Last week we had two very important polls – the US Presidential race and Richard Shaw’s #7albums10s.

There was no postal votes and recounts, although it took a lot longer to find out out who won and it was by Sunday evening, that David Bowie’s final album before he died, Blackstar came out on top with 398 points and a clear winner.

I must admit Bowie has definitely been one of those artists that I never really warmed to growing up. Too young to appreciate the Ziggy Stardust era, vaguely remember him a bit more during the 80s, particularly doing a duet with Mick Jagger and also his side project, Tin Machine. Maybe this is a chance to try something a bit different. There were loads of albums that caught my eye on the overall list so definitely keen to branch out a bit more and give somebody else a chance.

For the seven albums that I picked, only five of them polled. The albums that didn’t make it onto the list were Queens of the Stone Age Like Clockwork and Wolf Alice My Love is Cool.

So for the last two weeks I have been listening to my top 10 for each year of the 2010s. Taking in quite a lot – 100 albums and having to pick 7 of them for the poll. Quite a hard task considering what I was listening to.

Of all the albums listened to quite a few on my list made it into the poll. The five albums that made it for me are in bold. Final placings in Richard’s poll are in italics.

2010

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (2), The National – High Violet (3)

2011

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (7), Foo Fighters – Wasting Light (38), The Black Keys – El Camino (44), Arctic Monkeys – Suck it and See (58), The Decemberists – The Kings Is Dead (69)

2012

Bob Mould – Silver Age (66), Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball (144), Mark Lanegan Band – Blues Funeral (165)

2013

The National – Trouble Will Find Me (22), Primal Scream – More Light (177)

2014

The War on Drugs – Lost In The Dream (6), Manic Street Preachers – Futurology (95)

2015

No album polled

2016

Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool (8), Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression (55)

2017

Ride – Weather Diaries (25), The National – Sleep Well Beast (73), The Jesus and Mary Chain – Damage and Joy (95)

2018

Alice in Chains – Rainer Fog (177)

2019

Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars (38)

None of the albums I listened to the 2015 made it in the poll. Was a bit surprised as I thought maybe Faith No More’s comeback album, Sol Invictus would have been up there. I was definitely biased for the local bands – ASIWYA had 3 albums, Therapy? and Ash both had 2 albums each, Jetplane Landing and The Wood Burning Savages had 1 album each. A pretty good decade of albums for Northern Irish acts.

Below is a list of the contenders from 2010 to 2019.

Click to access best-of-2010s-2.pdf

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