100 albums of 2021 you shouldn’t miss, plus playlist

In a moment a folly, I (not me and my editorial team, or my writers, or indeed anyone) decided to make a playlist of the year. Not one of those in order ones, just a playlist of good records, written by the esteemed writers here at Backseat Mafia. I don’t know what possessed me to pick 100, certainly now I’ve spend many hours since Christmas pulling it together, but there we are.

The rules were we had to have reviewed it. So there’s no Mogwai or Little Simz or loads of others, purely because we didn’t get to them. Music lover think on, if you can write, contact us and you could review 2022’s equivalent of those records.

It also meant I went through the 500 or so album reviews we did this year, our biggest ever year, and picked them out. Yes, i went on ratings, but also – because it’s my list, and it took me SOOO long, I picked out records I liked, and that I wanted to put on the playlist.

Sweep through the pages as you see fit, looking at the records I picked out, and then listen to the frankly brilliant playlist at the end which shows up (I think anyway, but then I would wouldn’t I) the glorious think about Backseat Mafia – we don’t judge on genre, on label, on anything at all in fact. So everything gets in there, as long as we think its good.

Just do us a favour would you? Spread the post and the playlist around, and follow us on Spotify, and the playlist. So next year we can be bigger and better and bring you more of the things you want to read about and listen to. Whatever that may be.

Happy New Year

Records 1-10