So, I nicked this from Antony, who nicked it from Jake, who nicked it from Tom, who probably nicked it from someone else. Fair warning – this is a long post. You can jump ahead to a particular decade of music, if you like: 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, 20s.
1987
It has been fashionable to hate on U2 for as long as I’ve been aware of them, but that hasn’t stopped me from loving them. The Joshua Tree means so much to me, and features a number of my all-time favourite songs, including “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “Running to Stand Still,” “Exit,” and “One Tree Hill.” I can’t think of a finer birth year album.
Honourable Mention: Strangeways, Here We Come by The Smiths
1988
My pick for 1988 probably would have been Morrissey’s Viva Hate if he hadn’t turned into such a disappointing, hypocritical asshole in his old age, so … Daydream Nation, it is! This was an important album to me when I was learning how to play the guitar as a teenager, especially “Trilogy (The Wonder / Hyperstation / Eliminator Jr.).”
1989
Simply one of the most gorgeous albums ever written. It was something I frequently turned to and relied on during my emotionally tumultuous teens and early twenties, and it still gets me through the occasional awful day as I approach 40. I read somewhere that The Cure is a band you grow into, not out of – and I agree.
1990
Easily my favourite Depeche Mode album, featuring some all-time favourites like “Enjoy the Silence,” “Policy of Truth” and “Personal Jesus.” Of course, I can’t listen to the latter these days without thinking about how some people use generative AI…
1991
My favourite record by any band ever, featuring U2 at their darkest, sexiest, and best. It was another album that was hugely influential to me when I was learning how to play guitar as a teenager. One of the things I regret most about my life is that I wasn’t born a decade earlier; if I had been, I would have been able to experience the Zoo TV tour in the flesh.
1992
My second-favourite Cure album, after Disintegration. It’s a perfect example of how Robert Smith is equally adept at writing songs you want to play on your happiest days (“Friday I’m In Love”) and songs you want to play on your worst (“End”).
Honourable mention: Rage Against the Machine by Rage Against the Machine
1993
An album that, for me, will forever be associated with being an awkward teenager in a band, running through setlists of cover songs in our bass player’s basement, while said bass player got increasingly stoned to the point of being physically unable to play “All Apologies.”
Honourable Mention: Modern Life is Rubbish by Blur
1994
I first listened to this album in 1998. I loved The Offspring’s Americana at the time, and can still remember my best friend’s snobby teenage brother saying “if you think that garbage is good, you should listen to this instead.” He was right, to be fair (though I still do have a soft spot for Americana).
Honourable Mention: Parklife by Blur
1995
The Bends is the exact opposite of a sophomore slump. “Street Spirit,” “High and Dry,” “Fake Plastic Trees,” and “My Iron Lung” rank high among my favourite Radiohead songs, and are what I usually recommend to people who can’t get into their more experimental albums.
1996
Look, no one said that the albums on this list had to be good. This was the first album I bought with my own money, I still remember the lyrics to every song, and they still make me smile, so I figure it’s noteworthy enough for inclusion. I expect most elder Millennial women remember which Spice Girl they “were,” (even if they’d probably rather not admit to it). I was Sporty Spice, with hints of Posh Spice. Simpler times…
1997
I first started getting into Radiohead towards the end of 2001. OK Computer was four years old at that point and “ancient” from my fourteen-year-old perspective (cute), but all of the music forums I visited back then were still buzzing about it, so I decided to check it out. I was completely blown away. Thanks to this album, Radiohead quickly became my second-favourite band, and they’ve maintained that position ever since.
Honourable Mention: The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse
1998
I was a little late to the party with this one; I first listened to it in university circa the mid 2000s, back when House was getting really popular. The album still sounds as effortlessly cool to me as it did when I first heard it.
1999
An essential album for me in middle school and high school. I have such fond memories of one of my English teachers sitting there sour-faced when she made the mistake of allowing us to make and play our own mix CD for a class project on literary references, and my pick (“Testify”) offended her delicate senses.
2000
I didn’t “get” this album right away, but when it clicked, it clicked. “Optimistic,” “Everything in its Right Place,” “The National Anthem,” “How to Disappear Completely” and “Idioteque” are essential Radiohead tracks for me, and pretty much sum up what they’re all about.
2001
Muse: or, what you might get if you threw Radiohead and Queen in a blender for a bit. Origin of Symmetry was another massively important guitar album for me in my teens and early 20s, and features a few of my all-time favourite Muse songs (“Citizen Erased,” “Plug in Baby,” “Space Dementia,” and “New Born”).
2002
This album rips off all of my favourite bands from the early 80s, but I remember feeling so happy when it came out that people close-ish to my age still wanted to write gloomy post-punk music. Favourite tracks include “Leif Erikson,” “Obstacle 2,” “Hands Away,” and “Untitled.”
2003
My favourite Muse album by a mile. Matt Bellamy’s skills are on prominent display here, especially on “Butterflies & Hurricanes,” “Hysteria,” “Sing for Absolution,” and “Ruled By Secrecy.”
2004
This entry should have been Arcade Fire’s debut (which I listened to incessantly in my first year of university), but … the lead singer is an abusive asshole, so it’ll just have to be the other album I listened to incessantly in my first year of university. I didn’t really like anything else The Killers released after their debut, but I still return to this one every now and then.
2005
Another quintessential “university” album for me. Duelling guitars, catchy bass lines, tight rhythm section, bleak melodies … everything I was into back then. Favourite tracks include “This Modern Love,” “She’s Hearing Voices,” “Helicopter,” and “Like Eating Glass.”
2006
This is an odd one for me, as I don’t like the sound of Colin Meloy’s voice at all, but I adore the music and lyrics – especially on the epic twelve minute “The Island: Come and See / The Landlord’s Daughter / You’ll Not Feel the Drowning.” I also enjoy “Shankill Butchers” and “Perfect Crime #2.”
2007
Simply brilliant. My favourite Radiohead album, by far, without a single weak track. I can’t recall what I ended up paying for In Rainbows, but I do remember being astounded that the band gave us the option of downloading it legally for free, if we wanted to.
Honourable mention: Marry Me by St. Vincent
2008
Indie folk rock isn’t usually my jam, but I loved this album when it came out. The melodies and harmonies are absolutely gorgeous, especially on tracks like “He Doesn’t Know Why,” “Your Protector,” “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” and “Ragged Wood.”
2009
Very derivative of 80s post-punk and goth (think Joy Division mixed with The Cure mixed with The Jesus and Mary Chain), but I am a sucker for that sound. I listened to this album a ton between 2009 and 2010. Standouts for me include “Sea Within a Sea,” “Mirror’s Image,” “Do You Remember,” and “New Ice Age.”
2010
This album was important to me in grad school. It’s a little bit pretentious and far too clever for its own good … which is grad school, in a nutshell! I don’t listen to it much anymore, but still enjoy “I Can Change,” “Dance Yrself Clean,” “Drunk Girls,” and “You Wanted a Hit.”
2011
I was having major doubts about my long-term career plans in 2012, and this was one of the albums that helped me get through that uncertain time. Favourites include the title track, “Cheerleader,” “Champagne Year,” and “Surgeon.”
2012
I first encountered Joshua Tillman (AKA Father John Misty) via Fleet Foxes, with whom he drummed and provided backing harmonies. A voice like that doesn’t deserve to stay in the background, so I was thrilled when he released his first album under the Father John Misty moniker. It’s a charming, smart, funny album that still holds up today. I also love the music video for “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”, which is basically just Aubrey Plaza thoroughly enjoying herself.
2013
2013 was the worst year of my life. Apparently eager to help with that, The National released an emotionally devastating album for me to wallow in! I haven’t listened to it in years, but I was reminded about it recently when “I Need My Girl” appeared in the TV show Shrinking. It’s still a beautiful album, but I have to be in a certain mood to listen to it.
2014
Delightfully strange art pop that I wasn’t entirely ready for the year it was released (see my blurb on 2013; I was still far too miserable to listen to anything fun the following year), but I got into it in 2015 when life started looking up again. The video for “Digital Witness” also has the honour of featuring my favourite YouTube comment of all time: “I’m on the weird and pretentious side of ikea again.” We all are, @tavern2468!
2015
It was kind of hard to find an album to list here for this year. 2015 was around the time when my musical interests started to calcify. While digging around to jog my memory, I realized Father John Misty’s sophomore effort was the only new album I listened to that year besides Muse’s Drones (which I hated). I didn’t enjoy I Love You, Honeybear as much as Fear Fun, but since it’s the only album I actually liked in 2015, I guess it belongs here.
2016
2016 was another year marked by lack of musical adventurousness on my part. I blame Spotify, which I started using around 2014 or 2015. The only album I was excited for that year was Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, and they lost me a little with that one. I checked out You Want it Darker after hearing the sad news of Leonard Cohen’s passing; it’s far from his best work (that honour belongs to Songs of Love and Hate), but it’s still moving and thought-provoking, as is par for the course with Leonard Cohen.
2017
I only listened to one new album in 2017, so it’s a good thing it was a great one. St. Vincent / Annie Clark picks up where she left off with her self-titled album in 2014, pushing that art pop sound and aesthetic even further. “Los Ageless” is arguably her best single to date, and would be a great entry point for anyone who doesn’t know what she’s about. (That outro!)
2018
So, I apparently didn’t listen to any new music in 2018. [insert shame bell here] Decided to give this album a spin apropos of this post, as I enjoy MGMT’s first album and this one was (as per Wikipedia) written as “both an expression of surprise and dismay to the current political and social climate — particularly the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.” Said surprise and dismay is obviously and sadly still relevant in 2026. I love the lead single / title track, and can’t believe I somehow missed it when it first came out. Better late than never, I guess!
2019
Sam Fender’s debut album answers the question “what would Bruce Springsteen sound like if he was a British Gen Zeelennial kid?” I don’t mean that as a slight. This was the first record I connected with that wasn’t written by someone my age or older. There are a few duds on the album, to be sure, but it’s a solid release on the whole!
2020
I didn’t listen to any new albums in 2020 because I was, uh, too busy trying not to die at work. Decided to check out a few for the purposes of filling the gap in this post, and really enjoyed this one. It was a pleasant surprise, too; I assumed The Strokes broke up sometime in the early 2010s!
2021
I confess I only listened to this because I was curious to know if Bono’s kid sounded anything like him; as it turns out, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! The band doesn’t do anything earth shattering here (indie rock with some obvious 80s post-punk influences) but it’s a solid and consistent debut album. Favourite tracks include “My Honest Face,” “Cheer Up Baby, “Who’s Your Money On? (Plastic House),” and “In My Sleep.”
2022
I only heard this one in 2024, largely because I was still relying on Spotify to feed me new music in 2022 (seriously, Spotify, all those Radiohead tracks in my listening history, and your algorithm never saw it fit to point me in the direction of an amazing new project involving Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood?) I didn’t think that my favourite members of Radiohead would be writing their most creative music in their fifties, but here we are. Standouts: “Thin Thing” (holy shit, Jonny!), “Free in the Knowledge,” “A Hairdryer,” and “We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings.”
2023
Inhaler dropped their post-punk influences and leaned more into their indie rock side on their second album, and I think it works better for them. I still get a little weirded out by the uncanny resemblance between Elijah Hewson’s voice and his father’s, but given that I didn’t get to experience early U2 when they were contemporary, I’ll take it. “Dublin in Ecstasy” is easily the best track on the album, followed by “Perfect Storm,” “These Are the Days,” and “Just to Keep You Satisfied.”
2024
I quit my Spotify subscription in 2024 and slowly started returning to my old practice of seeking out new music on my own steam; a few of my favourite bands and artists made that transition easy for me, including The Cure. Songs of a Lost World is classic Robert Smith, and “Endsong” is the best thing he’s written in years – decades, even. It wouldn’t sound out of place on Disintegration. Even if the rest of the album sucked (it doesn’t), it would be worth it just to have that song. “I’m outside in the dark / wondering how I got so old.” SAME.
Honourable mentions: All Born Screaming by St. Vincent and Wall of Eyes by The Smile
2025
Imagine for a moment that back in the early 80s, Kate Bush, Freddie Mercury, and David Bowie formed a power throuple, then travelled into the future on Bowie’s time machine for the sole purpose of gifting us with their progeny; those freakishly talented children would have gone on to form The Last Dinner Party. From the Pyre is an absolute delight to listen to, and gives me so much hope for the future of art rock.
2026
It’s early days yet, but I think it’s safe to say this will end up being my favourite album of 2026. Much like The Strokes, I wrongly assumed Boards of Canada broke up in the early 2010; thankfully, they didn’t! Their music isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoy listening to gloomy ambient music when you work (like I do), you’ll probably appreciate Inferno.
If you made it this far…
Thank you for enduring this long-winded, self-indulgent journey through my past and present musical taste. I haven’t written about music on this blog before, but as this post hopefully makes clear, music has played a significant role in my life.
Like the person I stole this idea from, it took me a while to put this list together; a lot of the music I listen to and love the most was written before I was born, and I went through that aforementioned dark period several years back where I didn’t listen to anything new at all.
I always promised myself that I wouldn’t turn into one of those boring old people who only listen to the albums and singles they enjoyed in their teens and twenties; writing this post was a good reminder for me to keep on actively seeking out new music. It’s easy to scoff at some of the dreck that gets popular on streaming platforms and assume that no one writes good music anymore, but that is thankfully untrue. The kids are in fact alright, and many of my old favourites still have a lot left to give.
Depending on what we like, we have to dig a lot more to find gems than we used to … but we can always help each other out with that, by writing posts like these! If you checked out and enjoyed any of the albums I listed here, please consider buying them to support the artists. Human creativity needs our patronage now more than ever.