50 Best Albums of 2021: Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler, the Creator, Lucy Dacus - Rolling Stone

But while those blockbuster releases lived up to the industry’s ever-swelling hype, this year was often more about welcome surprises — like ornery rap visionary Tyler, the Creator meeting the world halfway with the most focused performance of his career, or Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner going from low-fi bedroom dreamer into futurist New Wave maximalist.

The biggest curveball of all was an unstoppable chart phenomenon few saw coming a year ago: Olivia Rodrigo, who arrived out of nowhere (or at least the Disney Channel) to rewrite the rules of the Top 40 with her instant-classic debut, Sour?

It was a fantastic year for indie singer-songwriters whose storytelling hit as hard as their guitars (Lucy Dacus, Snail Mail) and for pop synthesists from across the Spanish-speaking world (from Afro-Cuban hip-hop fusionist Cimafunk to omnidirectional reggaeton showman Rauw Alejandro)