Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2010

15.	The National High Violet 4AD

13: Taylor Swift's Speak Now

These moody Brooklyn rockers could have coasted with a repeat of their 2007 breakthrough, Boxer, but Violet is riskier and craftier, opening up their poetic guitar reveries with a late-Beatles sense of experimentation. Matt Berninger sings "Bloodbuzz Ohio" like a barfly who thinks you can't tell how terrified he is.

14.	Robyn Body Talk Cherrytree/Interscope

Body Talk began as two sugar- shot EPs; by the time the full-length dropped, it felt like a greatest-hits package. The Swedish diva's beats and tunes smoke her American competition. So does her wit: See "Fembot" and the secretly poignant "Don't Fucking Tell Me What to Do."

13.	Taylor Swift Speak Now Big Machine

Speak Now proves that Swift is more than the world's biggest country singer — at 21, she's a one-woman song factory with a rock & roll heart. There are tracks about celebrity studs, but what matters is how she can command a deep-freeze soft-soul ballad like "Enchanted" or a Phil Spector-style rocker like "Long Live."

12.	John Mellencamp No Better Than This Rounder

Folk-blues idealism — recorded on a mono tape machine, in places like a Georgia church and Sun Studios — with a very modern anger at the world after the crash. When Mellencamp sings "A Graceful Fall," he channels a pride and rage as fresh as last night's business reports.

11.	The Dead Weather Sea of Cowards Warner Bros./Third Man

This isn't so much an LP as it is a rush of metallic-blues spasms — and the best excessive-rock fun of the year. Jack White is the back-seat guy here — a singing drummer — but he leads by example: His Bonham-like force propels the zigzagging guitars and Alison Mosshart's Gothic-siren incantations.

Rolling Stone's Best of 2010: Albums, Singles, Movies and more

Next: Albums 10-6

9: Eminem's 'Recovery'

10.	LCD Soundsystem This Is Happening DFA/Virgin

James Murphy convenes his team of New York punk-funk troopers for a heavy-duty breakup album, tunneling out of the emotional wreckage with the help of Nancy Whang's keyboard glimmers and Pat Mahoney's monster drums. Murphy testifies about adult love gone bad ("I Can Change") over a host of electronic dance styles, while the goofball anthem "Drunk Girls" offers a motto for casual lovers everywhere: "I believe in waking up together."

9.	Eminem Recovery Aftermath/Interscope

"Let's be honest, that last Relapse CD was ehhh," Eminem rapped on Recovery, which turned out to be the post-rehab victory lap that the schlocky Relapse wasn't. Dominating radio, Eminem was back on top in 2010, but he was also older and wiser: a scared dad who'd been to drug-addict hell and made it back with his rhyme skills intact. When he pledges to stay sober on the hit "Not Afraid," you know the man is hellbent serious.

8.	Robert Plant Band of Joy Rounder

Keep waiting, Jimmy Page — he's not coming back. Plant followed up his dreamy roots-romp Raising Sand (2007) with an album that was edgier and rootsier: Plant and his bandleader, guitarist Buddy Miller, pursue ancient songs and modern tangents with a black-light glow on this psychedelic exploration of blues and country, covering Los Lobos, Townes Van Zandt, the slow-core band Low and public-domain gospel as if they are all stops on the true road to nirvana.

7.	Drake Thank Me Later Cash Money/Universal

Arriving after three years of mixtapes, guest spots and merciless hype, the debut LP from the Canadian actor- turned-rapper delivered the goods with sumptuous beats, airtight rhymes and nuanced introspection. Drake's sleepy, soulful flow gave his morning-after reflections on the high life an undercurrent of irony. He's the definitive star of hip-hop's tortured post-Kanye era: a guy who can't quite decide if "I've been up for four days gettin' money" is a brag or a burden.

6.	Vampire Weekend Contra XL

Contra was the album where Vampire Weekend discovered they could do just about anything: dubby, slo-mo gorgeousness, clattering pseudo-punk, African guitar riffs, choral swells, songs that rhyme "horchata" with "Aranciata" and "Masada." Ezra Koenig wrote dense lyrics about young love and Third World strife, but no matter how meditative he got, his melodic skills never failed him: Rarely do songs this lushly produced feel so buoyant or seem to zip by so quickly. By the time you marvel at the spacy ballad "I Think UR a Contra" or get "Your sword's grown old and rusty/Burnt beneath the rising sun" (from "Giving Up the Gun") stuck in your head, you realize these guys are as much about pure pleasure as anything else.

Rolling Stone's Best of 2010: Albums, Singles, Movies and more

Next: Albums 5-1

5.	Jamey Johnson The Guitar Song Mercury

1: Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

What does Jamey Johnson keep under all of that hair? Songs. Nashville's gruffest and grittiest star turns out to be its most reliable traditionalist, a Music Row pro who can write a song for every emotional season. Johnson pulled out a whole slew of them — 25, clocking in north of 105 minutes — for his double-disc fourth album: acoustic confessions and rugged boogie blues, big weepers and grim reapers, cover tunes and novelty ditties, not to mention "California Riots" and "Playing the Part," a pair of fiercely funny, unrepentantly redneck swipes at the frou-frou blue states.

4.	Arcade Fire The Suburbs Merge

Arcade Fire don't do anything small — so leave it to the Montreal collective to make an album of vast, orchestral rock that locates the battle for the human soul amid big houses and manicured lawns. The Suburbs is the band's most adventurous album yet: See the psychotic speed strings on "Empty Room," the Crazy Horse rush of "Month of May," the synth-pop disco of "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)." Win Butler and his wife, Régine Chassagne, sing about suburban boredom, fear of change and wanting to have a kid of their own — always scaling their intimate confessions to arena-rock levels and finding beauty wherever they look.

3.	Elton John and Leon Russell The Union Decca

Two rock giants, one largely forgotten, rekindle a friendship and make music that ranks with their best. Producer T Bone Burnett delivers his most spectacular production in memory, filled with shining steel guitar, chortling brass and gospel-time choirs. Ultimately, it's Russell's voice that shines brightest, drawing on the entire history of American popular music in its canny, vulnerable, knowing croon.

2.	The Black Keys Brothers Nonesuch

The duo boil it down on their best record yet: vivid tunes stripped bare and rubbed raw, with hot splashes of color and hooks popping through like compound fractures. "Howlin' for You" smears gnarly blues over a glam beat cribbed from Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2," while a cover of Jerry Butler's broken-hearted hit "Never Give You Up" takes Dan Auerbach's falsetto-flashing soulman persona to the next level. It's rock minimalism pushed to the max.

1.	Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam

With My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West made music as sprawlingly messy as his life. When he wasn't feuding with Matt Lauer or bugging out on Twitter, Kanye was building hip-hop epics, songs full of the kind of grandiose gestures that only the foolish attempt and only the wildly talented pull off. The more he piled on — string sections, Elton John piano solos, vocoder freakouts, Bon Iver cameos, King Crimson and Rick James samples — the better the music got. Never has Kanye rhymed so hilariously ("Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh?/I put the pussy in a sarcophagus") or been so insightful about his relationship-torpedoing faults. From the bracing prog-rock of "Power" to the spooky grandeur of "Runaway" to the shape-shifting "Hell of a Life," he made all other music seem dimmer and duller. Is the album dark? Sure. Twisted? Of course. But above all, it's beautiful.

Rolling Stone's Best of 2010: Albums, Singles, Movies and more

Next: The Complete List, Albums 1-30

Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2010

1. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
2. The Black Keys, Brothers
3. Elton John and Leon Russell, The Union
4. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
5. Jamey Johnson, The Guitar Song
6. Vampire Weekend, Contra
7. Drake, Thank Me Later
8. Robert Plant, Band of Joy
9. Eminem, Recovery
10. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening
11. The Dead Weather, Sea of Cowards
12. John Mellencamp, No Better Than This
13. Taylor Swift, Speak Now
14. Robyn, Body Talk
15. The National, High Violet
16. Kid Rock, Born Free
17. Beach House, Teen Dream
18. Kings of Leon, Come Around Sundown
19. M.I.A., Maya
20. Neil Young, Le Noise
21. Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty ///
22. Spoon, Transference
23. Elizabeth Cook, Welder
24. Maximum Balloon, Maximum Balloon
25. Superchunk, Majesty Shredding
26. Yeasayer, Odd Blood
27. Peter Wolf, Midnight Souvenirs
28. My Chemical Romance, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
29. The Roots, How I Got Over
30. Rick Ross, Teflon Don

Rolling Stone's Best of 2010: Albums, Singles, Movies and more

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