Our pick of the year’s finest albums brings American dreaming, teenage dynamism, heartbreak, barbed rap, impetuous indie and beautiful soundscapes, First published on Tue 3 Dec 2019 06.00 GMT. That this album-length collaboration by two of urbano's most visible artists covered as much genre territory as it did prompted another examination of its often relegated place within "Latin" music, whatever that is. But, urged on by Giddens, they shaped a song cycle aimed at reversing the erasure of black women from American historical narratives, at zeroing in on the dehumanizing suffering black women faced under slavery, their strategies of survival and resistance, their sharp, sly critiques of oppressive systems, their creativity. This list was made by writers, editors and producers at NPR Music operating under two rules: Albums had to be released during 2019 and no lead artist was allowed to appear on both this list and our list of the 25 Best Songs of 2019. Like Sons of Kemet’s Your Queen Is a Reptile, each track on poet/activist/songwriter Jamila Woods’s second album is named for a pivotal artist of colour, whose legacies she explores as models of how to live life to the fullest. —Otis Hart, ■ MORE: John Luther Adams on All Things Considered, And then, out of thin air, an impossibly polished, balanced and restrained piece of work from a faceless trio — we think it's a trio, at least — quietly slipped into the world. Jimmy Lee, Saadiq's first studio release in eight years,has all of those musical trademarks in place. Scroll down for 20 of our favorite punk albums from 2019, as voted on by the Paste staff. Singing of her deep ambivalence about love and identity, Tamko ultimately settled on the only album title that could sum up the full measure of her sleek, soulful shape-shifting: Vagabon. The Best Albums of 2019 By Jem Aswad, Andrew Barker, Chris Willman. View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band. By blending the trudging splendour of slowcore with country melodies and the kind of genuinely oddball artistry that doesn’t second guess or try to make things fit, (Sandy) Alex G remains one of America’s most underrated songwriters. This album is a radical act of self-claiming, one that does more than reintroduce a great 21st Century voice. Lanre Bakare Read the full review. Though fundamental African rhythms are clearly defined, the album's dance-infused pop sensibility makes it a crossover success. This album, Olsen's fourth, runs screaming from her quiet side, with songs propelled by string arrangements that, along with her dramatic vocal performance, enhance the lyricism of some of Olsen's most energetic songs. But peel away the gaudy rollout, two misrepresentative lead singles and the baggage surrounding its creator and you’re left with an endearing, adventurous old-school pop album. It’s both stupefying and incredibly obvious that When We All... 3. As buzz bands go, Black Midi is a weird one, a jagged mulch of math rock, Beefheart restlessness and the 90s Chicago school of alt-jazz, full of the declamatory vocals of Geordie Greep (whose voice you couldn’t make up if you tried). Until this year, rapper Dave was a singles artist – he managed 11 before his debut album was released – but Black marked a sea change: serious, reflective and grown-up. From the return of Sunn O))) to Blood Incantation’s death-metal space odysseys to anarcha-feminists Ragana, these are the metal records we loved this year. When I Get Home Whether’s it’s Robin Trower’s blazing… But nobody perfected the approach like Ariana Grande, whose second album in six months (following 2018’s Sweetener) vibrates with immediacy. With callbacks crisscrossing place and time, her music is now made of her own sepia-toned mythology. Sinking her fingers into the dirt of her own life story as a black biracial queer woman born in the Deep South, now living far West of that beloved, problematic home, Howard wrote a set of songs that invoke Moten's image of the groove as a broken circle. It's a beautiful and potent mix, one Mering deftly subverts with hints of madness. This isn't love in the strictly romantic sense — nor is it strictly platonic, or familial, or sexual. NME's 50 Best Albums of 2019. 1:59 While Hungry Child puts an offbeat spin on the sounds you might have heard pulsing from a motorway underpass 30 years ago, the vibe on A Bath Full of Ecstasy is less about revisiting the hedonism of some lost youth than its tender idealism, creating a bright, tender, often ballady idyll in a wretched age. 10. BEST ALBUM SEKAI NO OWARI 2010-2019 2021.2.10[WED] Release. The first solo album by Alabama Shakes front woman Brittany Howard inspires such heady thoughts. The starkness of those first chords of "I Told You Everything" offer a reprieve; a chance to gather yourself, to take one last breath before dunking deep beneath the surface. It's no surprise that Burna Boy received his first Grammy nomination for this album. Consider, then, a side-by-side accounting for a certain pop star who came into full flower over the course of the decade: In 2011, Lana Del Rey's mere presence was viewed by some as an affront to the ideal of authenticity; in 2019, few albums achieved the critical consensus that greeted Norman F****** Rockwell! Note: You can listen to a Spotify playlist of songs from these albums below. The album’s slick production, beautiful songwriting, and high level of consistency make it an easy choice for the best synthwave album of 2019. ", Those words, spoken by Angel Olsen during a conversation we had just after All Mirrors was released this fall, summed up my sentiments too. Specificity is the marker of killer pop (the matches in Pet Shop Boys’ So Hard, the shoelaces in Robyn’s Be Mine), a trope that the LA trio Muna wield to intense effect on their second album of gothic synthpop. An absentee father, a sibling in prison (his brother Christopher is serving a life sentence for his involvement in the killing of Sofyen Belamouadden), a burgeoning, pressurised music career – it all gets mixed into an urban opera that plays out intensely, and internally. But the moniker didn't stick. The latter is an album-length self-excavation that crawls through moldy memories in a brutal poetry that is at times darkly funny but mostly wrestles with personal and societal truths that'll leave you touched, shook. —Bobby Carter, ■ MORE: Watch Ari Lennox perform at NPR's Tiny Desk. It's a beautiful world, but we are not okay. How do we care for each other? From the exuberant, endlessly intricate West African polyrhythms of "I Own The Night" to the Afro-Latinx groove of "The Shared Stories of Rivals" to the metallic, Afrofuturist clang of "Prophesy," this project is both firmly rooted in the past and a vision of a dynamic, powerful future. Like Caroline Polachek, Hannah Diamond and so many others this year, Amber Bain uses super-synthetic electropop and soft rock to say much rougher, grittier truths. 4. A list of the top albums of the year from NME. —Nate Chinen, WBGO, Bad Bunny and J Balvin have both taken up the charge to make urbano a worldwide project without sacrificing the hunger that has made the genre seem abrasive and vulgar to some in their industry. LS Read the full review. Hval and her collaborators conjure Georgia O'Keefe, ponder childlessness and search for God. Remind Me Tomorrow was a grown-up record that didn’t sound jaded. The best work yet from the London rapper – she was already one of the most technically accomplished MCs in the country, but broadens and popularises her craft here with affecting song forms. Even with a supporting chorus of Kanye West, Lil Uzi Vert, La Roux, Solange and more, the true magic of this album is Tyler's ability to let his guard down just enough to give you symphonic slivers of his heartbreak. Monday, Dec. 9: Best Albums of 2019: #100 – 81 Tuesday, Dec. 10: Best Albums of 2019: #80 – 61 Wednesday, Dec. 11: Best Albums of 2019: #60 – 41 Thursday, Dec. 12: Best Albums of 2019: #40 – 21 Friday, Dec. 13: Best Albums of 2019: #20 – 1. By Pitchfor k. The 100 Best Songs of 2019. Sam Richards. This is the first album since 2010's Refuse; Start Fires and sees Mick Harris returning to his sonically contemptuous, imperious, snide, scornful best. 3. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Spotify Two of the biggest rock bands in the world released their first new albums in a decade and more. The strongest tracks, though, are when he slinks softly around guests Travis Scott and RosalÍa. Good: Check out our picks for the Best Movies of 2019 and the Best TV Shows of 2019. LS Read the full review. The D.C. native sings about universally recognizable ebbs and flows of life on songs like "Broke," "BMO" and "Speak To Me," which are sprinkled with euphemisms that will hit women of color first. Like that opening track warns, she tells you everything. Like its namesake, Become Desert feels infinite, stretching out in every direction at once; even after 40 celestial minutes, its ending arrives unexpectedly, lest we forget that sand always runs out. Wistful, resigned and cutting, it's a fitting swan song for the decade. Best Jazz of 2019 Brilliance accommodates any form — and, as these albums show, sometimes lightning lands in a bottle. John Luther Adams' follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean is brought to life here by the Seattle Symphony and its conductor emeritus Ludovic Morlot in grand-scale minimalist fashion. —Ruth Saxelby, ■ MORE: All Songs Considered interviews Holly Herndon, Burna Boy has been a superstar of Nigerian music for years. To realize her songs' deceptively plainspoken complexity, Howard and producer Shawn Everett brought together jazz disruptors Nate Smith on drums and Robert Glasper on keys, alongside her old bandmate and musical anchor, bassist Zac Cockrell. Yet the darkness of their first three albums is never far from the door, antisemitism and apocalypse snapping a little harder at the heels of a new father and husband who’s realised how much more he has to lose. Over the course of 2019, we featured more than 100 new releases on our airwaves. billy woods released two great albums in 2019: the jagged Terror Management and Hiding Places, a collaboration with L.A. producer Kenny Segal. Spotify Logo With St Vincent as producer, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker break new ground as songwriters – high camp on Bad Dance, trading intimacy and vaulting catharsis on The Dog/The Body – while mining affectingly desperate and ugly emotional depths. Play (With her flexible but utterly distinctive voice, she sometimes reminds me of Cat Stevens, if you never had a single clue what Cat Stevens' songs were about.) —J. —Sidney Madden, ■ MORE: Watch Tyler Perform At NPR's Tiny Desk, In spite of the reverence shown for country music made in the 1970s and the groundswell of nostalgia for '90s country, Tanya Tucker — an artist whose high-caliber hits spanned both eras — has been perpetually underappreciated. Since 2004 the chart has been based on the sales of both physical albums and digital downloads. Because Sharon Van Etten has no time for superficiality. Allison Moorer - Blood. They tell stories of desire with names like "Stay High," unorthodox faith through declarations like "He Loves Me" and family history by facing painful memories (in "Goat Head," the stench of racism permeates). Awards season has begun and we've already seen Shea Butter Baby obviously snubbed by the Soul Train Awards and the Grammys. On "Speak Gently," heavy fuzz guitar suddenly disintegrates as if Thanos had snapped his fingers; it's disarming, haunting. sharpens the singular vision that's always animated Lana Del Rey's body of work. To see each voter’s ballot, skip ahead to page 6 of this feature. This is a strutting, utterly badass glam rock record, shot through with a gimlet-eyed outlaw nihilism – and comes with its own accompanying Kurosawa-inspired anime. —Lars Gotrich, ■ MORE: billy woods is the rapper of 2019, Lankum, The Livelong Day Releasing a debut solo album at 66 is impressive enough; that it’s one of the most skilful records of an already iconic career is even more so. They colored a universe. LS Read the full review. It was alive with possibility. Across 40 minutes, IGOR draws, erases and redraws emotional lines in the sand, smudging up Tyler's self-esteem with each new boundary crossed. Since 2015, the album chart has been based on both sales and streaming. But Morgan Simpson’s astonishingly tight drumming keeps them painting within the lines, even when they’re making the most abstract daubs. Congleton told me that after they first made a solo acoustic version of the album (a version you may get a chance to hear in 2020), they worked to expand its scope, aiming for "early period Scott Walker" as an inspiration, "where it's fantastic songs, with really cool arrangements and you're hearing something totally new." Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! The best albums of 2019 (so far!) Instead, as the title promises, the album depicts intimacy as a process: a series of trials and metaphors that draw us closer to each other. You can find the rest of our picks for the best music of 2019 here. Much as Kacey Musgraves broke open country songwriting in 2018 with the love-bombing body high of Golden Hour, Sturgill Simpson casts himself as the genre’s outlier in 2019. There’s potential in classicism yet ... King Princess. IGOR, the fifth studio album from Tyler, The Creator, mourns a love that was never granted permission to flourish in the first place. —Raina Douris, World Cafe, ■ MORE: Watch Sharon Van Etten perform at NPR's Tiny Desk, No music I heard this year convinced me I could hear my own cells dividing like Designer, Aldous Harding's approachable, enigmatic third album. The repetitive phrasing. Jack Barnett’s vocals, conversational yet epic, add their own particular drama. December 13, 2019 If you’ve come here looking for some kind of overarching throughline in these 100 records, I’ll tell you right now: you can forget it. What about the heart?" A clutch of blue-chip guests (like Nels Cline and Marc Ribot on guitars, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone and Esperanza Spalding on spoken word) bring personality as well as fire. Nevertheless, human decency still feels close at hand – not least from the man singing. Working with two core partners, turntablist Val Jeanty and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Davis devises a new strain of avant-garde chamber-jazz, volatile yet gleaming. By NME. From the album's compact spaces to its expansive vistas, Shaw excels in the evocative power of the pluck – formally termed, pizzicato – which is the backbone of the ricocheting yet songful Limestone & Felt. Spotify Slowthai wryly evokes the forgotten parts of the country through snapshots of working-class life: tea and biscuits, hiding drugs, fallouts with a stepfather, EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell. The opening track, "The Wild Rover," goes back at least to the 16th century and is often thought to be a drinking song, one you might raise your glass to at a pub, singing, "No, nay, never no more / Will I play the wild rover / No, never no more." Albums and box sets released between Nov. 10, 2018 and Nov. 9, 2019 were eligible. The production, aided by George Daniel of the 1975, is like dense layers of fluttering gauze, annotated with fine detailing; floating through it all is Bain’s breakup pain. BBT Read the full review. Reading Time: 17min read 0. December 19, 2019 2019! This video is a look at the best this year had to offer. Jem Aswad’s 10 Best Albums. It features a song from every record. LS Read the full review. Listen to our Best Punk Albums of 2019 playlist on Spotify right here . The 50 Best Albums of 2019 So Far Including Lizzo, Vampire Weekend, Billie Eilish, Tyler the Creator and more. The Best Albums of 2019 This year should be remembered as a bridge between music’s past and future. And from album opener Psycho onwards, where he’s positioned as a patient telling all to a therapist, we meet a rapper as agitated as he is angry. 2019’s not been great – in fact, things haven’t been great for a while – and Richard Dawson’s album suggests it’s not going to get any better in 2020. Southern Sky, Bad Man, SugarHouse and plenty more make this a future cult classic. 7th June 2019. Lewis fully leans in to her best west coast troubadour mode on her fourth solo album, spinning endlessly captivating yarns of estranged lovers and lost hopes. Lankum - The Livelong Day. Next Page The Best 50 Albums of 2019 (so far): 40-31. 2019 was a great year for rock, metal, alternative, indie, and everything in between. —Marissa Lorusso, It's said that comedy is tragedy plus time, but what if the tragedy never ends? All scores on this page are from December 19, 2019. It's a cleverly-worded plea for social justice set to a masterful pastiche of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. But its status in the band’s catalogue is beyond reproach. She pulls you under with her. A transformative year for music brings bold new voices and a breaking of genre boundaries. With guest artists including musician/poet/rapper/actor Saul Williams, Ancestral Recall is an intense, keenly felt and richly articulated celebration of many of the musical streams that have nourished generations of the African, Native and Caribbean diasporas — a sonically and texturally spacious project that would feel urgent and necessary at almost any time, but asserts itself especially now. Illustration by Drew Litowitz. The 30 Best R&B Albums of 2019. by Rated R&B. As slow and stately as a tanker turning, and as waterlogged as its title implies, Titanic Rising was a curio in 2019. Death-metal, hardcore, grindcore, goth and industrial insurgents stakes their claim to the respective thrones.