From Girls to Beyoncé (and just about everyone in between), Bigger Than the Sound takes a look at the year's best albums.
 
In 2011, we all seemingly discovered dubstep and learned how to pronounce 'Bon Iver.' We marveled at the success of Adele, Katy Perry and Rihanna, took the leap with Beyoncé and got royal with Jay-Z and Kanye. We said hello to bright new stars like Frank Ocean and the Weeknd and watched former breakouts Florence Welch and Drake take the next steps in their careers. Oh, and pretty much all of us bought Lady Gaga's Born This Way, or at least debated its pricing schemes.

Yes, it's been a pretty eventful 12 months, and now, it's time to take a look back with my picks for the Best Albums of 2011. Rock, hip-hop, pop and electronic records — from artists big and small — that managed to stick with me through the entire year. Looking at it now, there are at least a half-dozen other albums I could've included — it really was that big of a year.

That said, I'm sure I left a few off my list, so I'm counting on you to remind me of anything I might have missed. Let me know in the comments below, and now, let's get right to my Best of 2011 list. These are my favorite albums, from a fascinating year in music.

20. Beyoncé, 4
  An artfully anachronistic album — in that it takes its cues from Fela Kuti and Earth, Wind and Fire instead of, you know, David Guetta — it's little wonder 4 confounded a large portion of the record-buying public when it was released this summer. But given time, most (myself included) have come to love its classy flourishes and classically influenced roots. From big-boned ballads to weirdo world-music jams, 4 is clearly the disc on which Beyoncé makes her bid for artistic credibility. Sadly, it just took us all a while to realize it.

19. Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We're New Here
  The late Scott-Heron's final album gets reworked by Jamie Smith (avowed superfan and beatmaker behind the XX), who deftly combines the poet's gravelly ruminations with cutting-edge electro flourishes, yet never lets the latter outshine the former. And in that regard, We're New Here stands apart from most remix albums, in that it is very much a labor of love. Released in February, it fittingly took on new life when Drake made its final track — 'I'll Take Care Of U' — the centerpiece of his Take Care disc.

18. Rihanna, Talk That Talk
  Depending on your perspective, it's either 'the best pop album of the year' or maybe 'the dirtiest 'pop' album since Madonna's Erotica, ' though given some time, perhaps it's best to just call TTT Rihanna's best album, a streamlined, over-sexed, oft-adventurous thing that pushes everything to the limit. And while you can get caught up in the adjectives, the real proof of TTT 's power lies in its ability to make you move, endlessly, effortlessly, excitedly so. That's what pop albums are supposed to do, after all.

17. Gospel Music, How to Get to Heaven From Jacksonville, FL
  Pocket-size pop from Owen Holmes, current (former?) member of Black Kids, whose deep croon recalls the likes of Calvin Johnson (not Megatron) and Stephin Merritt and whose erudition brings to mind Jarvis Cocker. High praise, but when the music comes this effortlessly (check 'This Town Doesn't Have Enough Bars for Both of Us' or 'Let's Run' for proof) and the lyrics are this heartbreakingly hilarious ('He pores over Poe, peruses Proust/ While waiting for sauce to reduce/ Buys only seasonal produce/ I don't know what you see in him'), well, the dude's sort of earned it, really. Quite possibly the year's most underrated album.

16. Black Keys, El Camino
  On the follow-up to their breakout Brothers, the Black Keys go full-throttle, tearing through 11 hard-riffing, deep-boogying tracks in something like 38 minutes. All handclaps and talk-box guitar solos, El Camino rattles and chugs along like the titular Chevy and, on tracks like 'Lonely Boy,' 'Money Maker' and 'Little Black Submarines,' manages to get positively brilliant too — in a George Thorogood-meets-the Cramps kind of way, of course.

15. Florence and the Machine, Ceremonials
  Florence Welch possesses a voice that can shatter glass, shift tectonic plates and quite possibly alter the very fabric of time, so it sort of makes sense that, on Ceremonials, producer Paul Epworth provides her with the appropriate backing tracks. This is an unapologetically massive album in just about every conceivable way, from the soaring heights of 'Shake It Out' and 'No Light, No Light' to the delving depths of 'Only If for the Night' and 'What the Water Gave Me,' which is to say it fits Florence like a glove. Or high-end Givenchy couture.

14. The Weeknd, House of Balloons and Thursday
  Mysterious, majestically paced R&B from Canadian Abel Tesfaye, who rode his pair of (free) releases to breakout success. Both Balloons and Thursday tell the trope of the troubled loverman, but rarely are matters of the heart played out as honestly as they are here. An endless cycle of druggy nights, desperate flings and depressed dawns, Tesfaye makes no apologies, and with his two albums of masterful murk, he's inadvertently created mood music for increasingly moody times.

13. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
'So now, I'm older/ Than my mother and father/ When they had their daughter/ Now what does that say about me?' That's how Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold opens the band's sophomore effort, and rarely does he relent from those notions. For an album so rich in wide-screen vocal harmonies and warm, finger-picked acoustics, Blues is far from atmospheric — in fact, it's downright analytical. Pecknold roots through problems that are very real, and that balance is key to the album's strength. Because for a band that so indulges in the space of the studio, this is an album that is rarely, if ever, self-indulgent.

12. Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra
  The year's most self-assured debut, courtesy of the only Odd Future member who seems to actually shrink from the spotlight. Like the title implies, Nostalgia is an album that longs for the past, both sonically — sampling Radiohead, Coldplay and the Eagles — and thematically, as Ocean tills through broken relationships and lost associates. The results are unflinchingly, almost unassumingly great, and wherever Ocean goes from here, I'll be sure to follow.

11. The War on Drugs, Slave Ambient
  Here's a fascinating little album, one that pulls just as readily from Bruce Springsteen's and Tom Petty's wide-eyed-yet-wincing Americana as it does Sonic Youth's and Spacemen 3's hazy dirges. Part road record, part barroom soundtrack, it's a compelling — and slightly confounding — listen, pairing jangly guitars with sleepy, bedheaded sonic sections, and frontman Adam Granduciel is frequently a man without a home, keening about freeways and harbors and great open expanses. In that regard, perhaps this is a record less about the final destination as it is the trip itself — a somnambulant trek in which the lines between awake and dreaming are constantly shifting.

10. Lady Gaga, Born This Way
  When it was first released, it wasn't a stretch to call BTW the year's most anticipated album, and though the debate may rage about whether it lived up to the hype, you cannot deny that Gaga put everything into it. From the piston-pumping electronics of 'Marry the Night' and the tarantula tango of 'Americano' to the twitching, 'Transformers'-huge techno of 'Heavy Metal Lover' and the epic balladry of 'Yoü and I' and 'The Edge of Glory,' this truly is an effort that tries very hard to be everything to everyone. And, in the process, Gaga has created something entirely new. BTW is quite possibly the first multi-national, multi-hyphenate, multi-sexual pop album of our time. And sure, it's probably too long, but that's sort of the point, isn't it? Gaga only operates on the hugest of stages, and BTW is her grandest mission statement to date. And if she didn't please everyone, you can't say she didn't try.

9. Portugal. The Man, In the Mountain, In the Cloud
  It is quite possible to argue Portugal. The Man may be the new Flaming Lips, especially if you've ever caught them live (and since the Lips seem content to simply embed songs inside human skulls these days). They are both from spots firmly off the musical map (Wasilla, Alaska, and Oklahoma City, respectively); they both indulge in frazzled, psych-tinged pop; and both seem hell-bent on doing things their way, no matter what the consequences. And if all that logic holds, then Cloud is either their Hit to Death in the Future Head (the one before they had the hit) or their Clouds Taste Metallic (the one before they got universal acclaim). On their major-label debut, Portugal got proggy, arty and unapologetically weird, and the disc sold about as well as you'd expect. Still, there's true genius in tracks like 'So American,' 'Senseless' and 'Sleep Forever,' and while they've still got, like, two decades to go before they can match the Lips in terms of longevity, consider this the next step on their voyage.

8. Jay-Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne
  The year's highest-profile collaboration didn't exactly play against type — except for the fact that, unlike most other meetings-of-the-egos, it actually ended up being really good. And that's because, despite all the flash surrounding it (the globe-trotting recording sessions, the Riccardo Tisci-designed cover, the video where they sawed the top off a Maybach ) and all the boasts contained within it, WTT is very much an album that grapples equally with big themes — success, race, responsibilities, public perception — and, you know, big watches. And then, of course, there's the incredibly odd 'N---as in Paris,' surely the first rap song to give equal face time to Will Ferrell . A weird, wonderful, whirling album — the kind that, sadly, they don't make all that often, mostly because it's impossible to do so.

7. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
  Justin Vernon has done the impossible: follow up a beloved, much-mythologized debut album (you know, the one that was recorded in a cabin) with a record that's just as good — if not better. He's always been one for atmospheres, but never before have those atmospheres been so dense — or so compelling. Here, he creates a singular, breathless world, building it with layers of echoing instrumentation and his own ghostly falsetto. There are moments where the sun shines through the cracks — a horn crescendo, a silvery sliver of bell — but for the most part, Bon Iver is a mesmerizing trip through a dewy dreamscape. And in that regard, it's a momentous achievement (one made even more momentous by Vernon's recent Grammy nominations ), even if the last song does sound like Bruce Hornsby.

6. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
  The iconic Brit shape-shifts with seemingly every record she releases, and on Shake, she's reborn as an old-fashioned protest singer (with a newfound upper register too). The sad thing is, the subjects she's singing about — conflict, bloodshed, man's unending cycle of self-immolation — are just as timely now as they were 50 years ago. Through it all, Harvey weaves a partial history of her oft-troubled homeland, and does so with haunting, harrowing specificity: the quivering flesh of the dead, the fog rolling over the bones of deceased sea captains, the tread of tanks plowing the countryside. That she manages to do so without ever gnarling into full-on outrage is a testament to both her skill as an observer of the human condition and her love of England, which is perhaps the most impressive feat of all on an album brimming with them.

5. The Horrors, Skying
  Is there a band with a more inexplicable career arc than the Horrors? They started off as spooky-ooky figureheads of London's goth-garage scene (or whatever you want to call it), reimagined themselves as psych disciples on 2009's Primary Colours and, finally, on the wildly emotive Skying, they've emerged as one of the U.K.'s best rock acts. It's a rhetorical question — there is no band quite like them, and their aptly named latest captures them at the height of their abilities. Skying is a bold, big, decidedly Technicolor affair, packed with synth peaks and piles of echoing guitars, and much like its title implies, it positively soars. The great moments abound, though it's on lengthy tracks like 'Moving Further Away' and 'Oceans Burning' — when they break through the clouds and let the daylight pour in — that they really, truly shine in ways no one thought imaginable.

4. F---ed Up, David Comes to Life
  A wrecking-ball sorta rock opera courtesy of Toronto's hardest-working (and, most likely, only ) six-piece punk collective, David Comes to Life tells the story of a downtrodden factory worker who may have killed his true love. I think. Because, along the way, there's also betrayal, heartache, bomb blasts, fisticuffs and a whole lot of plot-twisting shifts in narration too. Of course, the story behind the album is largely unimportant (if you want to keep score at home, here's a handy guide ), especially when the album itself hits so hard. The (multi-multi-multi-)tracked guitars squeal and chug for days, and frontman Pink Eyes' screams are so visceral you can practically feel his blood welling up in your headphones. It's an ambitious, ringing, raging success, the kind of record you'll listen to over and over again, either to try and follow the plotline or just get pummeled by the sheer might of the thing. Either way, you'll enjoy yourself.

3. Drake, Take Care
  What was that line Drake dropped a few years back? 'Last name ever, first name greatest?' Right. Well, here's the proof that he wasn't lying. Take Care is his masterpiece of mope, an agoraphobically artistic exploration of late-night excesses and early morning regrets, of being smothered by fame and troubled by success, of drunken phone calls and drugged-out epiphanies. You can chalk it up to him being 'emo,' but I prefer to think of it as him just being honest, unafraid to play the villain or point out his own shortcomings. And that's what makes this album so wonderful: It is very much about losing contact, fracturing relationships and attempting to put the pieces back together again. Much like Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (or 808s & Heartbreak ), on Take Care, Drake and producer Noah '40' Shebib craft an insular, downright claustrophobic world, one fraught with perils both real and imagined. Though, when your life is as fantastically surreal as Drake's, it's often difficult to tell the difference — much to his dismay, and our benefit.

2. Adele, 21
  It's nice when the year's best-selling album also ends up being one of the flat-out best, but, in the case of Adele's 21, we should have seen it coming. After all, she wowed critics and fans with her debut, but this time, well, she's stumbled onto something else entirely. She created a classy, classic album that moved units the old-fashioned way: namely, on the strength of some hits and her prodigious pipes. On 21, she's also grown as an artist, become a singer capable of both tremendous power (like on the smash 'Rolling in the Deep') and terrifying tenderness too (like on the smash ing 'Someone Like You'). A roiling collection of breakup ballads, revenge fantasies, heartbreaking honesty and even a little humor, there truly was no other album quite like 21 released this year. It's a throwback in every way, though it recalls nothing else so closely as it does the heady times when great albums were also great- selling albums. Hopefully, it's a sign of things to come.

1. Girls, Father, Son, Holy Ghost
  In a year when dance music slithered its way onto the top 40 and dudes like Skrillex pick up Best New Artist Grammy nods, I found solace in the bristling, brokenhearted Father, Son, Holy Ghost, a masterful collection of retro-leaning rock (Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys) that rang true above everything else. That's mostly because it is an undeniably real album, both sonically (the surging guitars and crashing drums that open 'Honey Bunny,' the pealing organ that closes 'Jamie Marie') and spiritually pining over lost loves and the emptiness of sex. And on two epic, excellent tracks — 'Vomit' and 'Forgiveness' — songwriter Christopher Owens lets his sadness and frustrations boil over, resulting in two of the most visceral moments of the year. It's a chilling, hair-raising ride, a heartbreaking listen that channels genuine emotions; full of sadness, self-loathing and real anger, it doesn't pull any punches, and somewhere in that morass, it also stumbles across true beauty too. In a time when everyone's got a DJ and people continue to sing like robots from the 23rd century, I'll take Father, Son, Holy Ghost 's unflinching realness any day. After all, sadness is a virtue too.

From Mother Monster to the Throne, MTV counts down the top 10 artists of the year.
In 2011, Beyoncé asked (rather rhetorically) 'Who run the world?' The answer, of course, was girls, which was pretty apt, considering everywhere you looked this year, female artists were front and center, not only running the world, but flat out dominating it.

Adele's had the year's best-selling album, by a long shot. Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift each moved 1 million units in a single week. Katy Perry continued to nab #1 singles , as did Rihanna and Britney Spears. Nicki Minaj broke through to the mainstream, B made the leap with 4, Christina Aguilera moved like Jagger ... the list goes on and on. Female artists did it all this year, to the point where you sort of forgot that dudes made music too.

Of course, they did and truly you can't have a discussion about 2011 without mentioning Lil Wayne, Drake, Justin Bieber or Jay-Z and Kanye West's high-profile Throne project. Girls may have run the world, but the guys definitely picked their spots, and delivered big time.

But who had the biggest year of all?

It's a tough question to answer. Still, we've given it our best shot, organizing a brain trust to lead a roundtable — moderated by MTV's Sway — on the Best Artists of 2011 . Panelists James Montgomery and Rob Markman (MTV News), Yomi Desalu and Malika Quemerais (MTV Music and Talent) and Tamar Anitai and Nicole James (MTV.com) pored over the charts, debated stuff like Facebook friends and Twitter followers and watched a ton of music videos. After some rather zesty discussions, we've come up with a list of 10 who not only defined the year, but dominated it too.

10. Justin Bieber
  This year, the teen pop superstar upped the ante: He toppled the box office with his 3-D concert flick, 'Never Say Never,' and released a slew of new music, including his chart-topping holiday album, Under the Mistletoe. And when he wasn't busy recording, shooting videos, rapping, shufflin' , touring and tweeting, he romanced Selena Gomez . Not even tabloid headlines could rain on his parade. In fact, Bieber proved that if he wants to try something in his career, he won't just try— he'll probably succeed. — Jocelyn Vena

9. Drake
  Drizzy claimed that all he cared about was money and the city that he's from, but you've got to figure that making hits was pretty high on the Toronto MC's list in 2011. Granted, his second solo album, Take Care, came out in November, but the singing rapper (or the rapping singer) still made his presence felt throughout the year. Duets with Rihanna ('What's My Name'), posse cuts with Lil Wayne and Rick Ross (DJ Khaled's 'I'm On One') and his own Internet leaks ('Marvins Room' and 'Dreams Money Can Buy') served as ample appetizers before Drake served his main course. When he did unveil his emotionally driven main course, 750,000 hungry fans came to the table and purchased it in the first week of release. So much for a sophomore jinx. — Rob Markman

8. Lil Wayne
  Rap star or rock star? Or maybe he's a pop star? In '11, Lil Wayne proved he's all of the above. With '6 Foot 7 Foot,' the thumping 'John' and his free Sorry 4 the Wait mixtape, Weezy left no doubt that he's still a premier MC. But over the acoustic guitar plucks of 'How to Love,' Wayne once again penetrated the pop world. If covers by Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato weren't enough , then consider Wayne's appearances on J.Lo's 'I'm Into You' or Joe Jonas' 'Just in Love.' Tunechi also took his guitar on the road with his I Am Still Music Tour, rocked an MTV 'Unplugged' special and closed out this year's Video Music Awards. Oh yeah, his ninth solo album, Tha Carter IV, nearly went platinum in its first week out, selling more than 964,000 copies. What a year! — R.M.

7. Beyoncé
  Like every other Beyoncé fan, I'm thrilled the star is expecting her first child with hubby Jay-Z, but the delivery of her album 4 was just as exciting. The LP, her most mature to date, is a collection of soulful ballads and midtempo tracks tempered with a deep nostalgic streak. And those singles, the best of which were joyful, horn-blasting throwback jams like 'Love on Top' and 'Countdown,' were unlike anything else on pop radio. Maybe that's why 4 didn't connect commercially the way many of her past records have. But B's 2011 arc has been steady and, most important, certain. Everything she touched in 2011, from 4 to those acclaimed dates at New York City's Roseland Ballroom in August ( to that belly !), was golden. — John Mitchell

6. Rihanna
  Rihanna had us buzzing about songs off not one, but two albums in 2011. There were a number of hits that dropped this year from 2010's Loud, including a remix of 'S&M' with the one-and-only Britney Spears. And while she was still riding high off the momentum of her fifth album, Rih went back into the studio mid-tour and cranked out the sexy, grinding Talk That Talk. Thanks to 'We Found Love,' the chart-topping lead single off TTT, Rihanna reinvented herself as a punked-out club kid looking for love ... knowing that it's not always easy to find. — J.V

5. Lady Gaga
  Gaga is that girl you knew in college with a triple-major in finance, modern dance and molecular chemistry who also played cello and made her own whole-wheat gnocchi on weekends. In 2011, she hit just about every talk show and awards ceremony known to man. And while she did all that, she also toured, released a string of controversial high-concept music videos , spoke out against bullying and starred in an HBO concert film and a prime-time Thanksgiving special . Oh, she also spent the year spinning off a string of hits that mined everything from classic rock to decadent disco. She never slows down, it's never enough and she's set a torrid pace for all divas to come. And that's exactly how she likes it. — Gil Kaufman

4. The Throne
  Be honest, you didn't think this was going to work out. After all, the track record for superstar team-ups isn't exactly great (just ask Jay-Z about the Best of Both Worlds Tour), and the Throne are perhaps the super-starriest team-up in recent history. But somehow, Jay and Kanye made it happen, ditching their egos and delivering a classic album ... and a sold-out tour too. Sure, they may play 'N---as in Paris' 15 times a show, but that's only because they've earned the right to do so. — James Montgomery

3. Adele
  No artist was more quietly ubiquitous this year than Adele. When it came to the charts, she dominated: 21 was the top-selling album of 2011 and 'Rolling in the Deep' was the year's biggest song. She ruled because everyone, from millennials to their mothers and maybe even their grandparents, could all agree that hers was the best, most universally appealing mainstream music released this year. There was no need for a year-round media assault, no reason to cause a Twitter beef; heck, she only needed to release two singles to keep it all afloat. Why? Because she's just that good. — J.M.

2. Nicki Minaj
  Minaj released her debut album Pink Friday in November 2010, but her popularity hit fever pitch this year. Minaj joined her YMCMB family on Lil Wayne's I Am Still Music Tour and then surprised even herself by landing an opening stint on Britney Spears' Femme Fatale Tour, where the two treated audiences to joint performances of Spears' 'Till the World Ends' remix. Nicki's following grew even more after her monster single 'Super Bass,' which became a pop-culture phenomenon and landed at #2 on MTV's Best Songs of 2011 list. The colorful clip that accompanied 'Super Bass' nabbed a Moonman for the year's Best Hip-Hop Video at the VMAs , and the Young Money rapper took home a trophy for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist at the BET Awards. Top that off with Billboard 's 2011 Rising Star Award and a much-coveted 2012 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist .

1. Katy Perry
  In 2011, no one shined as brightly as Katy Perry. She found success by unapologetically being herself. She sang about aliens, her foggy memories of house parties, lost love, true love, being yourself and everything in between. It's easy for fans to connect to Perry and her music: She's an open book. And in 2011, she turned a few more pages. Riding high off the success of 2010's Teenage Dream, Perry didn't rest on her laurels. Instead, she set the bar even higher by hitting the road on the California Dreams Tour, where night after night, decked out in candy-colored clothes, she belted out her greatest hits and empowered her fans with tracks like 'Firework.' That anthem, originally released late last year, became so ubiquitous this year that it finds itself at #10 on MTV's Best Songs of 2011 list. In August, she took home the VMA for Video of the Year for — you guessed it — 'Firework.' What would 2011 have been without Katy?

Cleveland rapper Machine Gun Kelly , recently signed to Diddy's Bad Boy label, was arrested Saturday (Aug. 20) after organizing a flash mob that brought hundreds of screaming fans to Cleveland's South Park Mall. Watch the scene unfold below, in a video that chronicles the flash mob from entrance to arrest to prison release.

It all started on Twitter , when Kelly tweeted  to his 70,000-plus followers, "I'm thinking about doing a flash mob at a mall or something tomorrow lol cleveland should we do one while I'm home?" followed by a flurry of posts over the course of three hours, deciding the location and explaining what everyone would do.

Kelly tweeted , "No one move til you hear 'Cleveland' start, once it starts run to whatever table i'm at and Lets bust a mid-mall crowd surf and RAGE HARD!!!" and then  "ok, see yall tomorrow. bring funny #powerRAGER disguises, i'll bring the camera, and don't move/talk till the song plays at 5pm in foodcourt" on Friday night.

Video shows Machine Gun Kelly shouting to his fans from a food court table. He is then pulled down and handcuffed by uniformed and plain-clothes police officers, who lead him away from the scene, as the rapper's fans continue to cheer and run throughout the suburban mall.

The flash mob was set for 5 p.m., and by 6:46 p.m., Machine Gun Kelly's management had posted  on Twitter, letting fans know that "MGK and the boys" were in a holding cell and to look for an update soon, along with the hashtag #FreeMGK.

A tweet  was posted announcing the group's release around 8 p.m., and soon after Kelly tweeted , "If havin fun with my fans and bringin the rage back to my hometown means I have to be arrested...then keep pullin the cuffs out #iwontstop."

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi has posted an update on his website about the progress of his cancer treatments:

Hiya,
A little update on how it's all going:
Well, I've had the last dose of chemotherapy so hopefully my body will start to get back to normal soon, the steroids were the worse. I've now got three weeks of radiotherapy coming up which I'm told can be very tiring so we'll see.

A big thanks to Ozzy and Geezer for coming over to England, it was a big incentive for me, we managed to work most days and have some great new tracks.
And, importantly thanks again for your kind messages, hope to be seeing you soon.

Tony

Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma in January, just as the Black Sabbath reunion recording and tour was about to get underway.

Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler traveled to England to be with Tony while he underwent his treatments, allowing them to work on new material. Unfortunately, the treatments, along with the inability of the group to come to contract terms with fourth member Bill Ward, forced the cancellation of all but two of the reunion tour dates.