My Top Albums of 2021

I like to listen to a lot of music. Like, a lot. I try my best to avoid Spotify and give back to artists when I can, but Spotify does tend to be convenient for finding new music (though I'm forever a big fan of Bandcamp as well). So about half my listening happens through Spotify, but even so, I average about 40,000 minutes of listening on Spotify a year.

I do tend to have pretty eclectic tastes, though. I got into more experimental bands later in high school, and something about the uniqueness has stuck with me ever since. I really like things that are interesting more so than things that are catchy. Sometimes there's overlap, which is great!

Anyway, I listened to 150+ different albums from 2021 alone. Obviously, 150 albums is far from all of what came out this year, and I tend to listen to stuff that I already think I might like, so this list is by no means extensive. It's also NOT just my weird eclectic tastes (though a lot of that is definitely there). Anyway, these are my top 25 albums from this year, and some honorable mentions. There were so many others I wanted to include, but I really had to limit myself!

The ordering here is somewhat flexible. Hover over the album title for a brief review. Rough genre is in [brackets].