The 10 best albums of 2021
This was an interesting year for albums. There were no obvious trends, although a certain quality of introversion and contemplation (perhaps responding to pandemic restrictions) ran through many of the year’s most absorbing releases. Female artists pushed further forward creatively and commercially and though few young British musicians made any impact in America, the UK nevertheless produced many of the year’s most inventive and critically admired works, which is cause for optimism.
UK rap was consistently interesting, displaying a new confidence and maturity. The commercial blockbusters came at the year’s end, with Adele, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and ABBA fighting it out for the Christmas market, but the best work happened in the margins.
Here are 10 albums that, for me, warrant the highest acclaim in terms of both artistry and impact. But there were many more that deserve mention and warrant further listening, including offerings from Sam Fender, Arlo Parks, Olivia Rodrigo, St Vincent, Ghetts, Headie One, Sault, Joy Crookes, James Blake, Anchoress, The Weather Station, Low, Dry Cleaning, Black Country, New Road, Paul Weller, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and whatever found its place on your own playlist to keep you sane in these strange times.
10. Dave: We’re all Alone in this Together
Eloquent and impassioned, Dave Orobosa Omoregie maintains a fierce, serious hold on British rap. The classically trained pianist brings deep musicality to his lean, modern productions as a showcase for sharp, heartfelt rhymes addressing darkness in his own heart and in the heart of a nation. “I remember when I used to be innocent / Ain’t s__changed, I’m a young black belligerent / Child of an immigrant, lifestyle frivolous … what’s the point of being rich when your family ain’t? / It’s like flying first class on a crashing plane.”
9. Billie Eilish: Happier than Ever
The sound of a tortured teen alone in her bedroom late at night, broadcasting to like-minded souls with a quiet force that cuts through the static of our over-saturated world. With whispery vocals and subdued micro-beats, Eilish’s lovingly crafted second album is a gorgeous exercise in soft power. The 16-song set flows beautifully, carrying listeners on an emotional journey in which surprising musical twists and glittering barbs of lyrical empowerment cast optimistic light on a long dark night of Billie’s soul.
8. Tom Jones: Surrounded by Time
The Welsh powerhouse’s 40th album married his age-weathered but still magnificent baritone with a set of tough, reflective songs blending roots Americana with atmospheric electronica. Under producer Ethan Johns’ guidance, big arrangements have been dialled back to something more spartan, honing in on the most intimate qualities of Jones’s voice. At 81, the old trooper was on top form, squeezing every drop from songs of hard-lived experience.
7. Wolf Alice: Blue Weekend
There is a compelling balance of forces at work in Wolf Alice: sweet and sour, soft and hard, feminine and masculine, sweet melodiousness and metal attack. Guitar slinging frontwoman Ellie Rowsell and her inventive band may be the best Britain has to offer right now. Their outstanding third album offered a sprawling expanse of rap, rock, pop and folk finding focus in intimate songcraft and sky-high choruses.
6. Self Esteem: Prioritise Pleasure
Formerly one half of gentle Sheffield folk duo Slow Club, Rebecca Taylor has completely reinvented herself as electro dance queen Self Esteem, mixing up experimental edginess with fizzing bangers in sexed-up feminist powerhouse leftfield superpop that must be making Madonna weak with envy. Prioritise Pleasure is a witty, smart, contemporary pop album dense with processed sound yet beating with a recognisably human heart.
5. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra: Promises
Cutting edge British electronic producer Sam Shephard (aka Floating Points) collaborated with 80-year-old American jazz saxophone master Pharaoh Sanders, then blended their ambient improvisations with the strings of the LSO. The result was a celestial masterpiece of pure blissful joy that really should have made Sanders the first octogenarian to scoop the Mercury Prize.
4. Adele: 30
Back with an almighty bang. The biggest selling artist in modern music reminded everyone why she is a force to be reckoned with on a big, emotional album about surviving divorce. The songs are powerhouse, the performances bravura, as the British superstar wrings every last drop of heart and soul from tear-jerking ballads and triumphalist pop. There is spirited positivity amid the self-pity and self-flagellation, allied to melodies that will have Karaoke nights booming, delivered with Adele’s customary gusto and lit up by her sheer joy when singing.
3. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis: Carnage
Created in lockdown, the Bad Seed duo’s alternately haunting and brutal album offered a dramatic account of our instinct for self-preservation in a crisis. Like most of Nick Cave’s work since the death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015, Carnage is infused with profound grief. But there is a new tone here too, embodied in Warren Ellis’s strange soundscapes. It is an album that allies with Samuel Beckett’s impulse for survival (summed up in his famous quote, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on”), a record of perseverance, no matter how bad things get.
2. Lana Del Rey: Chemtrails Over the Country Club
A simmering, sinister undercurrent flows through this sensuous album, another gorgeously enigmatic showpiece from a singer-songwriter who revels in private ambiguities in the dazzling glare of audacious songcraft. Astonishingly, she also released the equally dazzling Blue Banisters this year. A second dreamy, intimate yet pin-sharp collection of semi-autobiographical songs. The self-mythologising Del Rey continues to float through the pop world on a cloud of her own.
1. Little Simz: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Little Simz objects to being described as the best female rapper in Britain. And quite rightly too. Her magnificent fourth album demonstrates that she is one of the best rappers in the world, period. Funk, soul, jazz, gospel and grime bubble and boil through an astounding, autobiographical work vacillating between armour-plated confidence and private insecurity. Sumptuously produced by mysterious UK studio wizard Inflo, who also lent his considerable talents to SAULT and Adele.
