Here at Pitchfork, we listen to a lot of music. A lot. Every year, whittling down our best albums list to only 50 albums and our best songs list to only 100 songs is incredibly difficult. There’s just too much great stuff to choose from, and inevitably, even things that our staff members feel super passionate about end up on the cutting room floor.
This year, we decided to give our writers and editors one last chance to make the case for their personal favorites. This list features picks across genres and levels of fame; the only criteria for inclusion was that the album was not on our Best Albums of 2021 list. We hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed listening.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2021 wrap-up coverage here.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
Baby Keem: The Melodic Blue
Best Moment: “Two-phone Baby Keem, fuck you mean? I am here, ho/Ice cream, booger colored piss, Sub-Zero/No ho hookers in my clique, we don’t fear ho/Lit, lit, lit, lit, lit, lit, lit, lit” (“Vent”).
Best Song: “Family Ties” [ft. Kendrick Lamar]
RIYL: Postmodern hip-hop
–Matthew Strauss
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Cleo Sol: Mother
Best Moment: The way she wrings drama from every word on the first line of “Build Me Up,” slowly working up to the gospel-choir crescendo
Best Song: “23”
RIYL: Spirit in the Dark on a Sunday morning, easing into tender domesticity, the Inflo-produced tracks on Adele’s 30 or the softer side of SAULT, crying for reasons both happy and sad
–Jillian Mapes
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Colleen Green: Cool
Best Moment: The not one but two songs dedicated to becoming a nicer, happier person, goddammit
Best Song: “I Wanna Be a Dog”
RIYL: Illuminati Hotties, chorus effect, one-woman shows, deleting your Facebook, going to the park, ear scratches, treats
–Anna Gaca
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Dialect: Under~Between
Best Moment: The soft, glassy strings that flutter across “Yamaha Birds,” suggesting streaks of movement across a sun-warmed aviary
Best Song: “Under~Between”
RIYL: Talk Talk, Bing & Ruth, the sounds of nature while a minimalist chamber ensemble rehearses outdoors
–Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Dream Unending: Tide Turns Eternal
Best Moment: The ambient breakdown in the title track, which leads to a gut-punch guitar solo whose final note resonates for almost 30 seconds
Best Song: “Dream Undending”
RIYL: Metal with fretless bass and spoken word, the Cure patch on your battle jacket, crying to 1980s sci-fi movies, describing your dreams in great detail.
–Sam Sodomsky
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Fiddlehead: Between the Richness
Best Moment: At the start of “Life Notice,” when Pat Flynn’s wife reads a eulogy for her childhood best friend, and it segues into an ominous yet moving guitar riff honoring the life she lived
Best Song: “Get My Mind Right”
RIYL: Post-hardcore with an emo urgency, Floral Green by Title Fight, Samiam lyrics, Drug Church, telling your friends you love them
–Nina Corcoran
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Indigo Sparke: Echo
Best Moment: The lonesome whistling that comes in at the very end of “Colourblind” that could go on for another three minutes.
Best Song: “Carnival”
RIYL: Early Sharon Van Etten, the softer side of Big Thief and Lucinda Williams, kissing and whispering, the void in general
–Jeremy D. Larson
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Jenevieve: Division
Best Moment: When the beat casually reduces from a throb to a sensuous simmer in the middle of “Blameless”
Best Song: “Baby Powder”
RIYL: Cryptic flirting, ethereal soul, bubble-bath-and-chill nights
–Clover Hope
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Katy Kirby: Cool Dry Place
Best Moment: The final 30 seconds of “Tap Twice” when the serene indie-folk swells to a climactic finish as Kirby bellows a vivid image: “You thrashed around like goldfish in a garbage bag”
Best Song: “Juniper”
RIYL: Singing saws, a cool beer enjoyed beneath the blazing sun, Mitski’s Bury Me at Makeout Creek
–Quinn Moreland
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Mereba: AZEB EP
Best Moment: The beatific handclaps and improvised vocal riffs that close “Go(l)d” on a glorious, sun-kissed note.
Best Song: “Rider”
RIYL: The head rush of falling in love, earth signs, summer picnics, inner peace
–Eric Torres
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Mickey Guyton: Remember Her Name
Best Moment: The way Guyton wails “If you think we live in the land of the free” at the climax of “Black Like Me”
Best Song: “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?”
RIYL: When Beyoncé collaborated with the Dixie Chicks, early Kacey Musgraves, dismantling racist institutions, drinking rosé
–Amy Phillips
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Myriam Gendron: Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found
Best Moment: The long tail of gnarled guitar and fuzz at the end of “Par un dimanche au soir” sliding into the opening of “Au cœur de ma délire”
Best Song: “I Wonder As I Wander”
RIYL: Quiet contemplation, stormy afternoons, pale sunbeams, interpreting and re-interpreting, women with secrets
–Allison Hussey
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Quadry: They Think We Ghetto
Best Moment: Quadry, GRIP, and Tommy Rogue taking turns demolishing a crispy and humid Ahwlee beat on “I Can’t Throw No Stones”
Best Song: “That Scent (The New Me)”
RIYL: Organic explorations of Black manhood, Pivot Gang sprinkled with beignet sugar and left in the fryer for a few seconds extra, the film New Jersey Drive as told by your homie from around the way
–Dylan Green
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
quinn: i’m definitely getting sued for this (beat tape no.1)
Best Moment: When Azealia Banks first says “I’mma ruin you cunt” on the track of the same title
Best Song: “where we goin?”
RIYL: “212,” chilled-out house music, ’90s hip-hop, the opening notes to Fall Out Boy’s “Centuries,” following digicore artists to wherever their interest takes them
–Cat Zhang
Listen: SoundCloud
Saint Etienne: I've Been Trying to Tell You
Best Moment: The way “Penlop” explodes after an endlessly peaking buildup and Sarah Cracknell sings “I don’t really know you/But I’d like to show you”
Best Song: “Blue Kite”
RIYL: Late-1990s irrational exuberance as melted into hypnotic sample fodder by pop-besotted UK indie luminaries, Natalie Imbruglia deep cuts, PinkPantheress, made-up memories, people who love music recommending music you’d also love, dub, harp, the thrill of discovery
–Marc Hogan
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Ryan Sambol: Gestalt
Best Moment: When Sambol mumbles, “We met in the comments of one of our favorite singers’ songs” on “Just Like Golden Hours”
Best Song: “You’re Still Lovable to Someone”
RIYL: Hang-dog blues, hungover country, Townes Van Zandt
–Madison Bloom
Smirk: EP
Best Moment: The golden age country-sounding guitar lick that opens “So Original” and how it’s subsequently wiped out by budget punk power chords
Best Song: “Staring at Screens”
RIYL: Weird punks playing basement shows, ’70s power pop, Parquet Courts
–Evan Minsker
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Tony Shhnow: Authentic Goods
Best Moment: The transition from BoofPaxkMooky’s graceful melody to Tony Shhnow rapping about “bad bitches” that happens halfway through “K’s Around Me”
Best Song: “Right Now”
RIYL: If you wish there was an album of Hoodrich Pablo Juan rapping on ’90s R&B beats, Knxwledge remixes of Gucci Mane songs
–Alphonse Pierre
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Willow: lately I feel EVERYTHING
Best Moment: The pure, very direct angst when Willow yells, “FUCK YOU FOR FUCKING UP MY HEART/ DON’T YOU EVER GET INVOLVED WITH ME AGAIN!”
Best Song: “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l”
RIYL: 2000s pop punk, Fefe Dobson, “I Don’t Smoke” by Mitski, Manic Panic hair dye, movie montages where the protagonist gets over a shitty ex while singing into a hairbrush in her bedroom, revisiting the mall in your hometown over the holidays
–Vrinda Jagota
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
yes/and: yes/and
Best Moment: On closer “In My Heaven All Faucets Are Fountains,” producer Joel Ford dusts Meg Duffy’s fingerpicked guitar with enough angelic effects to guarantee ascension.
Best Song: “Ugly Orange”
RIYL: Majestic solo guitar dissolving into mist, the Books’ The Lemon of Pink
–Ryan Dombal
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
