The 2010s in ten albums

Maximalist, operatic and bottomless, the sound of an artist throwing every idea he had at the wall and watching almost all of it stick. It opened the decade by raising the ceiling for what a rap record could be.

Psychedelia rebuilt for headphones and bedrooms, all warped synths and impossible melodies. Tame Impala turned one man's isolation into the lushest pop of the decade, and pointed the way the mainstream would follow.

Arctic Monkeys reinvented themselves as a slinky, after-hours rock band and wrote the biggest guitar record of the streaming era. Heavy, sleek and precise, it proved a band could still be enormous in a decade built for solo stars.

Jazz, funk, spoken word and Black American history poured into one furious, generous record. The album that made the case for hip-hop as the most ambitious music of its time.

Grief stripped to whispers and fingerpicked guitar. Sufjan Stevens wrote through the death of his mother and made an album so quiet and exact it feels like reading someone's diary. Devastating and beautiful at once.

A breakup album, a Black feminist statement and a visual epic all at once. Beyoncé moved through country, rock, reggae and trap without a seam, and turned personal betrayal into communal catharsis.

The great pop record about being young, heartbroken and at a party you want to leave. Lorde turned a single house party into a concept album and proved she was a songwriter first and a star second.

The sound of an artist finally finding peace, released weeks before his death. Mac Miller's warm, jazzy, searching record is the most human album on this list, and impossible to hear now without ache.

Lana Del Rey's Californian sadness finally matched to songwriting worthy of it. Widescreen, witty and heartbroken, it reframed a much-doubted artist as one of the decade's very best.

A breakup song cycle dressed as a left-field pop record. Tyler, the Creator traded rapping for synths and falsetto and made his most emotional, most accomplished album, completing one of the great artistic glow-ups.