Bernstein, Jonathan, Blake, Emily, Blistein, Jonathan, Browne, David, Catucci, Nick, Dolan, Jon, Ehrlich, Brenna, Exposito, Suzy, Freeman, Jon, Greene, Andy, Grow, Kory, Hermes, Will, Hoard, Christian, Holmes, Charles, Hudak, Joseph, Klinkenberg, Brendan, Leight, Elias, Levy, Joe, Martoccio, Angie, and Schwartz, Danny
AFTER FORMING at Columbia University, the boat-shoe-wearing blog-loved indie-pop crew toned down the sunny globe-trotting guitars of their 2008 debut and stared down quarter-life crisis with a broodingly lovely album of reflections on morality, God, uncertainty, and romantic decay; fittingly, they debuted Modern Vampire's first single, "Unbelievers", dressed as skeletons on late-night TV just days after Hurricane Sandy shut down New York, and on songs like "Diane Young" and "Hannah Hunt", Ezra Koenig turns the search for faint glints of redemption in his own emotional wreckage into a drama of Dylan-esque grandeur. More impressive was the way she made her sonic wanderlust feel urgent, sculpting some of her most immediate songs, like the vulnerable, shimmering "Kiss It Better" and the Drake duet "Work", and how she capped off the album with a smoldering run of modern torch ballads. RECORDED in a secrecy that made the Manhattan Project look like a chill hang, Beyoncé's self- titled fifth album was the mother of all surprise releases when it hit in 2013 - an especially insane feat since Beyoncé came with a blockbuster visual album as well. My favorite album of the 2010s was: Beyoncé's 4, just because it has one of my favorite songs of all time, "Countdown.". [Extracted from the article]