2011 gave America a year where bad music was rewarded: Lady Antebellum won “Record of the Year” at the Grammies; Skrillex hit the Top 40; Rebecca Black wrote “the worst song ever” and became a household name. Thoughtful music barely got credit for what it was; here are few that should get some credit for actually being good.

10. Adele — “21”
Adele’s sophomore album is able to do what any album should be able to do– grasp true, strong feelings and turn them into beautiful music. It’s a pop-style breakup album written by a girl just barely old enough to buy beer (“21” was so named because of Adele’s age). But songs like “Hiding My Heart” and “Someone Like You” don’t feel like they were written after the end of a casual young adult relationship– they feel like the lyrical products of a heart being ripped out by the roots. And then there’s that voice– a husky but powerful alto, the likes of which hadn’t been heard since the death of Janis Joplin. Britney, Ke$ha, and Gaga take note: this is what pop music sounds like when it’s written by someone who gives a damn.

9. Tombs — “Path of Totality”
Perhaps because of its relatively short history, perhaps because of its blatant satanism, or perhaps just because of its total assault on the eardrums, metal is completely overlooked by mainstream critics. It should speak volumes, then, that “Path of Totality” not only topped critics’ lists on sites like Mind Over Metal, but on Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR.com. Yes– even the National Public Radio liked the pinnacle of black metal awesomeness that is Tombs’ sophomore effort. One listen should leave little doubt as to why. No other album from 2011 captures total agony, total despair, and total brutality like this godsend from hell. Tombs combined hardcore punk, space age rock, and Nordic black metal on “Totality”– and somehow it totally works. Kanye may have got the Grammy nomination, but “Path of Totality” might well be the darkest, most twisted fantasy of 2011.

8. Cerebral Ballzy —  “Cerebral Ballzy”
Fans of Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Minor Threat pulled on their safety-pin shirts, gelled up their mohawks, and jumped on their skateboards for this punk-rock animal of a record. The fact that “Ballzy” is 12 songs in 19 minutes with about 3 different chords attracted punk rockers to the album; the base humor of the lyrics and relentless talent of the musicians kept them with it. Here is an album that can be moshed to but is clever and exciting enough to separate it from all of the run-of-the-mill underground punk albums that came out in 2011 and, well, every year since the creation of the genre. To describe  “Cerebral Ballzy” in one sentence is as follows: it sounds like the band members got together in a garage, cranked some 80s punk records, and played like maniacs until all their teenage aggression manifested itself into pure awesome.

7. Drake — “Take Care”
In 2011, there were two kinds of hip-hop. There was the Odd Future and Lil B type of hip-hop, with lyrics that were blunt, violent, sexist and homophobic, coupled with music that was equally straightforward– repetitive eighth-notes made by drum machines and amateur producers. There was, however, a second type– the Kid Cudi and Kanye West type– which made a name for itself with emotional, dream-like hip-hop that was as straight outta Narnia as it was Compton, as much MGMT as ODB. Drake’s “Take Care” marks one of the key examples of this bizarro-style hip-hop: it is simultaneously blunt and subtle, in a way that Tyler the Creator would kill for. The lyrics are poetic, almost deep; the music reflects both high production values and musical ingenuity. What was it that Drake said in 2009? “Last name ever, first name greatest”? He might have been onto something with that one.

6. tUnE yArDs –“w h o k i l l”
Merril “tUnE yArDs” Garbus is weird. She performs in hipster war-paint; her primary instrument is the electric ukelele; and her only backing band is a looping pedal and some guy with a sax. Her newest LP is, if possible, even weirder than she is: it takes all of her idiosyncracies and mixes them together in a musical meth lab to get an album of “pop music” that simultaneously stings the ears and liberates them from the world of Autotune. “w h o k i l l” is a strange mix of “Kid A”, Tiny Tim, and African tribal chants; it’s a combination of lo-fi, trip-hop, electro-folk, Baroque-pop and all of those other made-up indie genres; it’s ten original songs in a stagnant musical world. It’s also really, really weird. And isn’t that all that matters?

5. Tom Waits — “Bad As Me”
Everything that has ever made Tom Waits good is on “Bad As Me”: semi-demonic vocals, sincere-yet-hilarious lyrics, celebrity compadres, and a whiskey– lots and lots of whiskey. This time around, Waits broadens his scope, attacking war (“Hell Broke Luce”); capitalism (“Everybody’s Talking at the Same Time”); and the illusions of modern happiness (“Raised Right Men”). He does so with alarming intensity, an intensity that is enhanced by the awesomely cool instrumentation of musicians like Les Claypool and Keith Richards. Somehow, though, Waits never lets listeners forget that he doesn’t really care about anything– despite the passion, the whole album still feels as though it were recorded on a drunk whim in a smokey backroom jazz club circa 1932. Listeners should be thankful that Tom Waits recorded this ode to the counterculture, because no one else is crazy enough to do it.

4. My Morning Jacket — “Circuital”
A well-written album by My Morning Jacket is no shock, since the Kentucky rock band were releasing critically acclaimed indie rock records before “indie rock” was even a thing. What is shocking about the band’s sixth album is the accessibility of it, the bare-bones rock and country songs that sound like they’d fit in well on modern radio. At the same time, however, this album is somehow uniquely MMJ, with frontman Jim James’ signature ethereal vocals and pedal guitar, and his band’s passionately sensible playing. “Circuital” may be hummable, even danceable, but LMFAO or Nickelback this is not– it may be easy to listen to, but it’s also real music. For that, its place on this list is well-deserved.

3. Bon Iver — “Bon Iver”
Several artists this year released excellent sequels to excellent debut albums: Adele, Fleet Foxes, Drake. All of the followups succeeded because of their ability to take the successes of the debuts and expand, improve and change on their sound to fit new material. None, however, were able to recapture the spirit in the same way as Justin Vernon and Bon Iver– where Bon Iver’s first album, “For Emma, Forever Ago”, reflected the insular world of the northern log cabin in which it was recorded, the new one expands into a sprawling, Arctic meditation on blissful loneliness. Songs like “Perth” and “Calgary” take the cities on which they’re based and expose the poetic desolation buried in them with a refined version of the unique distorted folk sound of “Emma”. The result is hypnotic. Bon Iver did the impossible with their sophomore album, taking one of the greatest albums of the past few years and using it as a stepping stone to something bigger.

2. The Decemberists — “The King Is Dead”
The Decemberists’ newest release is basically impossible. It manages to feel as though it were recorded more than 50 years ago but without feeling contrived or dated. The instruments on it are simple and the arrangements nothing new, but the clear, inspired and natural playing on songs like “Down by the Water” and “Calamity Song” makes them feel original. Singer Colin Meloy’s lyrics are something formidable, conjuring images of lost childhoods and newfound hopes, of dreamy summers and deathly winters, of love and heartbreak, of life and death. The album as a whole transports every listener to a place that’s distinctly American and terribly human, but a place that is also fantastic. The most impossible thing about it, though, is that it’ll make listeners miss things they’ve never seen and love things they’ve never known. It’s pure, righteous, and it should not be avoided.

1. Girls — “Father Son and Holy Ghost”
In a year where dubstep and house music reigned as the usurping kings of the pop charts and music made by musicians only existed in the forms of garage rock and black metal, two artsy hipsters from San Fransisco tossed aside their synthesizers, picked up Hammonds and Stratocasters, and cranked the classic-rock nostalgia up to eleven. The result was Girls’ “Father Son and Holy Ghost”, a record fully worthy of joining the pantheon of classic albums, like “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Graceland,” that it drew from. In terms of guts, Girls and their album could actually be even better than their predecessors: it didn’t take much to be the Beach Boys when everyone was doing surf rock, didn’t take much to be the Doors when everyone was into acid rock, but to want to be Elvis Presley when everyone else wanted to be Skrillex? That’s gutsy. And writing good rock music to undermine techno? That’s damn near heroic. “Father Son and Holy Ghost,” then, is undoubtedly the best album of 2011, for being an album that proves real music will always exist no matter how many two-bit DJs with MacBooks weasel their way to the top 40.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
There were a lot more than ten great albums this year, and these ten weren’t the only ones considered. Here are a few that were left on the proverbial cutting room floor:

A$AP Rocky — “LiveLoveA$AP”

Black Keys — “El Camino”

Drive-By Truckers — “Go-Go Boots”

Eric Church — “Chief”

Feist — “Metals”

Fleet Foxes — “Helplessness Blues”

Foo Fighters — “Wasting Light”

F—ed Up — “David Comes to Life”

Jay-Z & Kanye West — “Watch the Throne”

Kurt Vile — “Smoke Ring for My Halo”

Off! — “First Four EPs”

The Roots — “Undun”

War On Drugs — “Slave Ambient”

Wolves in the Throne Room — “Celestial Lineage”

40 Watt Sun — “The Inside Room”