After almost 5 years since her last album, Jazmine Sullivan put out two of the best songs of her career, "Lost One" and "Pick Up Your Feelings" and announced the release date for Heaux Tales, and I was pretty much ready for a classic album. Then, the day before it came out, she tweeted that it's an EP and not an album, and I was a little bummed out, but honestly this is a 32-minute concept record tied together with interludes and it's really great front to back, not far behind Love Me Back as my favorite project from her to date. And the blunt, funny, explicitly sexual theme of the lyrics is really a little different for Jazmine Sullivan but it works for her, feels like she's loosening up and putting a little more of her life and personality in to the songs now. Here's the 2021 albums Spotify playlist that I'll put all the albums I listen to this year into. 

It's funny to think that 3 years ago I was rooting for Morgan Wallen as an underdog after his debut single spent almost a year on the country radio charts without becoming a major hit, and now his second album is out and he's just a huge star breaking all sorts of chart records. Releasing a double album helped him break some of those streaming records, although it's so goofy that he put "the double album" in the title -- it was already ludicrously long at 30 songs, and last week they put out a deluxe edition with three bonus tracks. His first album had two whiskey-themed hit singles, so it's a smart move to have both "Me On Whiskey" and "Whiskey'd My Way" on this album. But there's also two choruses about bartenders in a row and "Country A$$ Shit" right next to "Whatcha Think Of Country Now," as if he made Noah's Ark-style double album with two variations on every kind of song he'd have on a regular-sized album. "Silverado For Sale" is probably my favorite so far, even if it's woefully buried on the 27th track of the album, and there's a nice 7/8 groove on "Wonderin' About The Wind." 

Jon Birkholz is a musician from Baltimore that I've been friendly with for a long time -- he plays keyboards in the great long-running hip hop band Soul Cannon, and I also played a show with one of the previous bands where he sang lead, Inca. Despite the very amusing title, America's Got Talons is kind of a dark breakup record with some really interesting proggy arrangements, I think my favorite track is "Octo." 

Sucker's Lunch was one of my favorite albums of 2020, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Madeline Kenney released a few new songs on an EP less than 6 months later. "Wasted Time" is the standout for me, there's so many interesting textures darting in and out of the track, I love Nathan Repasz's drumming on that one and "Superstition," the sound of the EP feels kind of experimental in a really relaxed and self-assured way. 

I have to admit I was really annoyed by Zayn Malik early in his career, when he made a big point of leaving One Direction and hyping up how different his solo music was from the group's and then dropped a big underwhelming debut single and album that both went to #1. But now that Harry Styles is a bigger star by a wide margin and Zayn's last two albums have floundered, debuting at #61 and #44 on the U.S. charts, I see Zayn totally differently, because his music has gotten better after debut. The highs of Nobody Is Listening aren't as high as the 2018 double album Icarus Falls, but it's a lot shorter and more digestible, and "Sweat" and "Tightrope" are particularly good. 

I really enjoyed the recent The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart documentary, and this album is kind of another part of Barry Gibb's organized effort to tend to his and his brothers' legacy. Lots of non-country artists have had tribute albums or collaboration albums with lots of country artists singing their most famous songs, and it works especially well here with people like Little Big Town and Dolly Parton and Keith Urban. The somewhat unexpected highlight is "Rest Your Love On Me," Olivia Newton-John sounds fantastic, and Jay Buchanan does justice to probably my favorite Bee Gees song, "To Love Somebody." The Bee Gees' disco era looms so large over their American profile that it's kind of cool to hear a focus on mostly other songs here, although the the 'Vol. 1' in the title makes me wonder if we'll get an album of R&B artists singing the Bee Gees' '70s stuff, which would be cool. 

Devin Dawson's 2018 debut album Dark Horse was perhaps a bit too aptly titled, because he kinda fell off the mainstream country radar until last year's terrible Hardy collaboration "One Beer" topped the radio charts. But Dawson is a pretty good writer and still has the great producer Jay Joyce in his corner, and his new songs are good, especially "I Got A Truck" and "Not On My Watch." 

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