As hard as it is to believe, we’re just a couple of months away from the end of the first half of this decade.

What are these, the tens? The teens? Did we ever even decide on the best way to describe the last decade? I could never get on board with “the aughts.”

I don’t anticipate any earth-shattering record releases the rest of this year, so this is as good a time as any to look back on the past five and write about my favorite albums of the decade so far.

I own 57 albums released between 2010-2014, all of which I enjoy to at least some degree. Narrowing those down to a top 20 was a difficult task.

As usual with lists like this, I reserve the right to change my mind immediately after publishing. This deck could be shuffled in dozens of different ways, but this is the order I’ve settled on for now, and that should count for something.

I had to find a spot for Adele’s chart-dominating juggernaut of a break-up album. 21 was a straight-up phenomenon in an age when albums are completely overshadowed by singles.

Of course, the record had a single of its own that was big enough to block out the sun in ‘Rolling in the Deep,’ one of those undeniable tracks that’s as strong artistically as it is commercially.

Beyond ‘Rolling in the Deep,’ ‘Someone Like You,’ ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ and the album’s other hit singles, 21 resonates down to its deepest cuts. Even a cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovesong,’ which closes out the record, is a stunner.

The inescapable nature of 21 has diminished it in the way all culture-dominating works of art are diminished through repetition, but there is no doubt it is among the best albums of the decade so far.