10 Best Rock Music Album Openers Of The 2010s
Music in the 2010s was very different, but it was still important to open an album with a banger.
The 2010s, also known as the decade where everything started to fall apart, might have only just passed us by, but they still feel like a lifetime ago.
At the start of 2010, Gordon Brown was the British Prime Minister, only two MCU movies had been released, and this funny little website called "YouTube" was really starting to take off.
By the time 2019 was over and done with, everything had changed.
The music business underwent some serious shifts throughout the period too, as physical album sales started to fall off a cliff once streaming culture really started to take hold.
Rock music really suffered, as this was the first decade that felt like the genre didn't have a place in the mainstream. Sure, some bands powered through, but the numbers of really big hitters had really started to dwindle.
Still, that doesn't mean there wasn't some incredible music on some incredible albums around at the time. Although the concept of an album was starting to become less important, bands still went all out to frontload their latest releases with the biggest bangers, and here are 10 of the best from a really weird era.
10. Shine A Little Light - The Black Keys ('Let’s Rock')
The reason why this 2019 album from The Black Keys has quotation marks around its name is because 'Let's Rock' were the last words of a convicted murderer before he was executed via the electric chair.
Guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach saw this in a newspaper and thought it was neat. The last words part, not the murdering part.
'Let's Rock' was the band's first album in five years and saw them return to good old-fashioned guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. Drummer Patrick Carney called the record an "homage to the electric guitar" and he was absolutely spot on.
The album gets off to a great start with Shine a Little Light, a song written with the express purpose of being really, really cool. The track is stuffed with catchy guitar parts to the point where you could listen to it multiple parts and follow a new one each time.
There's nothing fancy about Shine a Little Light, but that's the whole point. 'Let's Rock' was intentionally created to show how effective simple rock music can be, and it achieves that mission statement with its very first song.