feeling that Jepsen could conjure. Its lush, pristine ’80s synthpop production underscored Jepsen’s exceptional songwriting, with rushing, full-throated verses and choruses that lifted like an A380. Run Away With Me, with its now-iconic saxophone riff and screamable “take me to the feeling” refrain, and the aching title track, are high points in an album with no low ones. One of the most acclaimed pop records of the decade, it was an album that helped usher in the era of “poptimism” and unexpectedly cemented Jepsen as a cult pop hero. Jules LeFevre

Hamilton, Original Broadway Cast Recording (2015)

Having launched his hip-hop revolution of musical theatre with In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda dared to dream higher still. What better subject for a transformational musical than that key revolutionary, Alexander Hamilton? Miranda uses rap to solve a problem faced since recitative faded from operatic fashion: communicating swathes of story rapidly, without resorting to dialogue (given that songs more efficiently communicate emotion). Rapping doesn’t just accelerate the dissemination, it lends the whole show momentum, and with Miranda brilliantly playing Hamilton, the performing matches the writing. His songs shame much new-century composing for musicals. My Shot has the anthemic “Rise up!” refrain, Helpless is an R&B classic, The Duel Commandments is frighteningly visceral, and The Room Where it Happens is wickedly catchy. High art meets thrilling music as the rhymes, among the most dazzling since Byron, fly at you with the velocity of grapeshot from a cannon. John Shand

Lemonade, Beyonce (2016)

Watching Beyoncé‘s visual album Lemonade for the first time felt like witnessing a pivotal shift in the singer-songwriter’s career. Beyoncè’s music often depicted female empowerment, but with Lemonade she got personal and political, tapping into darker emotions fuelled by betrayal and survival and explored themes of womanhood, blackness in America and her southern roots. It showcased her ability to transcend genres, incorporating gospel intro Freedom, a tribute to the Black Lives Matter movement; bringing country tones into Daddy Lessons, a song about her relationship with her father; and integrating electro beats into Sorry, which detailed an incident of infidelity and brought the phrase “Becky with the good hair” into popular use. Unsurprisingly, it was a commercial and critical success, earning nine Grammy nominations (famously missing out on album of the year to Adele) and becoming the best-selling album globally in 2016. Fans even co-opted the lemon emoji to showcase their appreciation. Vyshnavee Wijekumar

Brat, Charli XCX (2024)

Charli XCX’s sixth studio album, Brat, is the high point for an artist whose underdog refusal to quit has made her the most consistently risk-taking pop star of her generation. Unlike her revisionist contemporaries, Charli XCX’s discography is entirely rooted in the 21st Century. Brat reflects our third millennium club-cultural zeitgeist, with executive producer A.G. Cook mischievously blitzing this century’s dominant dance music styles (electro house, techno and EDM) into three-minute bangers. Unlike most pop stars, who wrap themselves in an untouchable aura, Charli makes her ridiculous life feel relatable, like you’ve been invited into her stretch Hummer to pop bottles with Lorde, Billie Eilish and Troye Sivan (whose definitive remix appearances have supplanted the album versions). The Brat ethos says that simply by existing you’re worthy of having some fun in this life – and it doesn’t make you any less of a thoughtful, caring, intelligent person for doing so. Nick Buckley

Honourable mentions

Stankonia, Outkast (2000)
1989, Taylor Swift (2014)
To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar (2015)
Melodrama, Lorde (2017)
Norman F—ing Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey (2019)

What albums do you think deserve a place on the list? Tell us in the comments.