whittled it down to my 10 favorites as of writing.
my tastes change a lot, so this whole list could be different (other than the top 3, which are fairly set in stone) if you asked me tomorrow.
These are filtered out of a larger list of all-time favourites, and they look very weird in this order haha:
Polygondwanaland and Childish Gambino - Awaken, My Love! would pretty easily slot in there on any other day too. But its difficult to imagine any other decade will have more bearing on my musical taste over the course of my life than the 2010s, so really that pool is very large.
@phreakbrain I find Bottomless Pit to be an interest Death Grips fav, and I say that as someone who only truly got into them during that release cycle lol.
Solid list!
yeah, I know it’s a bit of an odd choice, but I do think it’s their best one front-to-back. Exmilitary is a very close second.
Ugh so many to choose from… this is so hard but I’ll try to keep it to a top 10 and this is hard enough w/o ranking gizzard… so leaving them out.
Honorable Mentions:
Gimes - Art Angels
Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
Tyler, The Creator - Wolf
Kurt Vile - Walkin On A Pretty Daze
Future Islands - Singles
Tycho - Dive
Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music
Oh Sees - Orc
The Menzingers - After The Party
Local Natives - Hummingbird
Savages - Adore Life
DJ Koze - Amygdala
Jeff Rosenstock - Post-
Vince Staples - Summertime '06
Nicolas Jarr - Space Is Only Noise
Baroness - Yellow & Green
Darkside - Psychic
London Grammar - If You Wait
The Weeknd - House Of Balloons
Gizz - Poly
Kikagaku Moyo - The House in the Tall Grass
Gizz - Nonagon
Khruangbin - The Universe Smiles Upon You
My Brother the Wind - Once There Was A Time When Time and Space Were One
Circles Around the Sun - Interludes for the Dead
Wooden Shjips - V
Stonefield - Far From Earth
The Re-Stoned - Stories of the Astral Lizard
King Buffalo - Orion
I tried to pick albums that reflect the 2010’s essence while also having a significant impact on me during the time.
Honorable Mentions
Wlfgrl- Machine Girl (2014)
Blonde - Frank Ocean (2016)
Art Angels - Grimes (2015)
This is Happening -LCD Soundsystem (2010)
Memorabilia- Human Tetris (2018)
Tourist History- Two Door Cinema Club (2010)
A Color Map of the Sun -Pretty Lights (2013)
EPS
Steve Lacy’s Demos (2017)
Vibes- Vacations (2016)
Feng Suave - Feng Suave (2017)
Shook- Vivienne Eastwood (2016)
Didn’t put any honorable mentions in the OP to keep it short, so here’s a few:
John Zorn / The Dreamers - Ipos: Book of Angels Volume 14
Death Grips - Exmilitary
Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City
Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
Death Grips - The Money Store
Blank Banshee - Blank Banshee 0
Kanye West - Yeezus
King Gizzard - Paper Maché Dream Balloon
Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material
Tame Impala - Currents
Death Grips - Jenny Death
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowell
Bon Iver - 22, A Million
Kero Kero Bonito - Bonito Generation
Kanye West - The Life of Pablo
Father John Misty - Pure Comedy
King Gizzard - Sketches of Brunswick East
The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Pusha T - Daytona
Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride
Damn, all these Gen Xers in the team have us never talking about Hip-Hop in here.
This Is Happening would also easily fit in my top 10, so without bloating it with the big Kanye, Kendrick, Death Grips, Grimes, and King Gizzard releases that also go in here, a few other honourable mentions:
Tame Impala - Lonerism
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
A Tribe Called Quest - We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service
Florence + The Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
Gotye - Making Mirrors (reminder that he isn’t a one-hit wonder)
Azealia Banks - Broke With Expensive Taste
Adele - 21
Grinderman - Grinderman 2
Matt Berry - Witchazel
Major Lazer - Free the Universe
Björk - Utopia
BROCKHAMPTON - Saturation trilogy
Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition
Jamie XX - In Colour
MGMT - Congratulations
Bruno Pernadas - Those Who Throw Objects at the Crocodiles Will Be Asked to Retrieve Them
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Never even heard of Cults, but I’m enjoying Static right now. A lot of Dream Pop like this tends to be a little too dreamy for me (like Beach House), but this is nice and melodic contrary to the name haha.
Haha I put on Jeff Rosenstock - Worry recently and was confused why I didn’t like it as much as I remembered, you’ve just made me realise its Post- that I like.
@phreakbrain Death Grips have no weak releases for me (I guess I don’t enjoy the intsrumentals as much, not that they’re weak), so I am inclined to agree. Though I saved listening to Exmilitary all the way through for the first time until only about four years ago, only cemented that I think they were the most consequential music act through the decade.
I feel bad for not mentioning an RTJ album, they are all great. I also thought briefly about Danny Brown, Schoolboy Q, Aesop Rock, Kanye, Mac Miller, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, Tribe, El-P and Anderson .Paak. So many to choose from 
still happy with Kendrick and Freddie on the top ten.
Haha I think we need a hip hop thread
Well, anyone want to cover that? I already feel like I start so many threads. Pity D00k_nation isn’t around currently, he’s a big Hip-Hop head.
To keep it relevant to this discussion for now, as a genre I think it was my most listened to over the last half of the 2010s. I think its obviously the most important musical movement of the 2010s, like yeah its been around 50 years now, but from 2010 onwards it still had a way to go fully replacing Rock as the dominant vehicle of popular music, and was still undergoing very big exciting stylistic developments. I think it was the time where generational divides in the genre really started to show properly too, like kids who grew up listening to it think their Hip-Hop is better than the old stuff, while their parents think it peaked. That was marked by the cloud rap/mumbling/auto-tune trends.
My list of favourites is a bit devoid of it though, probably because I am quite culturally far removed, before 2010 the only Hip-Hop I liked was Eminem, whoever was featured on Gorillaz tracks, and one Kanye song. Hip-Hop here is… different. I don’t think it was until the 2010s either that ‘Australian’ Hip-Hop was starting to be made in its original spirit, before that was almost purely Eminem wannabees.
In no particular order here’s my list:
Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal
Beach House -Teen Dream
Girls - Broken Dreams Club
MGMT - Congratulations
Brandi Carlile - The Firewatchers Daughter
Bob Dylan - Shadows in the Night
Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard -every damn one
Went and looked through my collection and found a few more worthy of mentioning.
Jim James - Tribute to 2
Hamilton Leithauser - I had a dream that you were mine
Black Lips - Arabia Mountain
The ‘10 were the years just after I discovered indie music thanks to SiriusXM. Basically the entire genre was new to me.
Before that I was into jazz, Reggae, jammy stuff and bluegrass. And before that phase I was into metal and 90’s rap.
Currently I’m back into a Grateful Dead phase.
That’s exactly the problem. I dare say it’s impossible to make such a list. My taste changes hourly, may even minutely. Now listening to some King Gizzard, followed by some Retro Prog, Wobbler is great for example, but also Änglågard, Advent, Beardfish…, in between some so-called Classic Rock like Rival Sons or De Wolff, after it could be some Swans, Melvins or Link Wray, well, you get the idea. Schlagenheim is brilliant btw.