Women Ruled Music In The 2010s & The 10 Best Albums Of The Decade Prove It

Do albums even matter in the 2010s? It was the decade that saw the rise of Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, and YouTube — places where we learned to make playlists from our favorite songs and lost the will to listen to a full album. But some artists still put out statement albums that got our attention. Whether the world consumed them as such, these collections of tracks were meant to convey a whole mood more than a vibe. To get the full picture and understand the storytelling, you had to go all in.

From Taylor Swift’s record breaking album that made her the first woman ever to win two Album of the Year Grammys, to Kacey Musgraves’ career-making turn that celebrates butterflies and outer space, to the Beyoncé album that taught us more about Queen Bey than we ever hoped to learn, these are the albums that ruled the 2010s. 

And yes, they’re (almost all) proof that women drove the creative and popular narratives in music throughout the decade.