Music
The Records That Made Me
Music is one of the ways I make sense of the world. So this is less a list of favorites than a small autobiography, told in albums — the ones that changed how I feel, and a few that changed how I think.
浮躁 — permanently in my now-playing
The constant
Faye Wong 王菲
Every other artist here belongs to a season of my life. Faye Wong belongs to all of them. She folded dream pop and the Cocteau Twins into Chinese pop and made it sound like the most natural thing in the world — cool, weightless, a little otherworldly. Her voice is the closest thing I have to a sound for home. I love the whole catalog; these are the five I keep coming back to.
- 浮躁Fú Zào · “Restless”1996Her most fearless record — ambient, Cocteau-Twins-shaped, barely trying to be pop and perfect for it.
- 王菲self-titled1997The one where the icon and the experiment meet in the middle.
- 唱游Chàng Yóu · “Sing and Play”1998Pure play — her voice at its most weightless.
- 只爱陌生人“Only Love Strangers”1999Cool, glassy, quietly heartbroken.
- 寓言Yù Yán · “Fable”2000Her most ambitious — half song cycle, half spell.
Pop titans
The ones who arrived exactly when I needed them and defined a decade of feeling — middle school through grad school, on repeat.
Lady Gagapop · performance art
The first pop that felt like armor — theater, costume, and the radical idea that a hook and an art-school concept could be the same gesture. She made strangeness a place you could live.
- The Fame Monster2009Eight songs of glorious dread — “Bad Romance,” and the birth of the monster.
Beyoncépop · R&B
The engine of my high school and college — discipline and abandon in the same body.
- I Am… Sasha Fierce2008The alter-ego record — permission to become someone bigger onstage than off.
- BEYONCÉ2013Dropped at midnight with no warning, a full visual album — it rewrote how a record could even arrive.
- Lemonade2016A concept album about betrayal, lineage, and Black womanhood. Still the high-water mark for what pop can hold.
- RENAISSANCE2022A love letter to house and ballroom — Black queer dance history turned into pure release.
Taylor Swiftpop · songwriting
The discography I grew up alongside — and kept growing with. I saw the Reputation tour.
- Fearless2008One of the best country records of its era — teenage romance written with startling precision.
- 19892014The full turn into pop; with the next one, the album that hit hardest.
- reputation2017Armor and heartbeat — the one that landed deepest. I saw this tour.
- folklore2020Lockdown turned into a hushed, wooded fiction.
- evermore2020folklore’s sister — proof she could disappear into a story and come back changed.
- Midnights2022Thirteen sleepless nights, synth-lit and confessional.
Ariana Grandepop · R&B
The voice that scored my grad-school years — featherlight runs over heavy feelings.
- Dangerous Woman2016The whistle-tone declaration of independence.
- Sweetener2018Pharrell-bright pop, healing in real time.
- thank u, next2019Grief and self-repair turned into the lightest, sharpest pop of the decade.
- Positions2020Late-night R&B, all silk.
- Eternal Sunshine2024House-lit heartbreak, spotless-mind and all.
Dua Lipapop · dance-pop
Modern pop with a disco spine — she made the dance floor feel new again.
- Dua Lipa2017The debut — “New Rules,” and a voice that already knew exactly what it wanted.
- Future Nostalgia2020A flawless pop record — nu-disco, wall to wall, not a wasted second. One of the great ones.
Rihannapop · R&B
A huge one growing up — effortless cool that never once tried too hard.
- Anti2016The one where she stopped chasing hits and made art — “Love on the Brain,” that voice finally unbothered.
Adelesoul · pop
The voice that stops a room — heartbreak sung so plainly it feels like your own.
- 212011Grief turned into the most bulletproof breakup record of a generation.
Art pop & alt-pop
Pop as literature — writers who use the form to say something stranger and sadder than the radio usually allows.
Lordeart pop
Teenage interiority rendered with a poet's precision — nobody writes the ache of a party like her.
- Melodrama2017That bitch. A whole heartbreak told across one long night — perfect from start to finish.
Lana Del Reyart pop · Americana
Cinematic melancholy and old-Hollywood glamour — she made sadness sound like a place.
- Norman Fucking Rockwell!2019Phenomenal — on repeat. Her masterpiece: sprawling, sun-bleached, quietly devastating.
Kate Bushart pop
The original — theatrical, uncanny, decades ahead of everyone who came after.
- Hounds of Love1985A perfect two-sided record — pop singles up front, an experimental suite on the back.
Dream pop
The gauzy, wordless-feeling lineage that runs underneath everything else I love — the DNA under Faye Wong.
Cocteau Twinsdream pop
Elizabeth Fraser’s voice used as pure texture, words dissolved into feeling. The source code for the whole mood.
- Heaven or Las Vegas1990Their masterpiece — gauzy, radiant, barely-there language and total emotional clarity.
The Cranberriesalt rock · dream pop
Dolores O’Riordan’s ache and lilt — jangle and grief in the same breath.
- No Need to Argue1994“Zombie,” and a whole album of that Irish-lit heartbreak.
Grunge & alternative
The wall of sound — the records that reorder a teenager from the inside out.
Nirvanagrunge
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” — the noise that rewired what music could feel like.
- Nevermind1991The record that ended one decade of music and started another.
Radioheadalt rock
Dread and beauty resolved into the same chord — anxiety made gorgeous.
- The Bends1995“High and Dry,” “Fake Plastic Trees” — heartbreak before they went abstract. I love this one.
- OK Computer1997Millennial unease turned into the most beautiful album about being afraid.
Country
Plainspoken heartbreak and big open skies — the songwriting tradition that never stopped teaching everyone else how to tell a story.
Kacey Musgravescountry · pop
Country with a cosmic, wide-open heart — plainspoken and psychedelic at once.
- Golden Hour2018One of my favorite country albums — warm, glowing, in love with being in love.
Lady ALady Antebellumcountry · pop
Radio-country at its most tender — three-part harmony built for a late-night phone call.
- Need You Now2010That title track — the sound of everyone's 1:15 a.m. weakness.
R&B, soul & hip-hop
The voices I grew up on — the runs, the ache, the writing. This is the music I reach for when I want to feel understood.
Mariah CareyR&B
Impeccable. The R&B I came up on; those runs are a whole language.
- Butterfly1997The pivot where the voice found its softness — phenomenal.
- The Emancipation of Mimi2005“We Belong Together” — the sound of growing up.
- E=MC²2008The comeback’s victory lap, still gliding.
Frank OceanR&B
Memory and blur made into music. Nobody writes loneliness this beautifully.
- Channel Orange2012A Los Angeles fever dream — “Pyramids,” “Thinkin Bout You,” heartbreak in widescreen.
- Blonde2016Shapeless, gorgeous, half-remembered — the sound of a mind wandering home.
Kendrick Lamarhip-hop
Pressure and precision in equal measure — the most exacting writer of his generation.
- DAMN.2017“HUMBLE.” and a Pulitzer’s worth of contradiction — faith, fame, and fear.
Jazz & soul
Smoke and warmth — voices that make a room go quiet. The music I put on when I want to feel something slow.
Amy Winehousesoul · jazz
A once-in-a-generation voice — old-soul phrasing over modern heartbreak. Huge for me.
- Back to Black2006Phenomenal — girl-group grandeur and raw hurt in the same breath. It marked me.
Norah Jonesjazz · pop
Hushed piano-jazz with a pop heart — the sound of a slow Sunday morning.
- Come Away with Me2002That debut — impossibly warm, impossibly easy to fall into.
Electronic, dance & hyperpop
The machines that taught me a groove can be a feeling — and the hyperpop that took pop apart and rebuilt it louder. Where a lot of my love of pop production actually begins.
Charli XCXhyperpop · pop
That bitch — 10 out of 10. With AG Cook she made hyperpop feel like the future of pop, then made the whole world admit it. I was obsessed.
- Number 1 Angel2017The mixtape that kicked the door in — sugar and static in equal measure.
- Pop 22017Practically the anthem of my 2017 — a PC Music fever dream, still the most fearless pop record I know.
- BRAT2024The one that finally made the whole planet get it — lime-green, sweaty, brilliant.
Daft PunkFrench house · electronic
Two robots who made electronic music feel human. As good as the genre gets.
- Discovery2001Phenomenal — “One More Time,” “Digital Love.” Pure, nostalgic, joyful. I love this album.
Underworldelectronic · techno
Hypnotic, euphoric, built to go all night.
- Second Toughest in the Infants1996Home of “Born Slippy” — that rush that reordered what dance music could do to me.
Black Eyed Peaspop · electronic
My very first taste of electronic pop — maximal, shameless, impossible not to move to.
- The E.N.D.2009“Boom Boom Pow” — the door I walked through into all of this.
Around the world
Pop doesn't speak one language. Two records from far outside the Anglo-American center that hit me just as hard.
Rosalíaflamenco pop · Latin
Flamenco reinvented for now — avant-garde and utterly pop at the same time.
- MOTOMAMI2022Fractured, playful, fearless — a pop album that sounds like nothing else.
- EL MAL QUERER2018A flamenco concept album about a toxic love — her breakthrough, and a marvel.
Kiyotaka Sugiyama杉山清貴city pop · Japan
Japanese city pop — sunlit, breezy, the sound of a coastal drive in the '80s.
- beyond…1985Warm, wistful city pop — the genre at its most effortlessly romantic.
The pantheon
The architects — style, concept, and pure craft I keep going back to school on. The language everyone after them is still speaking.
Princefunk · rock · soul
Maybe my favorite of them all. Genius with no edges — funk, rock, soul, everything at once.
- Purple Rain1984Guitar, gospel, and sex in one purple storm — the peak of a one-man genre.
David Bowieart rock · glam
Style and reinvention as a life practice; a new self for every record.
- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars1972The alien rock messiah — the album that turned persona into an art form.
Madonnapop
The blueprint for the modern pop star — reinvention as a career, provocation as a craft.
- Like a Virgin1984The one that made her an icon — cheeky, defiant, impossible to ignore.
- Ray of Light1998Her reinvention as an electronic mystic — the rare late-career peak.
Pink Floydprog rock
Space and silence used as instruments.
- The Dark Side of the Moon1973A seamless suite about time, money, and madness — the prism you already know by heart.
Queenrock
Opera-scaled ambition that still knows how to land a chorus.
- A Night at the Opera1975“Bohemian Rhapsody” and the most maximal record ever made.
The Beatlesrock
The songbook everything else is measured against.
- Abbey Road1969The farewell — that medley, that crosswalk, that goodbye.
The Beach Boyspop · rock
Harmony as sunlight — and, underneath, a deep ache.
- Pet Sounds1966“God Only Knows” — teenage symphonies to God, and the record that taught everyone else how.
Bee Geesdisco · pop
Falsetto and groove; joy engineered to the millimeter.
- Saturday Night Fever1977The soundtrack that lit up a whole decade’s dance floor.
ABBApop · disco
Melancholy smuggled inside the happiest melodies ever written.
- Arrival1976“Dancing Queen” — Swedish precision and bittersweet perfection.
The last song
Earth, Wind & Fire — “September”
Earth, Wind & Fire · 1978
If dying really does come with a flashback of your whole life, this is the song I want playing over mine. Not for anything profound — just because it is pure, uncut happiness. Horns like sunlight, that impossible chorus, a groove with no shadow in it anywhere.
Every record above taught me something about feeling. This one is the feeling I'd want to end on: blessing, gladness, the sheer luck of having been here at all. Do you remember? I always will.