I have found myself getting nostalgic for the 2010s lately

The 2010s are a frustrating decade to look back on as it was the ultimate "two-faced" decade. There's the progressive, Obama-governed, minimalist-2010s that I really appreciate and look back on with a lot of fondness, but then there's also the flashy, materialistic-2010s defined by Instagram #selfies, shallow EDM and an unhealthy obsession of social media culture. I'm just bitter in the sense that I like what the 2010s were aspiring to be during the first few years of the decade, but all that progress was completely turned on its head as the decade further progressed. The fact that we went from Obama and indie-pop at the beginning of the decade, to Trump and mumble-rap at the end sums it all up in a nutshell.  

Maybe it is still a bit too soon for me, but I wouldn't say that I have any sense of nostalgia for the 2010s at all. Don't get me wrong, there are aspects of the decade which I do like for what they were (e.g indie, the MCU) and I am starting to miss my high school years to a degree, however i'm not going to pretend that they were a utopia to live through. They weren't a good decade. I hated the fact that most kids would spend 80% of our lunch-breaks staring at their phones rather than talking to the person next to them face-to-face, or not knowing when to speak to your friend because they were holding their smartphone in one hand and an earpiece in one of their ears. I wish there had of been a decade-defining, Black Parade-type of album release which would have appealed to myself and all of the people in my grade, but it wasn't too be. Music had already become too fragmented for that to happen. Also, my favourite music genre (rock) kicked the bucket around the time I started high school in Early 2012, so I ended up hating most of the music that was popular during "my" years in pop culture. 

Ooh, good observation there, seriously well-said. I think that may be why it's "easier" to be nostalgic for hipsters, because they belong to that side of the 2010s coin. I will say that my experience of the 2010s is likely to have been vastly different from yours, since when it started I was already around halfway through college. It meant my friends and I didn't get sucked into the whole IG/smartphone thing because we had already grown up mainly with face-to-face contact. I was already basically an adult; the main aspects of pop culture that I interfaced with were not EDM and the EDM festivals, but the rustic hipster aesthetic, clean living, and hipster-inspired cuisine (one of the main things I miss from the decade).

On the flip side, it does mean that the darkening of the political situation personally hurt even more than it might have if I had been younger. I was no longer insulated from political events because by mid-decade, I was a working adult with rent and a fiancée. The first half of the decade was great because, as you said, there was a sense that the 2010s were headed in a good direction both culturally and politically, like it was going to be a return not only to stability but back to a feeling like we were the good guys and like we could work towards a better tomorrow. It's funny to think how that optimism arose even in the depths of a terrible recession, but there was this feeling that Obama was going to be this FDR-like figure that would usher in a new golden era for America and that that would benefit the rest of the world too.

You do have a good point about there not being a "definitive" album, though; there was no American Idiot of the 2010s. I think the "definitive" hallmarks of the 2010s came down to certain TV shows and movies; I think those ended up being the main face of pop culture in the 2010s. I mean, think about The Hunger Games or the Captain America movies; I think there is a decent argument that movies like that "defined" the decade and captured the imagination of the viewing public much more than any HAIM or Skrillex album.

Oh, I would love that.

So, funny you should mention mainstream music becoming fragmented, because in my opinion that's why we never had that definitive album. While the 2000s did have that whole duality between rock and rap, such that arguably the definitive album of the 2000s could have been either American Idiot by Green Day or Late Registration by Kanye West. Nevertheless, there was sort of a common thread or narrative held in common by most of society - at least American society - so that a singular definitive hit would be recognized. Our musical tastes may have been varied, but they hadn't been tribalized yet (though that was coming thanks to the iPod). It's the same reason why in decades past, we could all recognize Nirvana's Nevermind or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as "definitive" albums of their times.

In the 2010s, on the other hand, popular music (i.e. distinguished from pop music) branched out into so many different genres, styles, and approaches to music from the hipster stuff like Telekinesis or Guster to electropop like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry to R&B by Bruno Mars or John Legend, and on and on. While it's true that the decade was characterized by a lot of mindless, talentless garbage like deadmau5 or Fetty Wap, the 2010s also saw a great deal of experimentation and diversification within music, even as rock had died. Actually, arguably, the death of rock as the king paved the way for acts like Lorde and The Weeknd to dominate the airwaves now that they didn't have to compete with cKy or The Receiving End of Sirens. We might not appreciate it now, but the kinds of songs these pop acts were putting out were not utilizing ordinary pop sounds, styles, or song structures by any stretch, and ten years before they might've been pop artists operating at the very fringe of the mainstream. I would also point to Nicki Minaj as a similar example of this.

But there is a reason for this, and it goes back to your point about there not being a noticeable technological innovation in music. You are right: by and large it does not appear there was any new technological development that changed the way songs were recorded or performed. Auto-tune itself had been around for about a decade by the time the 2010s began, so it was far from new or unique; it was just utilized more. There is nothing else that comes to mind in terms of how music is recorded or performed. But that's because the main technological innovation in music during the 2010s was how it was distributed, through online outlets like Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Websites like Bandcamp meant anyone with recording equipment and some fair amount of musical proficiency could upload their songs and gain a decent following. It was Myspace on steroids, and artists were able to distribute entire albums or discographies and fans could virtually always pay what they wanted for it, meaning many chose to support the artist voluntarily. And predictably, the availability of more music from more sources - especially being from sources we may never have heard from in the days before Bandcamp - means musical tastes are tribalized even more. It may have meant now that more experimental options became more readily available like vaporwave or future funk (or even stuff like alternative pop or indie neo-soul), but it also meant music listeners were fragmented even further so it became hard to pick out a definitive album that they all would have heard of, let alone all enjoyed or related to.

Isn’t his I Remember a collab? He is also responsible for garbage like Ghosts n Stuff and Afterhours.