The decade of 2010 was definitely a great era for the pop, revealing many new singers and bands, bringing big hits from them and from those already known by the public. It was the “gold” era for artists like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, One Direction, Adele, Fifth Harmony, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande and many more. It’s impossible to list all good records of this decade but I choose some, picking one for each year.
- Teenage Dream, Katy Perry (2010)
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The best era of Katy Perry until now definitely was with her second studio album “Teenage Dream”. It was released in 2010 and later got a more complete version in 2012, the “Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection” with three extra songs. Katy Perry also went on her first world tour “California Dreams Tour”, and it was a very colorful era, with candies, teenage summer loves, crazy parties, fireworks and even ETs in her music videos. She was also the first woman and second artist overall following Michael Jackson, in the 53-year history of the Billboard Hot 100, to have five songs from the same album go to number 1. “California Gurls”, “Teenage Dream”, “Firework”, “ET” and “Last Friday Night” were the big hits on the Billboard charts and some of the best of her career.
- 21, Adele (2011)
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Adele’s second studio album was definitely what made her a famous popstar. With hits like “Rolling In The Deep”, “Someone Like You”, “Set Fire To The Rain” and “Turning Tables”, Adele’s “21” won the 2012 Grammy Award “Album of the Year” and “Best Pop Vocal Album”. Adele manages to bring a sentimental pop with beautiful lyrics, while showing what a great singer she is. Written after the singer’s separation from her partner, the album typifies talks about heartbreak, introspection, and forgiveness.
- Overexposed, Maroon 5 (2012)
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The fourth studio album of Maroon 5 was a huge success at the time, bringing big hits like “Payphone”, “One More Night”, “Daylight” and “Love Somebody”, all singles. Overexposed was the 10th global best-selling album of 2012 selling 2.2 million copies. The record mixes pop and rock, with some dancing songs and others being calmer, a lot of them talking about love. Maroon 5 went on a tour for this album that lasted almost two years and went all over the world.
- Midnight Memories, One Direction (2013)
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That One Direction was a huge success and the most iconic band of all times we all know, so how could we pick only one of all their incredible albums? Midnight Memories could definitely be a good one to “fight” the others. This record was the best-selling album of 2013, and had hits like “Story Of My Life”, “Best Song Ever”, “You and I” and the title song “Midnight Memories”. The “Where We Are Tour”, the world tour in promotion of this album, was the group’s biggest tour and the highest-grossing tour of 2014 and of all time by a vocal group. It is One Direction’s most attended one, mobilizing 3,439,560 fans.
- 1989, Taylor Swift (2014)
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Taylor Swift’s official transition to pop was definitely iconic. “1989”, named after the year she was born, brought 16 pop songs, different from her previous albums that had mostly country songs. She came back with the big hit “Shake It Off” and later released other great singles like “Blank Space”, “Style”, “Wildest Dreams” and “Bad Blood”, a song written for Katy Perry because of a fight they had over dancers in their tours. The “1989 World Tour” went to Asia, North America, Europe and Oceania. 1989 was very acclaimed by the music critics and won Grammy’s for “Best Pop Vocal Album” and “Album of The Year”.
- Confident, Demi Lovato (2015)
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Demi Lovato’s fifth album was promoted with the first single “Cool For The Summer”, and had other hits like “Confident” and “Stone Cold”. Demi wrote most of the record by herself, but had help from other music writers. Confident received generally positive reviews from music critics and was nominated for the Grammy Awards, being the first nomination of her career.
- Lemonade, Beyoncé (2016)
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We all know Beyoncé is one of the best artists of all time, but she keeps reinventing herself each new album. It is Beyoncé’s second “visual album”, following her self-titled fifth studio album, and a concept album with songs that relate to Beyoncé’s emotional journey after her husband’s infidelity in a generational and racial context. In “Lemonade” there are hits like “Formation”, “Sorry”, “Hold Up” and “All Night”. The record beats and sounds range from rap to rock to country and pop. Lemonade was nominated for nine Grammy Awards in 2017, but only won two.
- ÷ (Divide), Ed Sheeran (2017)
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Winner of the Grammy for “Best Pop Vocal”, Divide was definitely a huge success and an important moment in Ed Sheeran’s career. Singing about love with all his heart and soul, Ed’s third studio album brought nice slow songs like “Perfect”, but also fast pop hits like “Shape of You”. Other singles off the album are “Castle on the Hill”, “Galway Girl” and “Happier”. The Divide World Tour had 260 shows in two years.
- Sweetener, Ariana Grande (2018)
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Ariana Grande came back on her fourth album with pop, R&B and a bit of trap. Promoted with the big hit “No Tears Left To Cry”, this record was a huge success and won the 2019 Grammy award for “Best Pop Vocal Album”. Other success off Sweetener were “God is a Woman”, “Breathin’” and “The Light is Coming”. Ariana definitely manage to overcome her last album “The Best”.
- Lover, Taylor Swift (2019)
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After Taylor’s dark era on her last record “Reputation”, she came back with a colorful, calm, soft and, of course, lovely new record. Closing the decade, she released the seventh album of her career and fifth of these last ten years: “Lover”. The album mostly talks about being in love, with a pop and retro-style fun songs and calm beautiful ones like “Daylight”. She promoted the album with the single “ME!” featuring Brendon Urie, and the other singles were “You Need To Calm Down”, “Lover” and “The Man”.
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This article was edited by Anna Bastos.
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