- Formation – Beyoncé
- Nikes – Frank Ocean
- Rings of Saturn – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
- Baggage – Drive-By Truckers
- All Night – Beyoncé
- 33%GOD% - Bon Iver
- Ultralight Beam – Kanye West
- Lay Me Down – Loretta Lynn & Willie Nelson
- Needed Me – Rihanna
- No Problem – Chance the Rapper
- Holy Key – DJ Khalad
- 715 – CREEKS – Bon Iver
- Horace and Pete – Paul Simon
- Dollar Days – David Bowie
- Easy – Hinds
- 21 Summer – Brothers Osborne
- Cemetery Breeding – Black Mountain
- Not the Only One – Kevin Gates
- Cottonwood Lullaby – Bob Weir
- 30 Hours – Kanye West
- Oh Sarah – Sturgill Simpson
- Joanne – Lady Gaga
- Hands Up – Blood Orange
- Wow – Beck
- Angels – Chance the Rapper
- One Dance – Drake
- Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales – Car Seat Headrest
- Solo – Frank Ocean
- Let Me Love You – DJ Snake
- Bum Bum Bum – Cass McCombs
- Black Beatles – Rae Sremmurd
- I Need a Forest Fire – James Blake
- FDT, Pt. 2 – YG
- Gods – Maxwell
- 4 Degrees – ANOHNI
- (Joe Gets Kicked Out of School for Using) Drugs With Friends (But Says it Isn’t a Problem) – Car Seat Headrest
- Be a Part – Dinosaur Jr.
- In Care of 8675309 – Lambchop
- Burn the Witch – Radiohead
- My Church – Maren Morris
- I Have Been to the Mountain – Kevin Morby
- Holding On – Gregory Porter
- Wednesday Morning – Macklemore
- 2100 – Run the Jewels
- Modern Drugs – Eric Bachmann
- Friends – Francis and the Lights
- Fake Love – Drake
- Cold Little Heart – Michael Kiwanuka
- Untitled 02 – Kendrick Lamar
- We the People…. – A Tribe Called Quest
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#1. Lemonade
By: Beyoncé Two people owned 2016: Donald Trump and Beyoncé Knowles. While Trump used divisive, hateful, racism, xenophobic rhetoric to divide and conquer, Queen B used the history of divisive hate and racism to bring people together. Lemonade was a potent and provocative, intellectual and musically adventurous. It was a statement that demanded to be heard. When you upset the weasels at FOX News - who then go on to rile up their viewers - you know you have done something meaningful and socially important. Lemonade brought white and black audiences together, but there is no secret who this album was made for. White audiences obsessed over the marital drama that acted as the platform for the project’s message: who is Becky with the good hair?! On the other side of the coin, black audiences tapped straight into the vein of Beyoncé’s message of life in black America, specifically when it comes to the trials and tribulations of black women in America. As we enter into the approaching darkness of the next four years, we will need Beyoncé and bold projects like Lemonade more than ever. Best track: “Formation” - The album’s major single was the world’s first taste of this artistic and social masterpiece. “Formation” is a rallying cry for women, women of color, and anybody that has lost their voice in recent wave of hateful noise. Walking onto the Super Bowl halftime show in Panther gear singing this beast of a song? Bow down, people. #2. Skeleton Tree
By: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Last year, my second favorite album of the year, Carrie & Lowell, was audial heartbreak in its purest form. Or so I thought. Come 2016 and Nick Cave releases Skeleton Tree, what may be the purest distillation of grief every scratched onto wax. ST deals with issues common to many of Cave’s albums: death, God (or lack thereof), grief, basically dreadful. However, what sets this album apart is the events that surrounded its creation. Near the beginning of recording, with some of the songs already written, Cave’s son fell off a cliff to his death. Sufjan Steven’s loss of his mother inspired Carrie & Lowell, but Cave lost his son unexpectedly. I’m not trying to lessen Steven’s loss, but there are different types of grief for the loss of a child, the loss of a child in such a violent and unexpected way. While quite a few of the songs were already written, hearing Cave’s cracking, grief-stricken voice sing them added an inescapable sadness to the tracks. The lyrics of all the songs transformed into laments for a loss child. Even if they were initially about something else, these songs will forever be remembered as being about the death of Cave’s son. Tragic. Crippling. Intimate, personal art at its finest. Key song: “I Need You” - While “Rings of Saturn” may be my favorite track musically, “I Need You” is the whole album as song. Cave’s vocal track barely stays in key, but I dare you to turn away and ignore his pain. #3. The Life of Pablo
By: Kanye West Pablo is an album that only Kanye West could have made. Every record he makes sounds like a snapshot of Kanye at that moment. Every record he makes sounds like what music will sound like tomorrow. This album is no different: unruly, rambling, occasionally offensive, and even musically shoddy at times. But those moments only add to the album’s legacy in the Kanye canon. This is his White Album. It may be flawed, but it is never less than 100% undiluted Kanye, himself in all his enigmatic genius. Music aside, TLOP took full advantage of what an album can be in today’s digital landscape. For weeks after it was released, West continued to tinker with the album’s mixes and to add and subtract songs. Nowhere else last year, any other year, or in Kanye’s old discography can you find an album like this. No matter what you think about him - and he’s constantly, even today with his Trump compliments, giving you new reasons to second guess him - he never is anyone but himself. Messy and brilliant. That is The Life of Pablo in a nutshell. Key song: “Ultralight Beam” - That Chance the Rapper verse, though. Best verse of the whole year. #4. Blond[e]
By: Frank Ocean It’s hard to follow up on one of the most loved albums of the decade with anything more than slight disappointment. Like many albums these days, I think Blond[e] would have benefitted from a slightly smaller rollout. Elaborate rollouts often steal the spotlight from the actual music. Such was the case for Ocean’s long belated album, once titled Boys Don’t Cry. Once listeners finally stopped comparing it to Channel Orange and actually listened to the music, they finally heard the masterful beauty that is Blond[e] - I use brackets because the title could be interchangeable, based on your preferred gender. This is Ocean on max chill: drums barely make an appearance and gently plucked guitars dominate. Most notable is the effects draped over Ocean’s voice, providing a wall for him to hide behind as he shares pieces of himself too intimate to bear. Key song: “Nikes” - The first single the world heard of Ocean’s new music was also the best example of what the artist could do in 2016. It gave us the first taste of Ocean’s doctored alien vocals, the first taste of his newfound sincerity that he expressed in hushed tones. It perfectly blends the intimately personal with social commentary ("RIP Trayvon / that n***a look just like me") and manages to make them sound one in the same. "Nikes" is absolutely one of the best songs of the year. #5. 22, A Million
By: Bon Iver Bon Iver is such a enigmatic entity that it would be foolish to sit and wait for new material; you could be waiting years. That’s why it is such a event when Justin Vernon actually blesses us earth folk with more of his ethereal falsetto. Bon Iver, though only three albums in, have made significant leaps with each outing. Record one was an eerie log cabin confessional; the second introduced a more rounded band sound, complete with electric instruments; and with 22, A Million, Vernon jumps into the future of mournful crooning. While I would not go so far as to say the album invents a new genre, I certainly feel confident saying he has introduced new sounds to the world of music. And with new sounds come new ways to convey emotion, new ways to feel. While Vernon’s angelic voice is often disguised, morphed into distorted noise, his songs speak of sadness and longing that is far from alien. Key Track: “33 %GOD%” - “These will just be places to me now,” Vernon sings. Every Bon Iver lyric, indecipherable as they are, can be interpreted differently with each listen. Could he be speaking of his ever-expanding sound? People that he passes by? Who knows. I hear something new every time. That’s not even mentioning what is certainly the most dynamic musical arrangement on the album. #6. Blackstar
By: David Bowie There is nothing more I can say about Bowie’s artful farewell address that hasn’t been said a thousand times over, so I will save you the time of reading something you’ve already seen. That said, no other artist in the history of music - possibly art itself - has demonstrated such masterful control over his story. No other artist, ridden with cancer or otherwise, has ever given away a final album filled with such boldly graceful sentiments of the end. Each of these seven tracks have transformed themselves as the year unfolded; even the album artwork was a gift that kept giving. Is the fact that Blackstar is still a masterpiece after you separate it from Bowie’s death worth mentioning? Of course it is. Key Track: “Lazarus” - Listen to the music. Study the words. Watch the music video. Repeat, repeat, repeat. “Lazarus” is everything I said about the album as a whole in song form. Though, the same could be said about the title track…and “Dollar Days”…and “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” #7. Coloring Book
By: Chance the Rapper Coloring Book may be considered a mixtape, but it is jam packed with more cohesion, beauty, and artistry than almost any “proper album” this year. Bump all of the contemporary Christian music Nashville peddles around to dopes who do not know what actually makes praise music praiseworthy. Coloring Book is the best Gospel album of the year, and possibly of the decade. Chance has no interest in packing his songs with enough lab-tested Christian buzzwords to sell records - “sell” is an interesting choice of words, seeing how Chance insists on giving his music away. His music focuses on genuine uplift and exaltation, both in God and the beauty in everyday people. His rebranding of “Blessings” and “How Great” instill life in two melodies I thought for sure to be lost to the soul-sucking beast of corporate Christianity. If the occasional curse word offends you, just don’t listen; but this is Gospel music like I have never heard it. Key Song: “No Problem” - The album’s biggest single is a furiously catchy, jubilant takedown of corporate greed. The insistence on pushing units at quality’s expense is something Chance obviously understands better than anyone else. “No Problem” does not mention God directly, as many of the other tracks do; yet its message of giving away something uplifting and beautiful for free, without charge or consequence, is a sentiment that gets to the heart of what Jesus was all about. #8. American Band
By: Drive-by Truckers A “Drive-by Truckers album in the age of Trump” might not be the most accurate description for their new masterwork American Band. Recording happened in the early stages of his campaign mode. With that said, it may be more accurate to describe this as an album that captures the angry, hateful, hurting American spirit that allowed for the rise of a demagogue like Trump. The black and white photo on the cover of a US flag at half mast perfectly encapsulates everything that follows. Right from the bat, “Ramon Casiano” paints a picture of a country divided on immigration issues. “It all started with the border / And that’s still where it is today” is soon followed by sentiments like “But killing’s been the bullets business / Since back in 1931.” They certainly don’t ease you in. Sentiments on excessive gun violence continue a few songs down on “Guns of Umpqua,” which details a school shooting and the last days of those killed. This is heavy stuff that continues a long-standing mission for Drive-by Truckers: confront the demons of the South, their home they love, with an honest open eye. Key song: “Baggage” - The albums’ closing track brings all the issues dealt with in the preceding songs to a head with a sublime mix of acceptance, sadness, and healing. It must be heard. #9. Teens of Denial
By: Car Seat Headrest With 2015’s Teens of Style consisting of old, re-recorded songs, Teens of Denial served as a proper studio debut for storied indie artist Car Seat Headrest. Turns out all those years of Bandcamp training have suitably prepared the band for this task. Denial technically only has twelve tracks, but with most of the songs stretching to six-plus minutes, there are more hooks than you could possibly keep track of. Every song is a mini song suite, meaning songs like “Drugs With Friends,” “Cosmic Hero,” and “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia” feel like an album unto themselves. Most albums this long and expansive will inevitably (and understandably) feel drudging and tiring, but not Teens of Denial. If you wanted sweet, melodic guitar rock in 2016, there was nowhere else to look. Key Song: “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” - One of the most impressively written and recorded alt-rock songs of the decade, “DD/KW” is a prime example of the songs-within-a-song structure I was talking about. The song begins with a gentle tune strummed out on a guitar and ends with a furious manifesto of youthful angst. |
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January 2016
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