The 50 Best Albums of 2019: Staff Picks. Alexis Petridis 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. One of the UK’s greatest ever MCs ... Kano. Drawing from personal history — including the death of his older brother, the album's namesake, from a heroin overdose — Saadiq delivers an anguished suite of songs about black struggle and surrender, incarceration and redemption. Below is our updated running tally of the albums most frequently mentioned by individual music publications in their year-end top ten lists. Site also contains reviews, ratings & more. Then: simple piano chords. Harding's lyrics are filled with poetic images that slip away when you try to grasp them — she's spoken about her desire to resist interpretation. By. Those sounds are more than just another layer of Americana cosplay: her obsession with American archetypes, once dismissed as superficial, has matured into an acute understanding of how they are created and frustration at what they conceal. 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. BBT Read the full review. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell! Top 20 Jazz Albums of 2019 Mike Flynn Thursday, November 21, 2019 The ultimate guide to the year's best new jazz albums as voted for by Jazzwise's peerless panel of reviewers – including the complete original Jazzwise reviews. Over metronomic garage-rock, frontman James McGovern sings like a man reading a list of demands out of a high window, but also modulates into sweeping gothic romance. woods rocks references to authors who distilled drama with forceful wordplay (John Steinbeck, J.D. 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. Clockwise from left, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny and Brittany Howard. As with Sleater-Kinney’s album, there was so much noise around Lover that it was hard to parse the record itself on release. WhatsApp. A subtly defiant assertion that Del Rey is here for the long haul, no matter what. They dip into the strangest, sexiest bits of the 70s, with prowling disco on Feet, rollicking glam on Tastes Good With the Money, and electronically, chemically enhanced psychedelic skronk throughout. Pop in 2019 has been all about spontaneity, whether that’s the off-the-cuff language that’s crept into the biggest pop hits or the intensifying feedback loop between pop and TikTok. The Highest Rated Albums of 2019 1. Scroll down for 20 of our favorite punk albums from 2019, as voted on by the Paste staff. American Love Call is full of modern classics, from the falsetto raptures of How Can I Be Sure to the perfect country soul of Long Way Home. 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. —Bobby Carter, ■ MORE: Watch Ari Lennox perform at NPR's Tiny Desk. Ramshackle hip-hop, spoken word, gospel, neo and not-so-neo soul, raunchy funk, spiritual jazz and whatever glorious noise 13th Century Metal is, it’s all given extra heft by Howard’s poignant reflections on love and identity. Thank you for visiting Jazzwise.co.uk To … While Tyler has always been chameleonic, on Igor his restlessness feels like a conscious choice for the first time, not just the jittering impatience of a young star looking to explore new sounds. hide caption, This stunningly beautiful, trance-inducing album record draws heavily on traditional Irish folk music, but with a deep dark Dublin twist. But the sheer zest for life in these bombastic, ultra-quotable self-empowerment tracks – as well as the pure-pop hooks – gives them intensity even on record. — that matter, magnified magnificently. Ariana Grande, Thank U, Next 2. If that's true, Shaw has arrived, speaking loud and clear. With ambition and intent that should shame many of their peers, These New Puritans have crafted another suite of post-punk symphonies. It's a beautiful and potent mix, one Mering deftly subverts with hints of madness. The 50 Best Albums of 2019. 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. When drummer Janet Weiss quit Sleater-Kinney prior to the release of their ninth studio album, it cast an unfair pallor on a record mired in suspicion, every new dazzling synth or poppy refrain regarded as the possible straw that broke the camel’s back. It turns a broken circle into an open road. Without resembling anything so cliched as a “getting it together in the country” record, her fifth solo album runs on that solitary, spartan existence: sad and lovely piano-led songwriting unfolds in its own unruffled time, but then a post-punk scribble like Mother’s Mother’s Magazines upsets Le Bon’s calm, like a momentary wigout at her dislocation from society. The Best Rock Albums of 2019. Look for his name in larger fonts in the future. If you read the fine print under our list of high-scoring albums above, you noticed that reissues, compilations, live sets, and other album types were excluded from our best-reviewed albums charts (which are intended to include only new full-length studio albums). The slow, meditative sound echoes the album’s themes of acceptance; relative calm after the angry, anguished Skeleton Tree. As her discography has grown, her imagery has evolved: less shorthand, more self-reference. All that inscrutability could be off-putting, but Designer is the kind of art that rewards questioning. 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. BBT Read the full review. Alabama Shakes hardly cleaved to one genre, but frontwoman Brittany Howard shows just how astonishingly broad and instinctive her talent is here. By Pitchfor k. The Chorus of #MeToo, and the Women Who Turned Trauma Into Songs. The best albums of 2019 From Solange to Burial and everything in between, this is the music we loved this year. The following is a list of music albums, EPs, and mixtapes released in 2019. 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." Rough Trade This is a list of the albums ranked number one in the United States during 2019. 0:00 Kitty Empire Read the full review. Whether it's conceit or confidence, Burna Boy deserves to brag. 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. Too many artists stick unnecessary interludes between album tracks this year; Kiwanuka is a rare exception, a properly immersive album that offers space for reflection between Michael Kiwanuka’s close considerations of where hope might live among love, immigration and civil rights. View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band. She's been around the world, professionally and personally, but there's a special kind of power in being at home with yourself. Nevertheless, human decency still feels close at hand – not least from the man singing. 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. 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. These are the Best Records of 2019. —Rodney Carmichael, ■ MORE: 'Still Tippin': Solange At Home In Houston'. The title track stops and starts as if looking over its shoulder to see if you're still there. A list of the top albums of the year from NME. It makes Legacy! Though it used sounds and textures familiar from the 80s, Remind Me Tomorrow didn’t sound like an 80s record. From the knotted bass punto guajiro on "Yo Le Llego" to the rock en español "Un Peso" with Enanitos Verdes' Marciano Cantero to the two taking a backseat to Afrobeats rising star Mr. Eazi on the closer "Como Un Bebé," OASIS stretches across the spectrum of where urbano has been and where it's going. 2019 Blues Albums As the world of mainstream popular music grows more and more focused on technology and its latest trends, the blues gains a new kind of respect among those too young to recall the genre’s early days. Jack Barnett’s vocals, conversational yet epic, add their own particular drama. Lover paints in complex emotional shades and finds an artist known for her strict adherence to her brand trying lots of new things, from the girl-groupy Paper Rings to Mazzy Star-style reveries on the title track. The GQ staff rounds up the best albums of 2019, including appearances from Vampire Weekend, Lana Del Rey, DaBaby, and more. 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. But the original intent is that of a temperance song, and that's how Lankum approach it, with a sustained heaviness to match the story's consequence and building sense of regret. Death-metal, hardcore, grindcore, goth and industrial insurgents stakes their claim to the respective thrones. Yet following her own perspective, Howard turns confession on its head. The talk that's surrounded it has focused on Herndon's co-creation of an AI that became part of an ensemble she worked with to make the record. BBT Read the full review. Producers Danger Mouse and Inflo make his retro soul sharp enough to strike a match on, giving it an edge to match Brittany Howard’s equally expansive Jaime (see No 32 below). III by Kalax Enjoy all the best synthwave music of 2019 in Iron Skullet’s Synthwave / Retro Electro playlist on Spotify. 7th June 2019. It features a song from every record. Listen to our Best Indie Rock Albums of 2019 playlist on Spotify right here. How do we make sense of our relationships with our bodies or the planet — and how do those relationships impact each other? And while its musicality and artfulness are outstanding, the album spans party anthems and themes of love, history and political activism too. The UK Albums Chart is one of many music charts compiled by the Official Charts Company that calculates the best-selling albums of the week in the United Kingdom. BBT Read the full review. —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. 12/10/2019. LS Read the full review. If 2018 was the year of endless R&B releases, 2019 was definitely the year of anticipation for more intriguing R&B LPs to drop. Charli XCX’s long-awaited third album proper firmly puts to bed asinine questions about whether she is a mainstream pop star or a left-field one: here is someone not just punching above their weight but operating in an entirely different cosmos, unconcerned about putting goofy nostalgia (1999) next to deeply queer bass workouts (Click), trance-tinged, cocksure flexes (Next Level Charli) alongside cage-rattling anxiety anthems (Gone). The sound of drones play a central role in the overall tone of The Livelong Day. These are songs that draw the ear into their slow rhythms, only to disrupt and rearrange themselves; that build melodies like vines growing, turning and knotting into loops, getting tangled as they move toward sun. Cate Le Bon wrote Reward during a year spent living in the Lake District and learning how to make furniture. On "Speak Gently," heavy fuzz guitar suddenly disintegrates as if Thanos had snapped his fingers; it's disarming, haunting. LS Read the full review. After Clairo’s lo-fi, bedroom-pop hit Pretty Girl went viral, there was the risk that her ascent to pop proper would obliterate the intimacy that made her appeal in the first place. Ben Beaumont-Thomas Read the full review. BBT Read the full review. The point is that the best music you’ve ever heard can come from anywhere, and this year, it came from just about everywhere. More bests and worsts . 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. Reading Time: 17min read 0. The 30 Best R&B Albums of 2019. by Rated R&B. Michael Hann Read the full review. Things I Imagined Ten albums that take listeners to unexpected places while providing a timeless reminder that the boldest creative expression sounds like freedom. By Pitchfor k. The 20 Best Music Videos of 2019. But it's also untidy, uneasy, irresolvable. —Jewly Hight, ■ MORE: Jewly Hight reviews Songs Of Our Native Daughters, Ari Lennox declared her intentions for her debut album right from the title. BBT Read the full review. Dec 10, 2019 Getty. 15. 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! The data is compiled by Nielsen SoundScan based on each album's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as on-demand streaming and digital sales of … It's a beautiful world, but we are not okay. It’s certainly the first record by the Norwegian artist that you could put on as background music, give or take some striking spoken-word sections. New ground … Carrie Brownstein, left, and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney. Awards season has begun and we've already seen Shea Butter Baby obviously snubbed by the Soul Train Awards and the Grammys. By Olivia Ovenden. Norman F****** Rockwell! BBT Read the full review. Best of 2019. 2019 was a great year for rock, metal, alternative, indie, and everything in between. feel less like a history lesson and more like a glimpse into a beloved photo album. The title, the new age font, the tie-dye colours of the album artwork – they all indicate that Hot Chip are getting in on the very 2019 taste for rave culture. The Brooklyn band’s second album of the year is earthier than UFOF, the glowing collection that arrived in spring. The first solo album by Alabama Shakes front woman Brittany Howard inspires such heady thoughts. Legacy! As slow and stately as a tanker turning, and as waterlogged as its title implies, Titanic Rising was a curio in 2019. The orchestra's 100 or so musicians and a chorus of singers weave a beatless, beatific drone that draws inspiration from the deceptive monotony of our planet's deserts, where time only appears to stand still. Top 20 Jazz Albums of 2019 Mike Flynn Thursday, November 21, 2019 The ultimate guide to the year's best new jazz albums as voted for by Jazzwise's peerless panel of reviewers – including the complete original Jazzwise reviews. The freestyle flows. Every one of the album's 19 tracks is a gem and features his signature Afro-fusion genre blend of dancehall, reggae, R&B and hip-hop. 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. by VICE Staff They got psychedelic, locked into heavy funk, slid into classic R&B and then cleared space for Howard to be lonely, like the blues chanteuse she also can be. 5. The album progresses from crushing digi-dub ('Elephant' and 'The Lower The Middle Our Bit') into heavier more industrial zones, arguably reaching its peak with 'Talk Whiff', a track featuring Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods. Ammar Kalia Read the full review. Long may it last. Then, Solange messed around and made the hardest Screw tape of the decade in the form of an R&B album: The woozy BPMs. Music is filled with no shortage of characters proclaiming how “mad, me” they are, so it’s rare and delightful to come across a genuine oddball. —Marissa Lorusso, It's said that comedy is tragedy plus time, but what if the tragedy never ends? This video is a look at the best this year had to offer. LS Read the full review. Her classic band arrangements chime with festivity even as Lewis reveals her darkest experiences: the devastating Little White Dove is set at the deathbed of her estranged mother, who battled heroin addiction throughout Lewis’s life. "I am an AFRICAN GIANT," he blasted on Instagram after Coachella displayed his name on a festival poster with what he considered a too-small font. Remind Me Tomorrow is an album of introspection and honesty that never feels navel-gazing. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radi Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada create crushing, apocalyptic, layered drones using Uilleann pipes, harmonium, fiddle, voice and more. Copied to clipboard. 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. Across 40 minutes, IGOR draws, erases and redraws emotional lines in the sand, smudging up Tyler's self-esteem with each new boundary crossed. But it’s a disarming invitation to Hval’s most intimate work yet, one where she and her collaborators contemplate the purpose of existence and art in imagery that’s no less evocative for its surrealism.