Guides/A Riffiter guide
Feel-good albums: records to lift your mood
Bad day? These are the records that reliably turn it around.
Some albums are pure serotonin. This guide collects records that reliably lift the mood (disco-bright pop, joyful funk and sunlit soul) from Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life to Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia: music for when you need the day to get better.
Not every album needs to be profound. Some just need to make a bad afternoon better, and the ones that do that well are an art form of their own.
These records are built on joy: big choruses, bright grooves, and the kind of warmth that's almost impossible to resist. Keep them close for the days that need rescuing.
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Songs in the Key of Life
★ 4.5 · 4—A double album of pure generosity, love, gratitude, childhood and music itself, all set to grooves that radiate warmth. Maybe the most joyful record ever made.
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Future Nostalgia
★ 4.5 · 1—Disco revival done with discipline. Released into a locked-down world, it became the year's joy supply, sleek, bright and relentlessly fun.
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Off the Wall
★ 4.6 · 6—Disco perfected on its way out the door. Off the Wall is the sound of a young Michael Jackson at his most carefree, every track an invitation to dance.
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Vampire Weekend
Be the first to rate—Bright, breezy and impossibly catchy, preppy guitars and Afro-pop rhythms that sound like the first warm day of spring.
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Purple Rain
★ 5.0 · 5—Rock, funk and pop fused by one impossible performer. Purple Rain is a party and a triumph, and the title track is one of the great cathartic highs in all of music.
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