The 60 best albums of 2001

The year 2001 became a true turning point in the history of contemporary music. It was a time when the digital era began to rapidly transform the ways albums were recorded, distributed, and consumed, while artists themselves boldly experimented with sound and form. Many releases from that year not only captured the spirit of their time but also set the direction for musical development in the decades that followed.

It was in 2001 that Radiohead released Amnesiac, continuing to dismantle the boundaries of alternative rock, while Daft Punk, with Discovery, turned electronic music into a global pop-culture phenomenon. These albums sounded very different from one another, yet they shared a common drive: to move beyond conventions and create something genuinely new.

That same year, the world heard the debut album by The Strokes — Is This It, which became the starting point for the revival of the guitar-driven scene of the 2000s, and Björk unveiled Vespertine, an intimate, delicate, and experimental work that is still regarded as one of the peaks of her career. These releases proved that popularity and artistic boldness could go hand in hand.

This selection brings together the 60 best albums of 2001, spanning rock, electronic music, hip-hop, pop, and experimental genres. It is not merely a list, but a musical chronicle of a year that forever changed the sound of the 21st century.