So let’s call a truce, shall we? Let’s dance to the year’s strongest debut project, the short and strident To Hell With It. But then PinkPantheress came along and, at the tender age of 20, launched an nth-wave garage revival with her lighter-than-air singing. Gradually-due to some excessive patriotism on my part, I admit-I expanded the blacklist to include U.K.

rappers from my imagination in response to them often playing dumb about the obvious influence of U.S. I’d spent the past decade blacklisting U.K. And they may even make a few marquee names in their own right. These may not mark the biggest releases of 2021, but they’re the ones that hypnotized or thrilled us and gave us a glimpse of where music is headed. In their place, you’ll find a handful of interesting entries: heralded indie-rap projects, a left-field post-punk LP, a 20-year-old reviving garage and two-step for the TikTok generation. There’s no Billie, no Drake, no Lil Nas X-their albums that dominated the charts and captured the zeitgeist, but for one reason or another, couldn’t match those artists’ previous highs. You’ll notice that only a few of the names above appear on this countdown. Below, you’ll find the Ringer staff’s list of the 10 best albums of 2021. Perhaps the better question is whether these albums delivered on their promise. If you were looking for big-ticket releases, there was no shortage of them. (And that’s all before acknowledging two rerecorded Taylor Swift albums.) This year also saw a number of names jump into the upper crest of stardom: Doja Cat and Lil Nas X went from pop curiosities to certifiable A-listers, while Olivia Rodrigo catapulted to the very top of the industry almost the second her first single dropped. A year into the pandemic, the industry unleashed a torrent of high-profile releases, with Billie Eilish, Adele, Drake, Kanye, Lana Del Rey (twice), Kacey Musgraves, and Lorde all returning. Was 2021 a good year for music? Strictly from a marquee-name perspective, it certainly was.

Some kind of wonderful music