My Top 50 Albums of 2019
I already did my top 100 albums of the decade a few weeks ago, and kind of previewed this list with my 4 favorite 2019 albums scattered throughout it. But there was a lot of good music this year, I think it'd probably figure more prominently in my favorite 2010s albums list if I made it a little further down the road with hindsight. I also submitted my top 10 of this list for the Uproxx music critics poll and I guess helped my #3, #6 and #8 albums place on that list.
Here's a playlist I started making of a song from each album, I haven't finished it yet but I probably will soon. And here's my year-end lists for TV shows, singles by genre (rap, rock, country, pop, and R&B), and remixes.
1. Eleni Mandell - Wake Up Again
Eleni Mandell is a cult singer-songwriter who's spent 2 decades on the margins of the music industry writing who sings about people who live on the margins in other ways -- when many of her peers and a couple legends covered her songs on the 2017 tribute album Unsung Heroes, the title seemed to not at both her and the characters in her lyrics. But she's never made an album that was so explicitly a group of sympathetic portraits like her 11th album, Wake Up Again, which was inspired by women she met when teaching songwriting at two women's prisons. For the most part these aren't story songs that go into names -- besides Evelyn in "Evelyn" -- or details of crimes, instead the songs largely sketch out the thoughts and emotions of people who do or don't regret their actions, who do or don't now how to cope with their new reality, who do or don't have anyone on the outside eagerly waiting to see them again. Eleni Mandell specializes in small moments that don't pour on sentiment or catharsis, but there's a cumulative effect in these 11 songs that's quietly devastating.
2. DaBaby - Baby On Baby
One of my favorite pieces of music writing this year was Paul Thompson noting the timestamps where DaBaby starts rapping on the tracks on Baby On Baby (usually in the first few seconds of the song, if not the very first second). But the songs also aren't very long -- they average about 2:22 -- and DaBaby tends to fill all the available space with his voice, rapping full verses where the Soundcloud rappers that set the 2-minute standard for brevity in new rap would usually pad out their songs with additional refrains and vamping. And that sharp-elbowed flow ping ponging around the track is really all the songs need, there's a slippery wit to DaBaby's rhymes that I didn't tire of once during his breakthrough year of ubiquity.
3. Kim Gordon - No Home Record
I've spent my decades of Sonic Youth fandom voraciously consuming everything the band put out as well as dozens of solo records and side projects from every member of the band. And No Home Record, Kim Gordon's first proper solo album, is my favorite thing to come from a member of the band since they went inactive at the beginning of the decade, more playful than anything she did with Body/Head and more purposeful than anything she did with Free Kitten, applying her unique and inimitable voice to a surprising range of harsh and occasionally pretty catchy beat-driven tracks.
I've spent my decades of Sonic Youth fandom voraciously consuming everything the band put out as well as dozens of solo records and side projects from every member of the band. And No Home Record, Kim Gordon's first proper solo album, is my favorite thing to come from a member of the band since they went inactive at the beginning of the decade, more playful than anything she did with Body/Head and more purposeful than anything she did with Free Kitten, applying her unique and inimitable voice to a surprising range of harsh and occasionally pretty catchy beat-driven tracks.
4. Megan Thee Stallion - Fever
Houston native Megan Pete is a 25-year-old college student who remained enrolled in school even after she became one of the biggest new rappers in America, but she's steeped in past generations of hip hop, stamping her 'Tina Snow' persona as a female reincarnation of Pimp C, getting career advice from Q-Tip, and filling her debut mixtape with Memphis beats from Pimp C and Project Pat that sound more like something Gangsta Boo or La Chat would rap over 20 years ago than state of the art 2019 radio fodder. Megan moved on from Fever quickly, announcing a proper debut album due in 2020 and releasing a single, "Hot Girl Summer," that sounded more smoothed over and calculated, but Fever captured everything that was exciting about her in a quick and simple package that felt more like an early Trina album than an attempt to keep up with the Nicki's and Cardi's.
Houston native Megan Pete is a 25-year-old college student who remained enrolled in school even after she became one of the biggest new rappers in America, but she's steeped in past generations of hip hop, stamping her 'Tina Snow' persona as a female reincarnation of Pimp C, getting career advice from Q-Tip, and filling her debut mixtape with Memphis beats from Pimp C and Project Pat that sound more like something Gangsta Boo or La Chat would rap over 20 years ago than state of the art 2019 radio fodder. Megan moved on from Fever quickly, announcing a proper debut album due in 2020 and releasing a single, "Hot Girl Summer," that sounded more smoothed over and calculated, but Fever captured everything that was exciting about her in a quick and simple package that felt more like an early Trina album than an attempt to keep up with the Nicki's and Cardi's.
5. Bailen - Thrilled To Be Here
Having heard so much about '80s college radio while growing up, it bummed me out a little to finally go to college and find my school Towson University's station, WTMD, to be kind of a letdown. In the years since I graduated, though, it grew into a really good station that I listen to in the car regularly, and this is the second year in a row that my top 10 albums include a band I discovered via WTMD. Last year it was Lemon Twigs, a pair of young New York brothers influenced by '60s garage bands. This year it's another set of NY siblings, Bailen, who are more indebted to jangly '70s pop/rock. By the end of the year, the band released a Christmas single and a collection of covers and new originals, Bailen Mixtape Vol. 1, that affirmed that they've got more excellent songs beyond this very promising debut.
6. Ariana Grande - Thank U, Next
My favorite Ariana Grande since her 2013 debut also relied less on superproducers than any record since Yours Truly -- Max Martin was still in the mix, but took a backseat to Grande's longtime collaborator Tommy Brown on both the singles and the deep cuts. She basically decided to dash off her 5th album immediately after her 4th, and instead of it being a quickie bonus disc, it became her biggest blockbuster, as well as her most intimate and vulnerable and musically quirky record. It's a little wearying that it often takes real life heartbreak and tabloid curiosity for pop stars to really connect and for their love songs and breakup songs to resonate as more than cliches, but 2019 was the year Ariana Grande became both a full-fledge pop icon and a three dimensional person in the public imagination.
7. Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee
Raphael Saadiq may be the single most talented and accomplished R&B musician of his generation, but the 5 very worthwhile solo albums he's sporadically made over the last 20 years have often taken a backseat to more high profile work as a writer/producer or group member. Those albums sometimes seem to happen simply because he feels like it, has an aesthetic or an era he wants to explore, but Jimmy Lee feels like something powerful that had been bubbling inside him for decades was finally ready to come out. Jimmy Lee is named after Saadiq's brother, one of four siblings who died young, and there's a tense, uncomfortable energy here, with abrupt smash cuts from one song to the next and often disorienting, hypnotic grooves, and the grim political subtext of the deaths he's writing about, that's all the more poignant coming from a musician who has in the past specialized in bright, joyous melodies.
My favorite Ariana Grande since her 2013 debut also relied less on superproducers than any record since Yours Truly -- Max Martin was still in the mix, but took a backseat to Grande's longtime collaborator Tommy Brown on both the singles and the deep cuts. She basically decided to dash off her 5th album immediately after her 4th, and instead of it being a quickie bonus disc, it became her biggest blockbuster, as well as her most intimate and vulnerable and musically quirky record. It's a little wearying that it often takes real life heartbreak and tabloid curiosity for pop stars to really connect and for their love songs and breakup songs to resonate as more than cliches, but 2019 was the year Ariana Grande became both a full-fledge pop icon and a three dimensional person in the public imagination.
7. Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee
Raphael Saadiq may be the single most talented and accomplished R&B musician of his generation, but the 5 very worthwhile solo albums he's sporadically made over the last 20 years have often taken a backseat to more high profile work as a writer/producer or group member. Those albums sometimes seem to happen simply because he feels like it, has an aesthetic or an era he wants to explore, but Jimmy Lee feels like something powerful that had been bubbling inside him for decades was finally ready to come out. Jimmy Lee is named after Saadiq's brother, one of four siblings who died young, and there's a tense, uncomfortable energy here, with abrupt smash cuts from one song to the next and often disorienting, hypnotic grooves, and the grim political subtext of the deaths he's writing about, that's all the more poignant coming from a musician who has in the past specialized in bright, joyous melodies.
8. Young Thug - So Much Fun
After 5 years as rap's most mercurial star, the guy who seemed constitutionally incapable of settling down and putting together a full-length album worthy of his talents and giving it a traditional enough rollout to spin off hit singles and top the charts like everyone hoped he would, Young Thug finally stopped fucking around and nailed it. But given the relative blandness of some of his biggest crossover features in recent years, I did worry that an album like this would be a hollow victory, and Thug fires on all cylinders on So Much Fun with some of the best production of Thug's career, and features that err on the side of rappers he's influenced and mentors and a relative minimum of others, including J. Cole, who probably deserves a lot of credit for his executive producer role bringing this to the finish line.
9. King Princess - Cheap Queen
Mikaela Straus is the daughter of a New York recording engineer and grew up puttering around a studio and learning the ropes, Jon Bon Jovi-style. Now, she's signed to Mark Ronson's label, and toured with Harry Styles and played SNL this year, but she didn't quite ascend to an Eilish level of Gen Z it girl in 2019. But Cheap Queen is a really wonderful album, beautifully sung, sexually uninhibited and sonically unpredictable, I hope the sad teens aren't sleeping on this one.
Mikaela Straus is the daughter of a New York recording engineer and grew up puttering around a studio and learning the ropes, Jon Bon Jovi-style. Now, she's signed to Mark Ronson's label, and toured with Harry Styles and played SNL this year, but she didn't quite ascend to an Eilish level of Gen Z it girl in 2019. But Cheap Queen is a really wonderful album, beautifully sung, sexually uninhibited and sonically unpredictable, I hope the sad teens aren't sleeping on this one.
10. Justin Moore - Late Nights And Longnecks
For the past decade, Justin Moore has been one of the best and most underrated vocalists in Nashville, with a deep rich tone, an Arkansas twang, and a sincere and guileless way of bringing a lyric to life. As someone who loves country drinking songs so much that I have a personal playlist of George Jones songs about booze, Moore's 5th album was my favorite in part because more than half the songs were about drinking or trying to quit drinking, and the subject matter even seemed to seep into some of the songs about other topics.
11. Ex Hex - It's Real
This week I realized that Ex Hex released a single of the song "It's Real" in September, though the would-be title track never appeared on the album of the same name 6 months earlier. I don't know why, the song is good, but hey, the album kicks ass even without it. Mary Timony has made so much good music over the last 30 years, from Autoclave to Helium to Wild Flag to this year's debut single from Hammered Hulls. But Ex Hex has really stood out to me as some of the best work of her career, such a spirited and unironic blast of old-fashioned riff rock that sounded even better on their second album. In the year that we lost Ric Ocasek, It's Real was the only album that implored you to brush your rock and roll hair.
11. Ex Hex - It's Real
This week I realized that Ex Hex released a single of the song "It's Real" in September, though the would-be title track never appeared on the album of the same name 6 months earlier. I don't know why, the song is good, but hey, the album kicks ass even without it. Mary Timony has made so much good music over the last 30 years, from Autoclave to Helium to Wild Flag to this year's debut single from Hammered Hulls. But Ex Hex has really stood out to me as some of the best work of her career, such a spirited and unironic blast of old-fashioned riff rock that sounded even better on their second album. In the year that we lost Ric Ocasek, It's Real was the only album that implored you to brush your rock and roll hair.
12. Boogie - Everythings For Sale
Eminem's Shady Records had become about as cautious about mentoring new artists as the Aftermath umbrella it came up under, so the first Shady album from a relatively new rapper in nearly a decade was a pleasant surprise just to see on the release schedule, and Boogie's retail debut was a breath of fresh air in the context of the label's history, relaxed and melodic and emotionally vulnerable. Of course, there is an Eminem verse and it sucks all the air out of the room in a really annoying way, but that's to be expected, I guess.
Eminem's Shady Records had become about as cautious about mentoring new artists as the Aftermath umbrella it came up under, so the first Shady album from a relatively new rapper in nearly a decade was a pleasant surprise just to see on the release schedule, and Boogie's retail debut was a breath of fresh air in the context of the label's history, relaxed and melodic and emotionally vulnerable. Of course, there is an Eminem verse and it sucks all the air out of the room in a really annoying way, but that's to be expected, I guess.
13. Rapsody - Eve
I didn't find Eve as front-to-back enjoyable as 2017's Laila's Wisdom, but bar for bar Rapsody is still one of the best MC's out. She's got a really coy and entertaining way of phrasing things, and there's some ear tickling samples on here from Bjork to Phil Collins to Herbie Hancock, it's a shame I see people mainly praise Rapsody as a way to guilt people about listening to other women who rap.
14. Fantasia - Sketchbook
Being an American Idol winner seems to turn up all the Faustian bargain aspects of major label stardom up to 11, so I cheer a little every time somebody fulfills their 19 Entertainment contract and gets to continue their career on their on terms. And Fantasia Barrino, by far one of Idol's most talented alumni, had gradually come into her own with her last couple albums, and took control of her sound to an even greater degree on her first proper album as an independent artist. I only interviewed one person this year, and I'm glad that after weeks of getting the call pushed back and delayed, I finally got to talk to Fantasia about this album and hear more about how it was made and how deliberate she was about the choices she made on it.
15. Maggie Rogers - Heard It In A Past Life
The song that went viral in 2016 when an NYU student played it for Pharrell Williams and he teared up on camera talking about it, "Alaska," is on Heard It In A Past Life, alongside songs that Maggie Rogers mostly made it with established producers over the next 2 years after the viral video got her a record deal. And it's illustrative that "Alaska" sounds right at home on the album, that she figured out her sound as unknown and kept it as an aesthetic north star for tracks with Greg Kurstin and Rostam Batmanglij and Ricky Reed.
16. 2 Chainz - Rap Or Go To The League
The most significant lasting cultural impact of Rap Or Go To The League, 10 months later, may very well be the memes of LeBron James and 2 Chainz nod their heads approvingly to music, with comically silly-sounding beats dubbed over the video. And certainly there was something a little silly about 2 Chainz leveraging the publicity of a celebrity non-musician executive producing his record to launch an album that didn't have an advance radio hit, at almost the exact same time that James missed the NBA playoffs for the first time in over a decade. But I have to say, it was a smart and interesting way to rollout the album, and while I have no idea what creative decisions LeBron James made on this album, he didn't hold it back from having production as uniformly excellent as most of 2 Chainz's other projects.
17. Tove Lo - Sunshine Kitty
When Tove Lo first started getting played on American radio, I thought her lyrics sounded a little off in a funny way, like it was a little too obvious that her first language was not English and she was trying to sound cool and colloquially American and not quite pulling it off. But now I think she's a really perceptive lyricist who puts some feelings that are difficult to articulate into words well on songs like "Anywhere U Go" and "Glad He's Gone" and "Really Don't Like U."
18. SiR - Chasing Summer
2019 was Sir Darryl Farris's 5th year in a row dropping an excellent album or EP, and Chasing Summer was the first one to actually crack the Billboard 200, but it feels like his gradual rise to prominence is still a work in progress. Great to hear him so consistent with it, though. Also, it's incredibly funny that there's a song about a love triangle on this album that's called "John Redcorn."
2019 was Sir Darryl Farris's 5th year in a row dropping an excellent album or EP, and Chasing Summer was the first one to actually crack the Billboard 200, but it feels like his gradual rise to prominence is still a work in progress. Great to hear him so consistent with it, though. Also, it's incredibly funny that there's a song about a love triangle on this album that's called "John Redcorn."
19. Mannequin Pussy - Patience
I feel like I was late to check out Philadelphia band Mannequin Pussy on their third album and first for Epitaph, but I'm glad I did check them out. And their two previous were each 17-18 minutes, so it was easy enough to get up to speed for this one, which somehow feels pretty substantial and immersive at 25 minutes.
20. ScHoolboy Q - CrasH Talk
I feel like I was late to check out Philadelphia band Mannequin Pussy on their third album and first for Epitaph, but I'm glad I did check them out. And their two previous were each 17-18 minutes, so it was easy enough to get up to speed for this one, which somehow feels pretty substantial and immersive at 25 minutes.
20. ScHoolboy Q - CrasH Talk
I don't think much of anybody hailed this as ScHoolboy Q's best album to date. But it just really sounded like a breath of fresh air to me compared to the slog of Blank Face LP, about a half hour shorter and generally feeling a little more clear-eyed and sonically varied.
21. YG - 4Real 4Real
22. Billie Eilish - When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
I can't remember the last time the biggest album of the year was as genuinely strange as Billie Eilish's debut, there's a generation of tweens for whom this is their Jagged Little Pill and that's way cooler than, well, Jagged Little Pill. That said, I am twice Eilish's age and it took me a while for her stuff to grow on me, I thought "Bad Guy" sounded terrible the first time I heard it and now it's one of my top 10 singles of the year. The fact that Eilish and her brother pretty much made the whole album in their house lends it a pretty unique texture, and it's really impressive the way they were able to use whispers, dry drum sounds and jarring moments of silence to make a record that doesn't insist that you pay attention to it and still got the world's attention.
23. DaBaby - Kirk
DaBaby's second album of 2019 wasn't the breakthrough and had bigger guests, so a lot of people treated it as an inessential cash grab. But "Intro" alone makes it I think a big step forward in terms of his writing and fleshing out his story and his persona, and a rapper probably hasn't had 2 solo projects this good in one year since Future in 2015.
24. Harry Styles - Fine Line
I think I would still rate the last 3 albums One Direction made as a group above all the solo albums, but Fine Line is coming in at a very strong 4th place. Where 2017's Harry Styles had a certain sleepy confidence that would've gotten boring if he'd done it a second time, Fine Line makes a more concerted effort towards positioning Harry Styles as someone who actually gets played on the radio, while still letting him luxuriate in acoustic dad rock more than any of his peers would dare to.
25. DDm - Beautiful Gowns
It was around this time 14 years ago that I first saw a teenager named Midas start winning rap battles in Baltimore, and I've followed his career ever since as he evolved from Midas the charismatic street rapper on Team Green mixtapes to Dappa!!! Dan Midas the playfully experimental MC with Mania Music Grop to DDm the ambitious and unapologetic solo artist. DDm has said that Beautiful Gowns is his last album, and I hope it's not, but in some ways it does feel like a culmination of all the different styles he's tried on over the years.
26. Sara Bareilles - Amidst The Chaos
DaBaby's second album of 2019 wasn't the breakthrough and had bigger guests, so a lot of people treated it as an inessential cash grab. But "Intro" alone makes it I think a big step forward in terms of his writing and fleshing out his story and his persona, and a rapper probably hasn't had 2 solo projects this good in one year since Future in 2015.
24. Harry Styles - Fine Line
I think I would still rate the last 3 albums One Direction made as a group above all the solo albums, but Fine Line is coming in at a very strong 4th place. Where 2017's Harry Styles had a certain sleepy confidence that would've gotten boring if he'd done it a second time, Fine Line makes a more concerted effort towards positioning Harry Styles as someone who actually gets played on the radio, while still letting him luxuriate in acoustic dad rock more than any of his peers would dare to.
25. DDm - Beautiful Gowns
It was around this time 14 years ago that I first saw a teenager named Midas start winning rap battles in Baltimore, and I've followed his career ever since as he evolved from Midas the charismatic street rapper on Team Green mixtapes to Dappa!!! Dan Midas the playfully experimental MC with Mania Music Grop to DDm the ambitious and unapologetic solo artist. DDm has said that Beautiful Gowns is his last album, and I hope it's not, but in some ways it does feel like a culmination of all the different styles he's tried on over the years.
26. Sara Bareilles - Amidst The Chaos
Doing a stripped-down album with T-Bone Burnett is not something I would necessarily want from a lot of artists. But I've always liked Sara Bareilles's music the most when it's just her voice and piano and not much else, so after increasingly slick singles like "Brave," it was really refreshing to hear her kind of simplify her sound on Amidst The Chaos, as well as on this year's What's Not Inside EP, a collection of demos and outtakes from the songs she wrote for the Broadway musical Waitress.
27. Future - The WIZRD
It's a little odd that since 2017's "Mask Off," the biggest song of Future's career, his usually steady trickle of solo hits has dried up -- he's released hours and hours of music in the last two and a half years on albums, mixtapes, collaborative projects and soundtracks, and nothing has really stuck. I wouldn't say he fell off, though, there are a lot of songs on The WIZRD that I think would've made better singles than "Crushed Up." I took my wife to see X Ambassadors for her birthday a couple months ago and was really impressed, one of the best live shows I saw this year. She plays their two albums around the house a lot, so I knew Sam Harris was a talented singer, but hearing him belt out songs like "Hey Child" and "Quicksand" in person really gave me a new appreciation for this record.
29. Chance The Rapper - The Big Day
Chance The Rapper enjoyed a steady ascent to pop culture ubiquity on his own terms for most of the decade, so I don't feel terribly bad for him that he finally put out something that underperformed. But the backlash, though I felt it coming for a year or two before The Big Day arrived, was more dramatic than I expected, and didn't have a lot to do with the merits of the album, which is at least 90% as good as Coloring Book was and in most of the same ways.
30. LÉON - LÉON
Columbia Records had been cautiously releasing EPs and singles by Swedish singer/songwriter Lotta Lindgren since 2015, and I really enjoyed those songs, but they never caught fire in America enough to warrant an album release. So I'm glad that she finally got an independent full-length out there, it's an excellent record and "Hope Is A Heartache" is devastating.
31. Pale Spring - Cygnus
Emily Harper Scott and her co-producer and husband Drew Scott have really happened upon a cool, unique sound, it's cool to see people from Baltimore's rap and indie underground scenes try out something that feels a little pop and accessible but still very much in its own world.
32. Dawn Richard - New Breed
Between Diddy-Dirty Money and her restlessly inventive solo work, Dawn Richard has been easily one of my favorite artists of the 2010s, and New Breed saw her embrace her New Orleans roots more than ever before while still playing around in the unique space between R&B and EDM that she's created with her previous albums.
32. Dawn Richard - New Breed
Between Diddy-Dirty Money and her restlessly inventive solo work, Dawn Richard has been easily one of my favorite artists of the 2010s, and New Breed saw her embrace her New Orleans roots more than ever before while still playing around in the unique space between R&B and EDM that she's created with her previous albums.
33. Yung Baby Tate - Girls
Atlanta singer Yung Baby Tate's debut album is entirely self-produced and self-released, and I hear so much potential in this album, if she improves on the strengths of this project and kind of sticks to this weird fusion of pop and R&B and hip hop she could really be a force of nature.
34. Celine Dion - Courage
Like most Americans who came of age in the '90s, I probably never gave Celine Dion enough credit for her talent, and her earlier more R&B-leaning stuff has grown on me over the years. But this album where she emerges as a recently widowed woman singing dance diva anthems of perseverance is really something, "Flying On My Own" is just explosive.
Like most Americans who came of age in the '90s, I probably never gave Celine Dion enough credit for her talent, and her earlier more R&B-leaning stuff has grown on me over the years. But this album where she emerges as a recently widowed woman singing dance diva anthems of perseverance is really something, "Flying On My Own" is just explosive.
35. Maren Morris - Girl
The best song Maren Morris released this year is probably "Old Soul" from her supergroup The Highwomen's self-titled debut. But I'll admit that as far as Morris goes, the slick crossover Busbee and Greg Kurstin tracks of her second solo album are generally a little more my speed than The Highwomen's rootsy '70s homages.
The best song Maren Morris released this year is probably "Old Soul" from her supergroup The Highwomen's self-titled debut. But I'll admit that as far as Morris goes, the slick crossover Busbee and Greg Kurstin tracks of her second solo album are generally a little more my speed than The Highwomen's rootsy '70s homages.
36. Red Hearse - Red Hearse
Jack Antonoff produced the most acclaimed album of the year (Lana Del Rey) as well as one of the biggest sellers (Taylor Swift) but I thought the most interesting he made was the self-debuted debut by his new group that quietly slipped out around the same time as those records. Red Hearse is Antonoff with longtime Kendrick Lamar producer Sounwave and singer Sam Dew, a playful and idiosyncratic falsetto bedroom pop record that happened to be created by multi-platinum hitmakers.
37. Say Anything - Oliver Appropriate
On paper, Oliver Appropriate seems like something that would make me cringe: a relatively young band's farewell album and a sequel to the early breakthrough album that they've never quite been able to top. But I think Max Bemis decided to make this album, and make it Say Anything's last album, for good reasons, and it's really a unique and poignant record even if I would never say it's an equal to 2004's ...Is A Real Boy that it was crafted in response to.
On paper, Oliver Appropriate seems like something that would make me cringe: a relatively young band's farewell album and a sequel to the early breakthrough album that they've never quite been able to top. But I think Max Bemis decided to make this album, and make it Say Anything's last album, for good reasons, and it's really a unique and poignant record even if I would never say it's an equal to 2004's ...Is A Real Boy that it was crafted in response to.
38. Iggy Pop - Free
Free, a jazzy downtempo album that Iggy Pop made with trumpeter Leron Thomas as a way to unwind after touring for 2016's Post Pop Depression, kind of feels like Iggy's answer to David Bowie's ★. And I really like hearing what these guys come up with in their twilight years, when they seem to be even more relaxed and willing to try anything than they were as younger men.
39. Our Native Daughters - Songs Of Our Native Daughters
Our Native Daughters, four African-American women reclaiming American folk music in a debut album released by Smithsonian Folkways, feels like a very ambitious academic project, but it's also incredibly beautiful, with fascinating surprising moments like the stomping 9/8 rhythm of "Mama's Crying Long" alongside banjo-driven hoedowns like the John Henry response song "Polly Ann's Hammer." Free, a jazzy downtempo album that Iggy Pop made with trumpeter Leron Thomas as a way to unwind after touring for 2016's Post Pop Depression, kind of feels like Iggy's answer to David Bowie's ★. And I really like hearing what these guys come up with in their twilight years, when they seem to be even more relaxed and willing to try anything than they were as younger men.
39. Our Native Daughters - Songs Of Our Native Daughters
40. Gingerwitch - Gingerwitch 2019
Two of the most enjoyable nights out I had this year were when my band Woofir opened for Gingerwitch, our bands don't really sound alike but there's a certain kinship and mutual appreciation there and they're just an incredible fun band to watch. This album marks Gingerwitch's first release as a full five-piece band after starting out with the Fitzgibbon sisters forming an acoustic duo, but I feel like the shows I saw were a step forward even from this record, really looking forward to what they make in the future.
41. Julia Jacklin - Crushing
I really like the way Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin's lilting bittersweet voice sounds over the fuzzy hum of her guitar, a really pretty and subdued record that occasionally knocked me over with moments of withering observational wit.
42. CUP - Spinning Creature
Wilco/Geraldine Fibbers guitarist Nels Cline and Cibo Matto multi-instrumentalist Yuka Honda have both made a lot of great music over the last 3 decades, but have rarely been out front singing lead, so I kind of assumed that Cline and Honda, who married in 2010, would make some kind of experimental instrumental thing for their first album as a duo. So the surprise of Spinning Creature is that it's often a very bright, catchy pop record, with both of them singing far more than I've heard from them before, especially Cline.
43. JPEGMAFIA - All My Heroes Are Cornballs
It's been really cool to watch JPEGMAFIA kind of take what I see as a very Baltimore bohemian style of smart strange confrontational lo-fi rap and get embraced around the world for it, sometimes his sense of humor and his bullshit detector, both on record and on social media, seem to rub people the wrong way, but it really feels like he's representing a scene and a sensibility that's been here for a long time in many different forms even if he's the one that kind of figured out an iteration of it that really resonates outside Baltimore.
It's been really cool to watch JPEGMAFIA kind of take what I see as a very Baltimore bohemian style of smart strange confrontational lo-fi rap and get embraced around the world for it, sometimes his sense of humor and his bullshit detector, both on record and on social media, seem to rub people the wrong way, but it really feels like he's representing a scene and a sensibility that's been here for a long time in many different forms even if he's the one that kind of figured out an iteration of it that really resonates outside Baltimore.
44. Priests - The Seduction of Kansas
Priests' 2nd full album feels like the band very confidently planting their flag with a very stylized and trebly sound that's something of a departure from the sound that made them breakout stars of the D.C. punk scene. It's not my favorite record they've done, but it's got a sustained mood that really builds up well over the course of the album and I think reaches it's peak with "Not Perceived."
45. The O'Jays - The Last Word
Eddie Levert and Walter Williams formed The O'Jays in 1958, and it's remarkable that they made an album as potent as The Last Word over 60 years later. The Las Word is largely an update of their '70s Gamble & Huff sound, with righteous and timely songs like "Above The Law" as well as love songs like "Do You Really Know How I Feel." I spent a few minutes shooting TV promo spots with The O'Jays this summer, I didn't want to fan out and tell them how much I dug the new album, but they were hilarious to be around, like a bunch of uncles joking around at a cookout.
46. Marvin Gaye - You're The Man
The story I always took away from Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was that Gaye fought Motown for creative control to make a socially conscious album, and it was a universally loved classic that changed the course of his career. But the truth, as it turns out, is a bit more complicated than that: Gaye made an even more explicitly political follow-up album in 1972, and then decided to shelve You're The Man after the title track did poorly on the singles charts and he didn't feel like Motown would support the album and its message. So it was great to finally get that missing piece of Gaye's discography this year on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
The story I always took away from Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was that Gaye fought Motown for creative control to make a socially conscious album, and it was a universally loved classic that changed the course of his career. But the truth, as it turns out, is a bit more complicated than that: Gaye made an even more explicitly political follow-up album in 1972, and then decided to shelve You're The Man after the title track did poorly on the singles charts and he didn't feel like Motown would support the album and its message. So it was great to finally get that missing piece of Gaye's discography this year on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
47. Prince - Originals
Originals isn't a proper album as the late artist envisioned it like You're The Man -- the second posthumous album released by the executors of Prince's estate was patched together from some of the dozens of demos Prince cut and then decided to give to other artists. But it's a really fascinating little peak into his creative process and a kind of a vision of an alternate history where he had kept all these songs for himself instead of using them to fuel the careers of The Time, Sheila E. and others. 48. Maxo Kream - Brandon Banks
Brandon Banks features Travis Scott and Megan Thee Stallion and really feels like it helps cement that Houston rap is now an entirely different thing than it was in the '90s, although in some ways it does build on the foundation of the previous generations. And it's also a really unusual personal and intimate major label debut album, really felt like Maxo Kream wanted people to understand who he is with this record.
49. Susan Alcorn & Phillip Greenlief - Prism Mirror Lens
Prism Mirror Lens is a collaboration between Baltimore pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and Bay Area reeds player Phillip Greenlief, Alcorn creating a rich and beautiful bed of sound for Greenlief to color with splashes of saxophone and clarinet for 4 long improvisatory pieces, perhaps my favorite recording to date from one of my favorite Baltimore musicians.
50. Norah Jones - Begin Again
Norah Jones has charted a pretty interesting and unpredictable career since that moment in the mid-2000s when she became an unlikely pop phenomenon, a multi-platinum jazz balladeer. Begin Again isn't the biggest departure from her more famous early work, but it feels like another example of her shrugging off stardom and just doing whatever she wants, making a quick and varied little 7-song album in 3 days in the studio and releasing it as is, and it just sounds fantastic, I came back to it at the end of the year more eagerly than I expected to for such a deliberately minor record.
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