1. Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia
When Dua Lipa released her self-titled debut (my 55th favorite album of the 2010s), I felt like one of the only people in America who was really paying attention, and even after "New Rules" blew up, I kind of feared she'd end up a one hit wonder in the states and that people didn't appreciate how good the album was. For some reason, the modern U.S. pop zeitgeist mainly prefers uptempo Europop from American artists, and prefers more earnest U.K. artists who specialize in sad songs and ballads (Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, etc.). But I'm happy to be proven wrong, and it really feels like "Don't Stop Now" turned a corner for Dua Lipa and solidified her place in American pop in a way that, say, Ellie Goulding never quite achieved. And it's justified, this album is even better than her debut. If anything ties this album together, it's that almost every song has a big, juicy bassline at the center of the track, and I think "Pretty Please" is my favorite so far. Here's my big 2020 albums Spotify playlist that I put everything I listen to into.

2. Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake (Deluxe): LUV vs. The World 2
I'm really glad that Uzi finally got to release an album and it made a big impact, I was really starting to wonder if that label conflict was going to really derail his career in his prime. And I dig that he really seemed to dig his heels in and fill the album will some really agressive, relentless songs like "Baby Pluto" and "Homecoming," really feels like he wanted to separate himself from the Soundcloud pack a little before he got to the more melodic stuff in the back half of the album that he also does really well. I really didn't need "P2," though, "XO Tour Llif3" is his masterpiece and it feels kind of lazy to do such a deliberate sequel to it. It's pretty annoying the way Uzi got so much music leaked in the last couple years and when he dropped the album people ungratefully complained that the leaks weren't on it, but he made the best of it and released a deluxe edition a week later with a whole bonus album of leaked songs that is in some ways more accessible and crowd-pleasing than the proper album.

3. Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather
I think my wife always kind of rolled her eyes at my affection for One Direction and the members' solo careers, but "Nice To Meet Ya" won her over to the Niall side and now she's kind of partisan and objected the last time I put on some Harry Styles. Niall's second album is, like Fine Line, a nice solid step up from the debut, Jen thinks the Hailee Steinfeld breakup did a number on Niall because the title Heartbreak Weather is a pretty apt title for the content of the songs. I don't know if there's a song as unassailably great as "Slow Hands" on here, but I dig a lot of them, particularly "Small Talk."

4. Jadakiss - Ignatius
For a long time, Jadakiss's rep has been as one of the greatest rappers who doesn't have a classic album, the guy who excels in every category except in making albums. And I would say that's a little justified, but not entirely -- Styles P. by far has a better solo catalog, but every Jada album is at least good, and Ignatius is really excellent, probably his best since Kiss of Death. The solo tracks meet the high bar set by "ME," Kiss washes Pusha T, and he sounds right at home on tracks with 2 Chainz and Ty Dolla Sign and Dej Loaf, nothing trying too hard like that OJ Da Juiceman feature back in the day. I don't know who this 'Emanny' guy is who sounds like a Ne-Yo impersonator, though, Kiss should've just gotten another real Ne-Yo hook.

5. Maria McKee - La Vita Nuova
I think Maria McKee's had a really interesting career of near-misses -- her mid-'80s band Lone Justice had a lot of acclaim and co-signs from legends (Bob Dylan and Tom Petty wrote songs for them), but they were kind of alt-country a decade before it became a marketing term, and they never translated the buzz to record sales. McKee's solo single on the Days of Thunder soundtrack was a major hit pretty much everywhere in the English-speaking world except America, and not enough people realize that her "If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags)" was the only original song in Pulp Fiction -- I always thought it should've been nominated for an Oscar. So you might not have heard of her, but if not you should, she's a great singer and great songwriter. Her 8th solo album La Vita Nuova is her first in over a decade, and it feels like she's developed this really interesting writing style that's different from her earlier work -- some songs will have these incredibly verbose and overstuffed verses where she sings things like "Your kinetic architecture is evolving like a science before my eyes/ and this geometry which haunts him so perplexes me, and that lack of stillness which I find so mesmerizing" very quickly at the top of her vocal range, some of it reminds me a bit of Joni Mitchell.

6. Jay Electronica - A Written Testimony
Obviously "Exhibit C" was hot and Jay Electronica is talented, but I've always found the legend that grew largely out of his lack of musical output to be kind of over-the-top, and jeez, he just has an all-time awful rap name. The longer he waited to make an album, the more of a joke it became, and this album, good as it is, feels kind of silly for including a 9-year-old song and an unbilled Jay-Z on nearly every track. It's a solid album, though, "Ghost of Soulja Slim" is a great song. I always wondered if he'd cave and make Kendrick-style (or, worse, Lupe-style) commercial concessions when it was album time, but this mostly feels like he just made the record he wanted to make, although that makes the perfunctory Travis Scott hook feel even more unnecessary. Jay Electronica mostly holds his own next to Jay-Z, which is no small feat even in 2020. But it occasionally becomes hard to ignore that I just like Jay-Z a lot more as a rapper, he's a much more lucid and visceral writer next to Jay E's fussy wordplay, and Hov on "A.P.I.D.T.A." is by far the most memorable part of the whole record for me.

7. Pearl Jam - Gigaton
Lately I've thought about how Pearl Jam was the first band I was obsessed with, the first band whose new albums I'd eagerly anticipate and try to hear as soon as possible. In 1993, I called the closest CD store and asked them if they had the new Pearl Jam album, had my mom drive me there, and found that all they had were copies of Ten (mind you, Vs. became the fastest selling album of all time that week, so I'm still annoyed about this). So it was fun to just go and stream Gigaton at midnight on the release date last week, even if my musical world doesn't revolve around Pearl Jam anymore. "Dance Of The Clairvoyants" had me hoping for a little more of that experimental spirit of the band trying not to sound like Pearl Jam that animated some of their best albums, but it's an outlier in an otherwise pretty traditional album in the mold of their records since Riot Act. I suspect the band lost a little something when Eddie Vedder got more confident at writing solo and stopped relying on the genius riff factory that is Stone Gossard. Gigaton is growing on me, though, I'm looking forward to hearing "Quick Escape" and "Buckle Up" live whenever they reschedule the tour.

8. Megan Thee Stallion - Suga EP
I feel like people have gotten kind of neurotic about Megan Thee Stallion's career, which has risen pretty quickly over the past year, as if she's some kind of loser on the verge of losing it all because she hasn't had the kind of extremely rare and swift elevator-to-the-penthouse ascent that Cardi B had. In any event, it doesn't help that she spent the last 6 months talking up her debut album and ostensibly promoting Suga as the album, only to move the goalposts at the last minute and release a 24-minute EP and promise the full-length is still on the way. This is a solid record, though, if they had thrown on a few more tracks with big-name features that they're probably holding back now it'd be a worthy debut album -- she adapts to tracks by people like Timbaland and The Neptunes and Ariana Grande's right hand man Tommy Brown better than I expected but it doesn't feel like it's trying too hard for a crossover sound.

9. Caitlyn Smith - Supernova
Caitlyn Smith wrote singles for Meghan Trainor and a few country stars before transitioning to being a recording artist in her own right, and I'm really enjoying her second album. She's got a really lovely, expressive voice and "Put Me Back Together" and "I Can't" are fantastic tracks, would love to see her land a hit and get more recognition for this album.

10. Brian Fallon - Local Honey
Brian Fallon's more gentle acoutic stuff outside The Gaslight Anthem has always been solid but has never stuck with me as much as the band's albums. Local Honey just grabbed me right from the first song "When You're Ready" however, just a really lovely and moving song from a father to their child, I've definitely teared up listening to that song while my 4-year-old is playing with crayons in his pajamas.

The Worst Album of the Month: Childish Gambino - 3.15.20
The weird, circuitous route Donald Glover has taken to releasing the latest (supposedly last) Childish Gambino album might be due to him juggling so many film and TV projects aside from his music career, or maybe he's just trying to do something different and disruptive. Either way, it's been a convoluted 2-year journey: viral video and giant #1 single in 2018, followed by a couple more songs and an arena tour, then a musical film co-starring Rihanna featuring more songs, a final string of concerts, and then silence and an increased presumption that the album might just never come out. And then, he launched a website that streamed the album for a few hours, and then it came out officially a week later, with blank cover art and mostly generic time stamp song titles like "12.38" and "19.10" -- not to mention in the middle of an escalating national crisis. In a way, this slow confusing rollout just served to sap any enthusiasm or attention away from an album that would've been a huge deal if it came out on the heels of "This Is America" -- which is fine with me because I thought "This Is America" was a stupid song. But I have to wonder if he was passive-aggressively burying this album on purpose, because it really does just feel like a bunch of ideas listlessly thrown at a wall, from the weird poorly recorded Ariana Grande guest vocals to the Playboi Carti impression. Glover's gift for mimicry serves him well as an actor and comedian, but as a musician, he's always just seemed painfully derivative to me, it's always so transparent what he just listened to. And even something kind of unique like "35.31" I just find borderline unlistenable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 01, 2020 at 12:45 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.