AllMusic's Favorite Pop Albums of 2010

The AllMusic editors are recapping the year in recordings with well over a dozen posts in which they present their favorites within specific genres and styles. Right now, on the AllMusic Blog, they provide a list of their favorite pop releases of 2010. Pop music always needs a teen heartthrob and 2010 had one for the ages – Justin Bieber, whose popularity was so great his hair became better known in some quarters than his music. Of course this wasn’t quite fair. Like Selena Gomez, Drake, Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha, he had music that sounded like 2010’s youth, but that doesn’t mean that only the youth had great music in ’10. There were smooth, subtle records for grown-ups, too – anything from The Bird & The Bee’s surprisingly layered tribute to Hall & Oates to Bryan Ferry’s lush, luxurious Olympia, with Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite and KT Tunstall’s Tiger Suit speaking to audiences in between, and Taylor Swift’s coming-of-age diary Speak Now managing to garner the biggest audience of them all.

Check the album pages linked in each post for reviews and samples, and make sure you also check AllMusic Loves 2010 -- the editors' personal lists of albums and tracks -- as well as the forthcoming overall feature on new albums and classical releases.

Sara Bareilles - Kaleidoscope Heart
Justin Bieber - My World 2.0
The Bird & The Bee - Interpreting the Masters, Vol. 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates
Diddy/Dirty Money - Last Train to Paris
Drake - Thank Me Later
Bryan Ferry - Olympia
Goldfrapp - Head First
Selena Gomez and the Scene - A Year Without Rain
Norah Jones - ...Featuring Norah Jones
Kelis - Flesh Tone
Ke$ha - Animal
Maroon 5 - Hands All Over
Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday
Kylie Minogue - Aphrodite
The Pipettes - Earth vs. the Pipettes
Robyn - Body Talk
Mark Ronson and the Business Int'l - Record Collection
Taylor Swift - Speak Now
KT Tunstall - Tiger Suit