thought daughter: top ten albums

On music and the memories they hold

I don’t claim to be a music aficionado because of where I work or the fact that at 12 years old I discovered Frank Ocean on YouTube before my group of friends. I spent hours as a kid scouring the internet for new songs from all over the world, sometimes waiting for the songs to reach popularity in the US. Living with not one but two helicopter parents left few options for entertainment. I always had my own global mental music chart that would fluctuate just like the ones we use today to determine if a song is “liked.” Seeing the tracks on my mental music chart enter more widely accepted charts would be affirming and encouraging. The excitement I would feel when two months later those same tracks would reach my local station was unmatched. I enjoyed being in the know, and I enjoyed keeping my international and even local artists my little secret. Still, with time and TikTok, it’s increasingly difficult to keep your faves a secret. As I got older, I had to ask myself if I was doing more harm than good by not plugging their work.

For the longest time, my confirmation of interest in a song was based on if I immediately headed to Rap Genius to sit and decipher the lyrics. An album would drop, and I would listen in full at midnight, quickly determining which songs would be singles and which were coming from the heart. It was like the difference between fast food and soul food. I always preferred the tracks that I knew would never have mass appeal. I connected with the storytelling, finding lines that resonated with whatever I was experiencing at that time. In between letting my mind wander, each track was saved not on a mental chart but a mental library.

With all the talk of Top Ten albums, I wanted to share some of my all-time favorite albums. These albums are all tied to pivotal moments of my life. I’m not basing it off streams, genre, or any other chart criteria—only if each melody has the ability to transport me to a beach in Puerto Rico or my college dorm room will it end up on this list.

Allena’s Top Ten Albums (in no order)

Mama’s Gun - Erykah Badu

Where I Go: My family apartment living room. It’s Sunday, and my mom is singing from the top of her lungs, mop in hand. This album is essential to this day. Then to July 2023, listening to Erykah live with my mom at Madison Square Garden. The tickets were won by my partner, who also took their mom. Very full circle.

Juslisen - Musiq Soulchild

Where I Go: I’m in my father’s big tan Ford Explorer. He also has a knack for singing so loud it drowns out the ad-libs during “Half Crazy.” This album made me look forward to falling in love, because if it could make you write songs like that, I knew it was special.

Pure Heroine - Lorde

Where I Go: I’m on my first MacBook Pro of many and attempting to take the most Tumblr aesthetic photos I could muster in PhotoBooth. I have just discovered my love for dream pop and electronica. I grappled with sharing my love for Lorde’s sound, fearing my peers would ridicule me for liking “white people shit.” Now, I am happy that teenage me pushed past that. Lorde was my first teenage solo concert, and it is still a night that I cherish.

Love/Hate - The-Dream

Where I Go: Early YouTube madness, pixelated lyric videos, and webcams you had to clip on. You just had to be there. The-Dream was the first producer that I could sniff out on other tracks due to his unique production and songwriting style. If you listen to the first verse of “Ditch That” you hear the chorus of “Umbrella” by Rihanna, the famous “ella ella eh eh eh.” The-Dream was a co-writer on “Umbrella,” and I remember nerding out about that for months after “Umbrella” came out when I was ten.

Stripped - Christina Aguilera

Where I Go: MTV music videos in the morning before school. TVs that shocked you if you dared to touch the screen. This album was one of the first that made me feel empowered as a young girl. “Fighter,” “Beautiful,” and “Can’t Hold Us Down” went triple platinum on my CD player. The mix of R&B, Latin, and Soul was the sound bed to my future favorite tracks.

because the internet - Childish Gambino

Where I Go: I’m walking home from my high school and I just got my first iPhone. I’m using Spotify Free because I don’t have a job yet to pay for the subscription. In between the ads, I hear “3005” and all is well in the world. This was the first album where I felt like “okay, so we are all consuming content together.” I didn’t have many people in my life to talk about the latest fight comp on WorldStar with, so listening to his song about our newfound love for shock value video blogs was comforting, but in a scary way.

Channel Orange - Frank Ocean

Where I Go: I’m on a college tour to Pennsylvania, my seat buddy and childhood best friend is listening to “Pyramids” and I am listening to “Sierra Leone” for the seventh time, replaying the lullaby after 1:30. It’s the talk of every conversation, yet we consume it in silence, making up our own music videos while looking out at the dreary Pennsylvania farms. The orange album cover on our screens lights up our coach bus like a runway for a plane.

Getaway - Orion Sun

Where I Go: I am at a venue in Toronto staring up at the stage, thinking to myself “Am I queer?” I always told myself I was attracted to energies, not genders, but never thought to label myself as anything but straight my entire life. Just to give some context, I left the country to see this artist because they sold out in NYC. I was so infatuated with their sound—I immediately booked tickets in the next closest city, which happened to be in Canada. As I stared at them from the front row in GA, I felt like I was in one of those One Direction Wattpad fanfictions I used to read back in the day. Except this was a woman. I didn’t have to unpack much there, and from then on I identified as queer or bi. This album was not quite my gay awakening, more so a queer confirmation.

CTRL - SZA

Where I Go: I’m in the passenger seat of a car, my friends are drinking Tito’s straight in the backseat overusing the Snapchat dog filter. I had not heard much of SZA outside of her first project, but this debut could not have been at a better time for me. I was at a period of questioning everything about my future, from love to career path. Luckily, I had SZA to speak for every part of my brain that was warring with the other. “The Weekend,” for nights I wondered if my Scorpio partner was cheating (they were), “20 Something,” for nights I was anxious about my future before I was 20-something myself. I want to go back in time and hug 19-year-old me, and let them know that SZA was right about everything. The good and the bad!

It Was Good Until It Wasn’t - Kehlani

Where I Go: I’m going on mile walks through Bushwick with my partner in May of 2020. He brags to me that he dated Kehlani’s personal assistant during a short and unfruitful stay in LA in pursuit of production work. I put off listening to the album for months; every time I tried, a little jealousy and embarrassment crept up my brain. Little did I know, after a summer of late nights in studios meeting artists and learning all the production terms, I would be broken up with in the middle of the night for “not having my shit together” as a 22-year-old during a pandemic. This album is special because it was a marker of me controlling and changing the narrative—it was this album that got me through my first “adult” breakup.

If you made it this far, you deserve a treat, so here is a playlist of some of the songs I mentioned: Thought Daughter