Music Bummys: Best Songs of 2019

Top Twenty

20. Sunday Service Choir, “Lift Up Your Voices”: This whole album was brilliant, full of refreshingly pure and pared-down gospel music, but this is the choir’s crowning achievement, the chorus gradually rising and falling from ecstasy into bliss.

19. Vampire Weekend, “This Life”: The two Vampire Weekend songs on this list were probably my most-listened-to of the year, and “This Life,” a song about getting through suffering and doubt with the backdrop of the sunniest instrumentation you could imagine, was a big escape for me all 2019 and into 2020.

18. Ariana Grande, “NASA”: I think I dismissed this song on first listen, because she spells out “N-A-S-A,” and superficially that seemed silly to me, but this is a perfectly crafted little amuse-bouche of a song.

17. Big Thief, “Not”: Frontwoman Adrianne Lenker and her bandmates make music that often seems to exist on another plane, but this song about remaining present in the here and now is the most alive they’ve ever sounded.

16. Billie Eilish, “bad guy”: Eilish is less of a provocateur than the jittery villainy of her most famous song made her appear to be, but it nevertheless made her instantly iconic.

15. Joan Shelley, “Teal”: Shelley may never get the recognition she deserves, but according to “Teal,” all she needs are “fresh air, and wind, and waves,” and maybe that’s enough for me too.

14. Billie Eilish, “everything i wanted”: I love “bad guy,” but if you want to hear something closer to Eilish’s true capacity, “everything i wanted,” while closer to sounding like a more straightforward pop song, is the one.

13. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Bright Horses”: Cave’s incredible two-album cycle processing grief and the loss of his son is best represented by this ode to the impossibility and necessity of hope.

12. Brittany Howard, “Stay High”: Jaime didn’t quite work for me as a full album, but this highlight makes me so happy every time I hear it.

11. Taylor Swift, “Soon You’ll Get Better (feat. The Chicks)”: This isn’t the first Taylor Swift song to make me cry, but it’s probably the one I’ve cried during the most.

10. Lana Del Rey, “F*ck it I love you”: If there’s any song that more succinctly sums up Del Rey’s appeal, I haven’t heard it. She’s an avatar for millennial malaise, high expectations with mild disappointment leading to self-medication in one way or another more often than not in her songs. In this one, she reaches for clichés (“California dreamin’, got money on my mind”) but ends up forsaking them for something ostensibly more meaningful in her lover, but succumbing to meaninglessness anyway.

9. John Moreland, “East October”: Trying to survive in a cruel world necessitates either hope or despair, and John Moreland’s music exists at the intersection between the two. This song leans into the despair of getting by as a sober person, without anything to ease the pain. But Moreland understands that the act of living is inherently connected to the spiritual, and the pain in this song is cut with the knowledge that there is a way, even if its somewhere above his understanding.

8. Taylor Swift, “Cornelia Street [Live from Paris]”: This is cheating a bit; this version of the song wasn’t released till May of this year, though the performance is from September 2019, so I’m counting it as a 2019 song. The original “Cornelia Street,” combining the fear of losing a good thing with an incredible sense of place within her memories, is pop perfection. But this version features Swift on acoustic guitar, and it’s an incredible example of the connection she can foster with her audience when she strips her songs down and lets her songwriting take center stage.

7. Dua Lipa, “Don’t Start Now”: Lipa broke the Best New Artist curse with this song. It should have been hard to replicate her early success, the propulsive pop anthems of “IDGAF” and “New Rules” matching any hit from the last ten years for addictiveness, but Future Nostalgia‘s first single has been the best of the bunch. Those first hits were precocious, rising above her status as a newcomer; “Don’t Start Now” solidifies her as a contender for one of the queens of pop.

6. Vampire Weekend, “Harmony Hall”: If you listen to Ezra Koenig tell it, this song is intensely political, carrying loaded themes of power and oppression. I believe him, but like many songs that reach for higher meaning, it needs to work on a visceral level as well, and “Harmony Hall” was probably the biggest balm for me of 2019. Sometimes I’d listen to it on repeat after a hard day and just be comforted by the acoustic guitar lick that forms the song’s backbone and by the plinking piano that gives it flavor, while repeating the refrain of “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t know why,” somehow finding in the paradox a salve.

5. Sharon Van Etten, “Seventeen”: Van Etten has always been one of a kind at painting her songs like the landscape of her inner mind, but she outdoes herself on this single from Remind Me Tomorrow. If her forte before this album was introspection, she takes a detour into retrospection for a song, diving into the freedom she felt as a teenager in New York City. I’ve never lived in New York City, but “Seventeen” perfectly captures for me the feeling at the titular age of having the world at your fingertips without any understanding of what time can do to you. It also sums up what seeing people that age now feels like, that they are somehow your “shadow.” Maybe it’s just a product of being in my thirties that songs like this, about the profundity of time passing, resonate with me. Or maybe it’s just a great song.

4. Taylor Swift, “Lover”: Swift has written a lot of songs about love, but she hasn’t written a lot of love songs, and there’s been a special dearth of them since 2012’s Red. Most of her songs about love look into the past at relationships since dissolved. “Lover” is the first in a long time, and it’s the most content she’s ever sounded. Swift likes a chorus that propels you into the upper stratosphere, and “Lover” doesn’t do that. Instead, “Lover” finds peace in current commitment with a view to a life of the same. That doesn’t sound exciting put that way, but it’s one of the most life-giving songs she’s ever written.

3. Our Native Daughters, “You’re Not Alone”: There are other uplifting songs on Songs of Our Native Daughters, but after an album about suffering and oppression, the folk supergroup chose to end it with a lullaby to the next generation, and it listens like the light breaking over the horizon. Group member Allison Russell wrote and sings the song specifically for her 5-year-old daughter, hoping she can face the world with the knowledge that she is loved by her earthly family and the host of African ancestors that faced the world before her. I know that I cannot draw from the same heritage that Russell is evoking here; it’s specific to her family, her people. But the wider themes of encouraging her daughter that she is connected to a history of love and strength in the face of a cruel world…yeah, I think that’s hitting home right about now.

2. Lana Del Rey, “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it”: I already unpacked Del Rey’s puzzling lack of self-awareness regarding her privilege in the post about my favorite albums of 2019, and here’s an example of the exact opposite. If there’s an example of someone’s complexity perfectly reflecting the current state of culture, it’s Del Rey, and this song is the perfect reflection of that reflection. It’s what made her response to her critics so frustrating; songs like “hope” reveal that she does know her place in the world. She’s a certain kind of woman living a certain kind of life, and that means something specific.

Del Rey is known (and criticized) for playing into the stereotypes of a fragile woman, dependent and submissive to the men in her life, sometimes to the point of abuse, which is an archetype rife with land mines. I think she pulls it off, but your mileage may vary. A song like “hope” is about this tension though, “a modern day woman with a wake constitution” still maintaining the belief that life will get better. She thinks that the culture thinks hope isn’t an option for her, and she defies that notion. It’s the strongest song on a strong record, and I couldn’t get enough of it in 2019.

1. Blue Ivy, SAINt JHN, Beyoncé & WizKid, “BROWN SKIN GIRL”: You may be seeing a trend in these top three songs: female empowerment anthems that may or may not be meant for a daughter. I promise this isn’t a “as a father of a daughter” moment though; I liked these songs before we even knew we were having a child at all, let alone that she would be a girl. But I can’t deny that thinking about my daughter facing the world gives these songs extra power for me.

LION KING: THE GIFT is Beyoncé’s project, so it’s significant that she gives her daughter first billing on this song. Coming from Beyoncé later in the song, the song’s chorus is meant as an exhortation to her child to love herself, even if the world’s artificial standard of beauty doesn’t match up. But having Blue sing it at the beginning makes it sound like a mantra Blue has internalized, something that’s taken root in her heart.

I know this song is for Black girls of all shades and shapes and not for me. But it’s been good for my heart to listen to this song over and over again over the last year, feeling the pure love in Beyoncé’s words and the desire for her child to find her worth in something outside the wider culture. There’s common ground there for me; I don’t know what my daughter will be tempted to believe about herself from a world that doesn’t value the good things inside of her. But “Brown Skin Girl” is such a beautiful model for how a parent can shut the world out for her child and teach her what good really is.

Another Thirty Contenders (alphabetical by artist)

21 Savage, “a lot”

Angel Olsen, “Lark”

Ariana Grande, “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”

Better Oblivion Community Center, “Dylan Thomas”

Beyoncé, “SPIRIT”

Bill Callahan, “Lonesome Valley”

Bon Iver, “Faith”

DaBaby, “Suge”

FKA twigs, “cellophane”

HAIM, “Summer Girl”

The Highwomen, “Highwomen”

Holly Herndon, “Frontier”

Joan Shelley, “The Fading”

Joan Shelley, “The Sway”

John Moreland, “Harder Dreams”

Josh Garrels, “Follow”

Katy Perry, “Never Really Over”

Megan Thee Stallion, “Hot Girl Summer (feat. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign)”

Miranda Lambert, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love (feat. Maren Morris, Elle King, Ashley McBryde, Tenille Townes & Caylee Hammack)”

Miranda Lambert, “Tequila Does”

Over the Rhine, “Broken Angels”

Purple Mountains, “All My Happiness Is Gone”

ROSALÍA, “Milionària”

Sam Smith, “How Do You Sleep?”

Selena Gomez, “Lose You to Love Me”

Sunday Service Choir, “Count Your Blessings”

Sunday Service Choir, “Revelations 19:1”

The Tallest Man on Earth, “I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream.”

Thom Yorke, “Dawn Chorus”

Young Thug, “Hot (feat. Gunna)”

Past Top Tens

2018

Ariana Grande, “thank u, next”
The 1975, “Love It If We Made It”
Ariana Grande, “no tears left to cry”
Drake, “Nice for What”
Janelle Monáe, “Make Me Feel”
Our Native Daughters, “Mama’s Cryin’ Long”
Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin, “I Like It”
Ariana Grande, “imagine”
Drake, “In My Feelings”
Courtney Marie Andrews, “May Your Kindness Remains”

2017

Sufjan Stevens, “Mystery of Love”
Brandi Carlile, “The Joke”
Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”
Kesha, “Praying”
Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Pa’lante”
Rhiannon Giddens, “Birmingham Sunday”
Lorde, “Green Light”
Propaganda, “Gentrify”
The War on Drugs, “Thinking of a Place”
Julien Baker, “Appointments”

2016

Kanye West, “Ultralight Beam”
Rae Sremmurd, “Black Beatles (feat. Gucci Mane)”
Rihanna, “Work (feat. Drake)”
Drive-By Truckers, “What It Means”
Chance the Rapper, “No Problem (feat. Lil Wayne & 2 Chainz)”
Leonard Cohen, “You Want It Darker”
Solange, “Cranes in the Sky”
Car Seat Headrest, “Fill in the Blank”
Lecrae, “Can’t Stop Me Now (Destination)”
Japandroids, “Near to the Wild Heart of Life”

2015

Leon Bridges, “River”
Sufjan Stevens, “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”
Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment, “Sunday Candy”
Blood Orange, “Sandra’s Smile”
Kendrick Lamar, “Alright”
Alessia Cara, “Here”
Justin Bieber, “Love Yourself”
Rihanna and Kanye West and Paul McCartney, “FourFiveSeconds”
Jack Ü, “Where Are Ü Now (with Justin Bieber)”
Miguel, “Coffee (F***ing) (feat. Wale)”

2014

FKA twigs, “Two Weeks”
Strand of Oaks, “Goshen ’97”
The War on Drugs, “Red Eyes”
John Mark McMillan, “Future / Past”
First Aid Kit, “Waitress Song”
Sia, “Chandelier”
Jackie Hill Perry, “I Just Wanna Get There”
Taylor Swift, “Out of the Woods”
Parquet Courts, “Instant Disassembly”
Sharon Van Etten, “Your Love Is Killing Me”

Music Bummys: Best Albums of 2019

Top Ten

10. Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride: Vampire Weekend have been an indie rock staple for the last twelve years. I remember listening to their debut album during my freshman year of college having mostly had a diet of Christian music and classic rock up till that point, so I was a little befuddled by what I was listening to and why I loved it so much. Nothing they’ve made since has had quite the same effect on me, until Father of the Bride, which was on repeat for much of the latter part of last year. The band has gotten more collaborative and less derivative, and Father of the Bride is the result of artists who are more comfortable with relying on good hooks without getting bogged down in trying to make something more than good pop music. It’s the most relaxed they’ve sounded in years, and as a result it sounds like they stumbled onto their best album in years.

9. Bon Iver, i,i: Much of the same could be applied to Bon Iver. They debuted the same year, and they’ve been pillars of the indie music community ever since. The difference is that their albums have consistently been showing up on these lists, so it’s hard for me to pick the best among them all. Every album since the beginning has felt like a refinement of Justin Vernon’s vision, from the more straightforward folk of For Emma, through the pop filtered through AM radio on the self-titled album, to the totally deconstructed folktronica on 22, a Million, and all of them have presented a view of the world somewhere between hope and anxiety. i,i feels like Vernon crested some kind of wave of anxiety with 22 and is more hopeful in its aftermath, giving us flashes of the narrative dissonance on 22 while shifting his focus in its themes toward uplift and community. It’s a welcome direction, and it may be their warmest record yet.

8. FKA twigs, MAGDALENE: When FKA twigs released her first album, LP1, in 2014, I dismissed her music as brooding and obtuse, as if those were bad things. Later the next year, I named her song “Two Weeks” as my top song of 2014, so clearly she grew on me. This is her first full-length since, and it’s a supreme step forward in both confidence and execution. On LP1, twigs found joy in playing around with one’s expectations for R&B music, casting about for a direction worth moving in. On MAGDALENE, she’s forging her own path forward, staking claim to control over all aspects over all aspects of her life while the world rejects her claims at every turn. This leads to her most assured songs yet, holding up over the album’s full length with music that sounds like almost nothing else. She finds inspiration in the persona of Mary Magdalene as a judged woman to rise above the culture’s collective expectations for what she should do with her life, her body, and her art.

7. Taylor Swift, Lover: It’s fascinating to look back on Lover after the 2020 release of folklore. Remembering the Lover rollout, much like remembering the reputation rollout, is to remember the underwhelming first singles. But by now we should realize that Swift’s album-making should never be doubted on the basis of her marketing, because Lover is a return to form for her after the uneven (but still pretty good!) reputation after the perfection of 1989. It shouldn’t be surprising that the artist who has been one of the best songwriters alive since she was in high school can fill an album with great pop songs. And yet it still amazes me that her pop albums are the documents that so consistently reflect the state her generation as she’s gotten older. Lover is the album of a thirty-year-old grappling with insecurity, commitment, and her aging parents. Stars aren’t just like us, but I’ll be damned if Taylor Swift doesn’t keep convincing me she is.

6. Ariana Grande, thank u, next: After everything that’s happened in 2020, I almost forgot what Ariana pulled off in the 10-month period from April 2018 to February 2019, rolling out two different near-pitch-perfect pop albums in the wake of the 2017 Manchester suicide bombing at her concert. If you don’t put much stock in the importance of pop music, that’s fine, but I tend to think of all art as having a cultural and personal significance. Ariana’s thank u, next set a standard in a cultural way, taking a step beyond most female empowerment projects’ speculative nature to embody the very ideal of what a woman in power might sound like, from the economic latitude of “7 rings” to the romantic domination of “break up with your girlfriend.” And the significance that the album must have for Ariana personally, in the ardent optimism of “imagine” to the self-love of “thank u, next,” is what seals the deal for me on continuing to revisit this album.

5. Purple Mountains, Purple Mountains: I had never listened to any of David Berman’s previous musical project, Silver Jews, so Purple Mountains hit me like a sucker punch. It’s impossible not to listen to this album in light of Berman’s suicide one month after its release. This makes it difficult not to read too much into these songs as cries for help. Songs like “All My Happiness Is Gone” (“I confess I’m barely hanging on”) and “That’s Just the Way That I Feel” (“The end of all wanting is all I’ve been wanting”) sound like message from the brink. It’s a dark album, but there is something life-giving in Berman’s honesty, his willingness to empty his soul in his music. That darkness is a part of life too, and actively listening to someone face it feels like a necessary act of living.

4. Beyoncé, Lion King: The Gift: Smarter people than me were critiquing this album for failing to be a full representation of the continent of Africa, neglecting to include East or North African artists. They also found that Bey had nothing new to add to genres (namely Afropop and South African house) that are already finding growing worldwide popularity. But I can’t get behind these critiques, because while for them The Gift may not tick all the boxes needed for a masterpiece of pan-African or diaspora culture, it was for me an incredible window into Beyoncé’s vision of blackness’s ties to an extraordinary history. It’s good to call for better representation and more innovation, but those criticisms don’t address the fact that The Gift is front-to-back bangers. When an artist is so sure of her vision and holds an entire culture in the palm of her hand, a flawed statement is still a masterpiece.

3. Joan Shelley, Like the River Loves the Sea: Joan Shelley has been making music since 2010 and has appeared in the annals of this weblog since 2014, when she released what could be termed her breakthrough album, Electric Ursa – that is, if she had really had anything to break through or had been trying to break through anything. Shelley’s music isn’t really the kind of music that breaks anything, unless you count hearts. She’s appeared on these lists in the past for the kind of spare folk music she’s become known for, for masterful albums that need little ornamentation to elevate them. What sets apart Like the River from her older work is a new poise, slight enough that it’s of a piece with the rest of her catalog and present enough that Shelley sounds like she’s writing from a new perspective: as one taking ownership of her comfort and pleasure rather than one only wishing for them.

2. Lana Del Rey, Norman F*cking Rockwell!: There’s a song on NFR called “The Next Best American Record,” which isn’t even close to my favorite song on the album but sums up the album’s ambitions perfectly. No, I don’t mean this is Del Rey’s attempt to make a grandiose, critically revered statement album that sums up the modern American experience. I mean Del Rey is doing that while scoffing at the very idea. After all, on a song called “Venice Bitch,” she describes herself as “fresh out of f*cks forever,” and on “The greatest,” she declares that “the culture is lit.” That’s not the language of someone concerned with serious album-making.

Yet the landscape that Del Rey crafts on NFR with the help of pop super-producer Jack Antonoff, a hazy version of classic pop orchestration utilizing every instrument from harps to flugelhorns, together with her voice, which Del Rey has honed ever since 2011’s “Video Games” into a dynamic weapon of faux delicateness, are marks of a a serious album. And for as cheeky as her lyrics are, Del Rey is remarkable at walking the line between honest and acidic. There’s sarcasm at play here, but there’s also sensitivity.

Del Rey made some news earlier this year for implying on Instagram that female artists of color get to make music about sex without criticism, while she gets critiqued for glamorizing abuse. It was hardly the first Lana Del Rey controversy, but it was the most indicative of her place in the culture. She benefits from all the pop-music tropes she likes to twist, but is unaware that those are uniquely white tropes. She’s almost unquestionably less popular than the artists she called out but is still nominated for Grammys and has access to producers like Antonoff.

Del Rey’s lack of self-awareness is ironic, given how incisively she observes American culture. But maybe that’s appropriate. After all, if there’s any culture that lacks self-awareness, it’s America’s. So with all her gifts and with all her flaws, Lana Del Rey is the mirror America deserves. For better or for worse, she made the most recent best American record.

1. Our Native Daughters, Songs of Our Native Daughters: Before this February, I would not have expected an album inspired by a museum to top this list. But that month I visited the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., before everything shut down. That museum, part of the Smithsonian complex, provides an immersive experience in the history of slavery on its bottom floors. It was impossible to remain unmoved by the stories told in those exhibits.

Those very stories inspired Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell to form a folk supergroup and write music honoring the history of African-American women in particular. These songs are both personal and empathetic. They are not just stories of tragedy, though there are some of those (“Mama’s Cryin’ Long,” “Blood and Bones”), but also stories of resilience and liberty (“Quasheba, Quasheba,” “You’re Not Alone”), often in the same songs. This album doesn’t fall into the twin traps of fetishizing suffering or turning a blind eye to it.

Most of these songs are story songs, told from someone else’s perspective. The women in this group are masters at creating these kinds of songs, using their crafts (singing and banjo-playing) to transport the listener to a different time and place to confront the feelings and thoughts of people not like them. This is a gift of some of my favorite artists – Bruce Springsteen and Patty Griffin to name a couple – and is one of the more potent remedies for selfishness.

But that can sound a bit like eating your vegetables, and Songs of Our Native Daughters is nothing if not a collection of beautiful music. This is a transportive experience, not a history lesson. It draws from historical narratives but explores them with the contours of blues and bluegrass. No album I listened to in 2019 was as triumphant as Our Native Daughters’. Perhaps 2020 has colored that opinion, but listening to the album today makes it feel more like a fact.

Another Fifteen Contenders (alphabetical by artist)

Angel Olsen, All Mirrors: The best chamber-pop album of the year.

Billie Eilish, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?: The best horror movie of the year.

Caroline Spence, Mint Condition: A pure country experience.

Ondara, Tales of America: The most incredible voice I heard from 2019.

Jamila Woods, LEGACY! LEGACY!: LEGACY felt like an announcement to the world that Woods is a singular artist.

Josh Garrels, Chrysaline: The best worship album of the year; just missed out on the Top Ten.

Kings Kaleidoscope, Zeal: The best non-worship Christian album of the year.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ghosteen: An incredible exploration of grief.

Over the Rhine, Love & Revelation: This duo has never gotten its due, and this album is a continuation of an incredible career in Americana.

PUP, Morbid Stuff: The best rock band working today.

Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow: Another album that just missed the Top Ten, Van Etten’s foray into adolescent insecurity as she faces being a mother contains some of the most propulsive hooks of the year.

Sunday Service Choir, JESUS IS BORN: I never got a chance to write about this record, but it’s the best thing Kanye has done in ten years.

The Tallest Man on Earth, I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream: Kristian Matsson’s one of Sweden’s best folk exports, and this album is his most joyous yet.

Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising: The best chamber-folk album of the year.

Young Thug, So Much Fun: Thugger isn’t my favorite rapper alive, but he’s my favorite combination of prolific and consistent, and So Much Fun adds to that reputation.

Past Top Tens

2018

Brandi Carlile, By the Way, I Forgive You
The 1975, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
Ariana Grande, Sweetener
Robyn, Honey
Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer
Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour
Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy
Sandra McCracken, Songs from the Valley
The Carters, EVERYTHING IS LOVE
Courtney Marie Andrews, May Your Kindness Remain

2017

Gang of Youths, Go Farther in Lightness
Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway
Propaganda, Crooked
Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Navigator
Father John Misty, Pure Comedy
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Nashville Sound
Joan Shelley, Joan Shelley
Lorde, Melodrama

2016

Chance the Rapper, Coloring Book
Beyoncé, Lemonade
Sturgill Simpson, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
Car Seat Headrest, Teens of Denial
Solange, A Seat at the Table
Miranda Lambert, The Weight of These Wings
Sho Baraka, The Narrative
Bon Iver, 22, a Million
Courtney Marie Andrews, Honest Life
Jeff Rosenstock, WORRY.

2015

Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly
Leon Bridges, Coming Home
Phil Cook, Southland Mission
Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
David Ramirez, Fables
John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat
Ben Rector, Brand New
The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird Is Home
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

2014

John Mark McMillan, Borderland
Sharon Van Etten, Are We There
The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
Strand of Oaks, HEAL
Taylor Swift, 1989
Liz Vice, There’s a Light
Jackie Hill Perry, The Art of Joy
First Aid Kit, Stay Gold
Miranda Lambert, Platinum
Propaganda, Crimson Cord

Music Bummys: Best Albums of 2017

Top Ten

10. Lorde, Melodrama: There used to be a tendency among critics not to take pop music seriously, dismissing it as frivolous and trivial. The norm now is to equate pop music with the seriousness of any other genre, though sometimes publications go a little too far, anointing any catchy song as a pop “gem,” or any high-profile pop album as “good.” Lorde’s Melodrama deserves its own special designation. Written and recorded at the end of Lorde’s teen years, this is an album for adults, danceable but daring, dramatic but universally so. If it’s a “gem,” it’s a hard-edged one; if it’s “good,” it’s because it sets the bar for pop music.

9. Joan Shelley, Joan Shelley: Shelley’s brand of folk music has always been minimalist. She herself said of this self-titled album that it was “an exercise in understatement,” which feels like an understatement. If that sounds boring, let me assure you that Shelley has an ear for the kinds of melodies that seep into the crevasses of your brain and remain their forever. She enlisted the help of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy for this album, but he keeps things spare- just the way Shelley likes it. Indeed, the only thing to distinguish this album from the rest of her sterling catalog is that literally every song feels essential.

8. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Nashville Sound: Consistency can be a boring thing to write about, and there’s no one who has been so consistent over the course of his career as Jason Isbell. From his elevation of an already great band in the Drive-By Truckers to his solo career starting in 2013 after he found sobriety, everything Isbell has touched has turned to gold. The Nashville Sound finds him rejoining his post-DBT band for a more robust record. Southeastern and Something More Than Free were intimate, personal. The Nashville Sound gives its full-bodied sound more panoramic subject matter, tackling racism, tribalism, and mental health.

7. The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding: At first glance, The War on Drugs may appear to have the same consistency as Isbell. They certainly have been consistently good, but A Deeper Understanding is something profoundly different for them. 2014’s Lost in the Dream was anthemic, engineered to give you catharsis or release at each song’s climax. It was one of my favorite albums of the year, and in that respect, A Deeper Understanding is no different. But its effect on me has been unique, sweeping me up in its epic scope and its measured introspection, which is a wholly different experience, but no less great.

6. Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.: The album that came after 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly was bound to be disappointing, because that record was one of a kind, a generational masterpiece of its genre, or any genre for that matter. And while I liked DAMN when I first heard it, I couldn’t quite give it the same devotion I gave TPAB, but time has told a different story about Kendrick’s deeply intimate diary of dread, dreams, and desire. If I first listened to it in TPAB‘s shadow, DAMN casts its own shadow now, firmly establishing Kendrick in his own damn tier as a musician. Don’t let the fact that there are five albums ahead of his on this list; the margins are small, and it’s only personal preference. Kendrick is king, top ten lists be damned.

5. Father John Misty, Pure Comedy: At one point during 2017, I would have Pure Comedy at the top of this list, and it wouldn’t have been close. Josh Tillman sings the way that I think, which is definitely not pretentious on my part and may in fact be an insult to Tillman. Indeed, Tillman is pretentious, cynical, and self-righteous, but also intuitive, empathetic, and insightful, which describes me on my worst days and my best days to a T. I associated with this album to such a high degree that I think it eventually wore me down to where I appreciated its artfulness less. I still think it’s a masterpiece (I put it at No. 5 for a reason!), but it’s not my favorite masterpiece on the list anymore.

If there’s one quality I don’t share with Tillman, it’s hopefulness, and this is not a hopeful record. That said, it is a truthful one, especially on album standouts “Two Wildly Different Perspectives” and “When the God of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell to Pay,” which dissect worldviews until there’s nothing left. Pure Comedy is intense, so steel yourself before you give it a listen.

4. Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Navigator: I was a theater kid through middle school and high school, appearing in plays as varied as Fiddler on the Roof and Grease at school and in a junior company in Dallas. I loved acting and performing, and I still miss it. The Navigator moved the theater kid in me.

While Hurray for the Riff Raff’s previous album, Small Town Heroes, was a folk album that leaned hard into Creole and swamp influences, The Navigator plays almost like the soundtrack to a musical. Alynda Segarra, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, split the album into two acts, making it into a loose concept album. In the first act, the Puerto Rican main character survives on the streets (“Living in the City”) and discovers a toughness within herself (“Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl”). In the second act, she awakens to find everything stripped away from her people (“Rican Beach”) and calls them to action in response to oppression (“Pa’lante”), completing a work of art that empowers the downtrodden, the used- indeed, the riff raff.

3. Propaganda, Crooked: No artist has made music that challenges my perspective as deeply as Propaganda. His first solo album with his current label, Humble Beast, included a song called “Precious Puritans,” which called out evangelicals who deify American Calvinist forefathers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, without ever confronting the fact that they owned slaves. I had to wrestle with this, and that was good for my soul.

Prop has always been unafraid to address social ills in his music, and Crooked takes this to a new level. There are songs called “Gentrify” and “Darkie,” and they’re as unabashed as they sound. For most of its recent popularity, Christian rap has largely kept its lyrical content to biblical truths that are easy to swallow for most evangelicals regardless of race. That’s beginning to change, thanks to Prop and other artists like Sho Baraka, and Crooked is the most recent record that serves as an example for rebuke, and the best.

2. Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway: Over the last few years, purely by coincidence, I’ve read a lot of books that deal directly with the wounds left on the African-American psyche by America’s history of slavery and racism. It started with Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was still in college, but then more recently I’ve read Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, and C.E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings. In all of these stories, slavery is presented in its unvarnished brutality, forcing a reckoning in my soul on the soil American is rooted in.

Freedom Highway feels like a continuation of the story those books tell of America’s scars and their wicked origins. Giddens, who has long been a leader in the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, released her first solo album in 2015 with producer T Bone Burnett. They were well matched to fill out the album, which was mostly covers, with a rootsy vibe. Freedom Highway is more attuned to Giddens’s personal perspective; nine of the twelve songs are co-written by her, and they traverse the history of Southern America. Opener “At the Purchaser’s Option” contemplates that the singer, a slave, has no autonomy over her children, her sexuality, or her work. This helplessness is translated into a quiet anger on “Julie,” in which a slave confronts her owner, who claims to love her, for selling her children to another owner. And the heaviest and most hopeful song, “Birmingham Sunday,” a Joan Baez cover, details the 1963 bombing of a black church by the Ku Klux Klan and its aftermath.

Growing up white and privileged, my understanding of America’s foundation was unknowingly colored by my color. America’s principles of liberty, independence, and unity seemed natural and sewn into the fabric of our culture, when the reality is that they’re fragile and tenuous and far from pure. On Freedom Highway, Giddens joins a long history of uncovering this truth and inspiring hope for a better future.

1. Gang of Youths, Go Farther in Lightness: There are more important things than relevance in pop art, but it undeniably matters. If an album moves me, but no one else I know has ever even heard of it, how much import can that album really hold? Does a movie matter if no one saw it but one person who loved it?

Gang of Youths forces me to ask this question, because there was no place I could put their second album on this list other than the very top. This album is the one that has stayed on repeat more than any other, the one that shot up to the top of my to-buy list as soon as I heard it, the one that I found myself thinking about long after I had turned it off to head to bed. If Father John Misty sings the way I think, Gang of Youths sings the way I feel. It’s bombastic, dramatic, and emotional from front to back; frontman Dave Le’aupepe doesn’t take breaks.

But the intensity isn’t for its own sake; Le’aupepe and his band, whom he met at Hillsong Church in Sydney, are processing real questions of mortality and purpose. Opener “Fear and Trembling” advocates for celebration and worship in the face of aging and death. The ballad “Persevere” is about the death of his best friend’s baby. Le’aupepe sings, quoting his friend, “‘But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast / There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan / Not some vindictive motherfucker, not is he shitty at his job;” it’s a powerful examination of faith in light of grief. And my personal favorite, “The Deepest Sighs, the Frankest Shadows,” contemplates what it takes to “bear the unbearable, terrible triteness of being.”

If this sounds melodramatic, that’s because Le’aupepe gets it: life is a melodrama, and you have to embrace it.

Another Fifteen Contenders (alphabetical)

Chris Stapleton, From a Room: Volume 1
David Ramirez, We’re Not Going Anywhere
Drake, More Life
Future, HNDRXX
HAIM, Something to Tell You
Japandroids, Near to the Wild Heart of Life
JAY-Z, 4:44
Julien Baker, Turn Out the Lights
Kehlani, SweetSexySavage
Kesha, Rainbow
Lana Del Rey, Lust for Life
Margo Price, All American Made
The Porter’s Gate, Work Songs: The Porter’s Gate Worship Project, Vol. 1
Sheer Mag, Need to Feel Your Love
Taylor Swift, reputation

Past Top Tens

2016

Chance the Rapper, Coloring Book
Beyoncé, Lemonade
Sturgill Simpson, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
Car Seat Headrest, Teens of Denial
Solange, A Seat at the Table
Miranda Lambert, The Weight of These Wings
Sho Baraka, The Narrative
Bon Iver, 22, a Million
Courtney Marie Andrews, Honest Life
Jeff Rosenstock, WORRY.

2015

Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly
Leon Bridges, Coming Home
Phil Cook, Southland Mission
Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
David Ramirez, Fables
John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat
Ben Rector, Brand New
The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird Is Home
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

2014

John Mark McMillan, Borderland
Sharon Van Etten, Are We There
The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
Strand of Oaks, HEAL
Taylor Swift, 1989
Liz Vice, There’s a Light
Jackie Hill Perry, The Art of Joy
First Aid Kit, Stay Gold
Miranda Lambert, Platinum
Propaganda, Crimson Cord

2013

Jason Isbell, Southeastern
Beyoncé, Beyoncé
Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle
Patty Griffin, American Kid
Sandra McCracken, Desire Like Dynamite
Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience
Beautiful Eulogy, Instruments of Mercy
Kanye West, Yeezus
KaiL Baxley, Heatstroke / The Wind and the War

2012

Andrew Peterson, Light for the Lost Boy
Lecrae, Gravity
Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE
Japandroids, Celebration Rock
David Crowder*Band, Give Us Rest or (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys])
Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball
Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
The Olive Tree, Our Desert Ways
Benjamin Dunn & the Animal Orchestra, Fable
Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city

If I Ran the 2018 Grammys

I do this every year, and the amount of time I spend on it far outweighs the amount I care about the real Grammys. But damned if I’m not back here again, discovering that the Grammys think Metallica is still making award-worthy music in 2018.

It does feel like this year’s nominees in the main categories line up a bit more with mine than usual, which means, of course, that they’re closer to being right.

A few ground rules for this largely pointless exercise:

1) I’ll give the real nominees with my prediction for the winner in bold. Then I’ll give you who I would have nominated, with my choice for the best in that group in bold.

2) We all know the October 1st, 2016-September 30th, 2017 qualifying dates are stupid, but we’re going to keep them in the interest of chaos. I can’t fix everything about the Grammys. So no Taylor Swift, but Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings (from 2016, but released in November) is fair game.

3) For the four major awards (Album, Record, Song, New Artist), I’m realistic. Father John Misty and Propaganda made two of my favorite albums in the qualifying year, but they’re too niche to be nominated for Album of the Year. However, Alicia Keys and SZA also released albums I loved, and they’re plausible options for the big one. But when it comes to the genre awards, anything goes- hence, artists like Joan Shelley, Sho Baraka, and Sheer Mag getting nods over more popular acts in their respective categories.

4) Genre boundaries are fuzzy- London Grammar’s and Lana Del Rey’s albums could really fit into pop or alternative, Phoebe Bridgers and Hurray for the Riff Raff could easily be considered Americana instead of alternative, John Legend might be more of a pop artist than urban contemporary, etc. So I went with my gut. I don’t have your gut, so if you disagree with me on whether or not Spoon belongs in the alternative or rock category, sorry.

5) Forget the 5-nominee limit! Sometimes the Grammys do this; a genre will have enough contenders that they’ll fit 6 nominees into one category because of a tie. I’ve often wondered why more award shows don’t open categories up a bit more. If there are enough albums that truly deserve to be in the conversation, why not include them and draw more attention to more great music? Let’s have a little anarchy! Except in the 4 main categories, which will continue to have the rigid 5-nominee rule, because too much anarchy is a bad thing.

Album of the Year:

Real nominees: Bruno Mars, 24K Magic
Childish Gambino, “Awaken, My Love!”
JAY-Z, 4:44
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Lorde, Melodrama

My nominees: Alicia Keys, Here
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Lorde, Melodrama
Miranda Lambert, The Weight of These Wings
SZA, Ctrl

Is this the year when a black nominee finally wins Album of the Year? Seems likely that it will finally be a person of color for the first time in 10 years. But it also would not be surprising for Lorde to win, given how great her album is. On one hand, the Grammys don’t matter, so Lorde winning would be insignificant. On the other hand, award shows like this are touchstones within every year that we use to get a feel for the story our culture is telling. Over the last 10 years, the story has felt like a rejection of the amazing work that people of color have built. Lorde deserves to win, but so does Kendrick, and I can’t help but feel like the Academy will finally choose to reward him. And Kendrick would be my personal pick too, with a slight edge over Lorde. He should have won for TPAB, but DAMN. seems like the kind of record that is going to seem weirdly underrated in comparison to its titanic predecessor.

I could take or leave the rest of the Academy’s choices. I like JAY-Z’s album, but it’s a little overrated for its pop cultural significance. 24K Magic has great singles, but that’s about it. I’ve never gotten into Childish Gambino, but “Redbone” is the shit. I would have rather seen the underrated Here get some love for an artist that really embraced a less pop-driven sound to make a statement record. Lambert’s most recent record, a 2-disc opus, also deserves to be considered. And SZA, the breakout star of the moment, made an album that should not be relegated to the genre awards but seen as belonging among the best of the best.

Record of the Year

Real nominees: Bruno Mars, “24K Magic”
Childish Gambino, “Redbone”
JAY-Z, “The Story of O.J.”
Kendrick Lamar, “HUMBLE.”
Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee, “Despacito (feat. Justin Bieber)”

My nominees: Cardi B, “Bodak Yellow”
Kendrick Lamar, “HUMBLE.”
Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee, “Despacito (feat. Justin Bieber)”
Migos, “Bad and Boujee (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)”
Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”

I understand the difference between Record of the Year and Song of the Year, but I’m not sure the Academy does. Record of the Year is supposed to focus on the performance and the production, while Song of the Year is supposed to focus on the songwriting. If they actually vote based on the award’s definition, I don’t see how any song but Kendrick’s wins. But if they don’t, “Despacito” could sweep both song awards.

I wouldn’t be too mad about that; “Despacito” is a banger, for sure. I’m surprised 2 of the obvious songs of the year aren’t nominated though: “Bodak Yellow” and “Bad and Boujee,” both of which dominated the culture during their respective seasons. But my personal favorite belongs to Selena Gomez, who altered her singing style and leaned on Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter to craft the most interesting pop song of the year.

Song of the Year

Real nominees: Bruno Mars, “That’s What I Like”
JAY-Z, “The Story of O.J.”
Julia Michaels, “Issues”
Logic, “1-800-273-8255 (feat. Alessia Cara & Khalid)”
Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee, “Despacito (feat. Justin Bieber)”

My nominees: Childish Gambino, “Redbone”
Harry Styles, “Sign of the Times”
Kesha, “Praying”
Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”
The Weeknd, “I Feel It Coming (feat. Daft Punk)”

Hard to imagine anything but “Despacito” winning, but if the Academy is going to pick a category to screw up, I can see it being this one. The fact that “Issues” and “1-800-273-8255” are in here suggests the voters did not know what to make of their options. I’m surprised the Weeknd or Harry Styles didn’t get a look from them. I suppose it’s not surprising that Kesha didn’t get a nod, seeing as there are probably enough voters in the Academy who still feel enough of a kinship with Dr. Luke to see Kesha as too controversial. But her “Praying” is the best pop song of the year by far, eliciting tears from me nearly every time I hear it.

I can’t believe I typed that sentence, but here we are.

Best New Artist

Real nominees: Alessia Cara
Khalid
Lil Uzi Vert
Julia Michaels
SZA

My nominees: Cardi B
Harry Styles
Julien Baker
Lil Uzi Vert
SZA

Not sure why Alessia Cara is here, since she broke out during the previous qualifying year, but I’m happy she’s getting some love. SZA seems like the favorite here, but it’s not by a lot. Anyone could win in this category, and I wouldn’t be surprised. I would have liked to have seen Harry Styles get honored with a nomination here, though I supposed the Academy may not consider him new, since he was in One Direction and all, but seeing as he released his first solo album this year, I say he qualifies. I don’t understand the Julia Michaels love; her songs have been better interpreted by other artists. Julien Baker, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who took the online indie community by storm with her single, “Appointments,” is who I would replace Michaels with.

Best Alternative Album

Real nominees: Arcade Fire, Everything Now
Father John Misty, Pure Comedy
Gorillaz, Humanz
LCD Soundsystem, American Dream
The National, Sleep Well Beast

My nominees: Big Thief, Capacity
Father John Misty, Pure Comedy
Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Navigator
Hundred Waters, Communicating
Phoebe Bridgers, Stranger in the Alps
Spoon, Hot Thoughts

The Academy loves Arcade Fire, but LCD Soundsystem could be the dark horse for orchestrating a successful comeback, as silly as it may have been. As far as indie electronic music goes, though, I preferred Hundred Waters. Father John Misty made my favorite album of 2017, so he of course gets my bid here, though Hurray for the Riff Raff was hot on his heels. Gorillaz and the National were fine legacy act picks from the Academy to go with LCD, but the best indie legacy act of the year was Spoon, and it wasn’t close. Rounding things out are 2 female-powered acts who bare all through their words, Phoebe Bridgers and Big Thief.

Best Americana/Country Album

Real nominees (Best Country Album): Chris Stapleton, From a Room: Volume 1
Kenny Chesney, Cosmic Hallelujah
Lady Antebellum, Heart Break
Little Big Town, The Breaker
Thomas Rhett, Life Changes

My nominees: Chris Stapleton, From a Room: Volume 1
David Ramirez, We’re Not Going Anywhere
Hiss Golden Messenger, Hallelujah Anyhow
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Nashville Sound
Joan Shelley, Joan Shelley
Miranda Lambert, The Weight of These Wings
Paul Cauthen, My Gospel
Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway

There’s a world where Lady Antebellum wins, given their undue past recognition from the Academy, but I think Chris Stapleton’s Traveller is still fresh in voters’ minds, and he’ll take it the night of. That album and Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings rank up there with any other album of this year for me, but Joan Shelley’s self-titled takes the title for me by a hair. Jason Isbell has received plenty of accolades for his newest album, and he’s nominated in the Americana category. I like things a little simpler than the Academy, so I’d lump the 2 categories together and highlight some more obscure acts, like Texas’s David Ramirez and Paul Cauthen, as well as North Carolina’s Hiss Golden Messenger and Rhiannon Giddens.

Best Christian Album

Real nominees (Best Contemporary Christian Music Album): Danny Gokey, Rise
Matt Maher, Echoes [Deluxe Edition]
MercyMe, Lifer
Tauren Wells, Hills and Valleys
Zach Williams, Chain Breaker

My nominees: The Brilliance, All Is Not Lost
CeCe Winans, Let Them Fall in Love
Ellie Holcomb, Red Sea Road
John Mark McMillan, Mercury & Lightning
Stu Garrard, Beatitudes

I find popular Christian music less and less interesting with every passing year. So I haven’t listened to any of the nominated albums, though I’ve heard a few Tauren Wells songs in passing. Wells feels more of the moment than the rest of these acts. The good Christian music struggles to be heard. John Mark McMillan is perennially underrated, and though Stu Garrard was part of one of the most popular Christian acts of all time (Delirious?), he himself is not a Christian household name. Neither is Ellie Holcomb, even though she’s one of the best worship songwriters in recent memory. CeCe Winans is probably the best-known name on this list, and her most recent album is near perfect. But my favorite is the album from The Brilliance, who leave no stone unturned on their quest to properly worship the father in all manners of music-making.

Best Pop Album

Real nominees (Best Pop Vocal Album): Coldplay, Kaleidoscope EP
Ed Sheeran, ÷
Imagine Dragons, Evolve
Kesha, Rainbow
Lady Gaga, Joanne
Lana Del Rey, Lust for Life

My nominees: HAIM, Something to Tell You
Kesha, Rainbow
Lana Del Rey, Lust for Life
London Grammar, Truth Is a Beautiful Thing
Lorde, Melodrama

This isn’t a particularly inspiring category, even if half of it seems kind of laughable that it’s included with the other half. Both HAIM and London Grammar could wipe the floor with that Coldplay EP (which is secretly pretty good), Ed Sheeran, and Imagine Dragons. I think the #MeToo/#TimesUp movement will inspire voters to given Kesha the vote. But the best pop album of the qualifying year should have been Lorde’s to lose. She was inexplicably not nominated in any of the genre awards.

Best R&B/Urban Contemporary Album

Real nominees (Best Urban Contemporary Album): 6LACK, Free 6LACK
Childish Gambino, “Awaken, My Love!”
Khalid, American Teen
SZA, Ctrl
The Weeknd, Starboy

My nominees: Alicia Keys, Here
John Legend, DARKNESS AND LIGHT
Kehlani, SweetSexySavage
Lizzo, Coconut Oil
Sampha, Process
SZA, Ctrl

There’s so much good R&B right now, it’s surprising the best the Academy could come up with to accompany likely winner Childish Gambino, the Weeknd, and SZA, was 6LACK and Khalid. Any of Sampha, Lizzo, or Kehlani would have been worthier. Both Alicia Keys and John Legend went unnoticed at the end of 2016, even though their albums were the best of their respective careers. I’m okay with Childish Gambino winning, but SZA winning would be the best.

Best Rap Album

Real nominees: JAY-Z, 4:44
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Migos, Culture
Rapsody, Laila’s Wisdom
Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy

My nominees: Drake, More Life
Future, HNDRXX
JAY-Z, 4:44
Kendrick Lamar, DAMN.
Propaganda, Crooked
Sho Baraka, The Narrative

It’s possible that JAY-Z will take this, since there seems to be a lot of support for his shot at redemption. It’s definitely his best album in 10 or so years, but it’s not anywhere close to as deep and interesting as Kendrick’s. It’s fun seeing Migos, Rapsody, and Tyler get some mainstream Grammy love. It’s not like Drake and Future needed any more attention, even though their albums were great steps forward for both artists. I doubt Christian rap will ever get proper love in this category, but my 2 favorite rap albums of the qualifying year were from 2 bold Christian hip-hop artists, Sho Baraka and Propaganda.

Best Rock Album

Real nominees: Mastodon, Emperor of Sand
Metallica, Hardwired…to Self-Destruct
Nothing More, The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Queens of the Stone Age, Villains
The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding

My nominees: Gang of Youths, Go Farther in Lightness
Japandroids, Near to the Wild Heart of Life
Jeff Rosenstock, WORRY.
Sheer Mag, Need to Feel Your Love
The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding
White Reaper, The World’s Best American Band

I have absolutely no feel for what the Grammys value in rock music. Two rock bands could not be more different than Metallica and The War on Drugs, and I don’t know what a Nothing More is. I’m guessing they’ve never heard of my pick, Jeff Rosenstock, or Sheer Mag or White Reaper, even though the Internet has been gushing about them for the last two years. Surely they’ve heard of Japandroids if they know who The War on Drugs is? Unfortunately, there’s no way Gang of Youths would have been nominated, since the Australia band has yet to cross over here in America, even their album is the best rock album I heard in 2017. I guess Queens of the Stone Age will win? I have no idea.

Top Albums You Won’t Find on 2017’s Top Ten Lists

Every year I highlight 5 albums that didn’t end up on any critic’s top ten lists. That’s slightly misleading; I survey this Metacritic collection of lists, and if the album doesn’t appear on 3 or more lists, it gets considered for this post. If it’s a Christian album, I just search the usual way (read: Google) through some of the main Christian music publications. If I missed a list, it’s okay; no one’s life is over.

The Brilliance, All Is Not Lost: There have been several artists in Christian music history that have bucked (or set) the industry’s trends, but there are few today outside of hip-hop. The Brilliance have some of the kitchen-sink creativity that most recently blessed Gungor before that band veered into emergent-church territory. This makes sense, since one of The Brilliance’s primary members is David Gungor, the brother of Gungor’s Michael. But where Michael’s band has taken a decidedly meditative tack, David’s has set his rudder directly toward celebration. Beautifully synthesizing several genres, The Brilliance overcome worship music tropes, celebrating a God for everybody with music for everybody.

Caroline Spence, Spades & Roses: I understand Margo Price receiving all of 2017’s allotted attention for female off-the-beaten-path Nashvillians, because Price is brilliant. But now that 2017 is over, please turn your attention to its forgotten folk artist, Caroline Spence. Her 2015 album Somehow won me over with its plain-spoken heartbreak spiked with hard liquor. Spades & Roses is like Somehow, but with more liquor. This is best exemplified on standout track, “All the Beds I’ve Made,” in which beds and all their accoutrement become a metaphor not for love, but for the hope that this one will make you forget the rest.

David Ramirez, We’re Not Going Anywhere: I wrote about this album not 6 weeks ago, and I’m still on a high for the response it got. Ramirez himself retweeted the post and said it was “one of [his] favorite reviews for the new album,” and I could have cried. You write about an album you love and you hope someone reads it. You never expect the artist to read it and, much less, appreciate it. Ultimately, I just want this album to get attention, because it’s a devastatingly good folk album from one of Austin’s best resident musicians.

Hiss Golden Messenger, Hallelujah Anyhow: You’ll be forgiven if you’re not into Americana and haven’t heard of Hiss Golden Messenger, the Carolina-based outfit from the prolific M.C. Taylor. You’ll also be forgiven if you are into Americana and can’t remember which album of his is which. But holding this against him is like complaining that Cary Grant plays the same character in every movie- he does what he’s good at, and he’s the best at it. Taylor has a tried and true sound, a mélange of soul and backwoods blues befitting his scruffy look and family life. What makes Hallelujah Anyhow special in light of the rest of his discography is an unabashed celebration of life in the face of life’s mundanity.

Joan Shelley, Joan Shelley: Another Americana artist on this list, yes, but Shelley is quite unlike any other Americana artist we are familiar with. That’s partly because she doesn’t even consider herself an Americana musician, but mostly because she’s a singular artist. Her first few albums trafficked in Appalachian folk music, but Joan Shelley is a slight change in direction for the Kentucky artist. Her transfixing voice is still the focal point here, but she’s less reliant on her usual guitarists to give her voice its home. Instead, she travels outside her comfort zone to songs with barely any production at all, and more of a reliance on plinking keys rather than plucking strings, and her music has broadened with her world.

Best Music of 2015 So Far

Welp, it’s 2015 and Taylor Swift is still dominating music. As much as rap tends to dominate the airwaves, it’s earnest pop music like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Sam Smith that continues to have staying power in album sales. Swift has been in the Billboard Top 10 for 35 straight weeks, and it appears she’s averaged out at position #2 for that whole time, so we might as well call it a year. She’s reaching 2011-2013 Adele levels of world domination, though Adele was in the top 10 for a total of 80 straight weeks, so T-Swift’s still got a long ways to go. But considering she’s still in the top 5 after 9 months, we might as well call it a year. Pack it in, music industry. Taylor’s won. The next five albums may as well function as my Top 5 for the whole year. Seeya in 2016, pop music. Bye.

Albums

Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color: Alabama Shakes’s Boys & Girls was a perfect slice of a beach party, mixing the pathos of the blues with the chill of surf rock. Sound & Color is what happens when the bonfire gets out of control. Even if rock as we knew it is basically dead, on Sound & Color Alabama Shakes have delivered an explosion of the genre at its best.

Jimmy Needham, Vice & Virtue: Before this year, you’d be forgiven for thinking Jimmy Needham was soft. Speak, his bitingly blunt debut album, was released way back in 2006, so it was easy to forget how lovingly rebuking his songs could be. After the funky Vice, you won’t mistake him for anything but hardened by the ravages of sin and emboldened by the mercy of the empty tomb.

Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly: With great expectations comes great responsibility, and Kendrick has more than lived up to his end. Expectations were sky high after the cinematic good kid. Butterfly rocketed past them as very personal and yet somehow universal.

Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell: We’re fifteen years into Sufjan’s career, ten years removed from Illinois, and five from Age of Adz. We’ve gotten scads of Christmas EPs and a symphonic meditation on a highway. And Carrie & Lowell is the first time I feel like I’ve seen the real Sufjan.

The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird Is Home: Making changes to one’s sound is always risky, and the breakup album seems like the most volatile time to make an attempt. But that’s exactly the hill Kristian Matsson determined to climb with Dark Bird. He expanded his sound from provincial folk to play around the edges of synth-rock, all in the name of purging his demons.

Songs

Fetty Wap, “Trap Queen”: That Furious 7 song will probably earn “Song of the Summer” honors at the end of August, but as far as I’m concerned, “Trap Queen” is the Song of the Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall.

Kendrick Lamar, “i [Album Version]”: The version of “i” that Kendrick Lamar was great enough, but the song that appears on the album sounds like a cherished bootleg copy with an added verse that functions as the epiphany of the whole brilliant record.

Sufjan Stevens, “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”: Sufjan has penned beautiful acoustic folk songs before, but none have ever had the emotional power of this single about dealing with his mother’s death.

The Tallest Man on Earth, “Sagres”: The warmest song Matsson has released to date; it’s also his most vulnerable, as he ponders whether hope is really worth it.

The Weather Station, “Way It Is, Way It Could Be”: A simple song, to be sure, but it’s haunted me more than any other this year.

Most Anticipated Albums of (the rest of) 2015

Gungor, One Wild Life: Soul (8/7): The eclectic band is releasing three new albums soon, the first of which is One Wild Life: Soul and is hopefully going to move in a more solid direction after 2013’s scattered I Am Mountain.

Jason Isbell, Something More Than Free (7/17): This will be the best songwriter in alt-country’s second album as a sober man, and arrives in anticipation of his first child with wife Amanda Shires, who will appear on the album.

Joan Shelley, Over and Even (9/4): If Isbell is alt-country’s best songwriter, Shelley might just  be alt-folk’s.

Sara Groves, Floodplain (9/11): Groves has never released an album I haven’t loved, and I don’t expect Floodplain to break that streak.

Titus Andronicus, The Most Lamentable Tragedy (7/31): This will definitely be the best five-act rock opera of the year.

Top 5 Albums You Won’t Find on 2014’s Top Ten Lists

2014 was a pretty terrible year for music. That’s not to say there weren’t great albums; but there were few blockbusters. This is probably the norm for music now, so let’s just embrace it. Of course, that means that under-the-radar gems shine a little less brightly, since what’s on the radar isn’t commanding much attention.

This year critics seemed to love albums by The War on Drugs, Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert, Sharon Van Etten, and, for some strange reason, Beck. Lana Del Rey even received some love. But the following artists have remained forgotten here at the end of the year. I couldn’t find a single top ten list that included any of these. You may be able to, but for the sake of this post’s title, pretend you can’t.

March on Washington, Diamond District: Mainstream rap laid an egg in 2014, both in terms of album sales and social consciousness. All the shit going down around the country surrounding protests against injustice and literally no one spoke out. It was up to former underground titans like Killer Mike and El-P and to current underground up-and-comers Diamond District to carry the torch. The power to catch your attention was in their lyrics to conjure images of corrupt politicians and angry 99-percenters. But the power to keep you hooked rested firmly in their grimy, old-school beats which conjure images of rap’s heyday as the vanguard of social unrest.

English Oceans, Drive-By Truckers: DBT are perennial underdogs, even though they’ve had a long career as a beloved southern rock band. They just can’t seem to break on through to the other side past their loyal fans to the critical mass. Critics are forever underrating their albums, and while DBT hadn’t made a great album for about five years, English Oceans fit right in next to their best. It’s criminal that people didn’t notice. Sometimes longevity is your worst enemy, because people get so used to you that they forget you haven’t had your moment yet.

Electric Ursa, Joan Shelley: The singer-songwriter album of the year belongs to Sharon Van Etten, but Electric Ursa is a close second. On Are We There, Van Etten reached new emotional depths with an expanded palette of production. On Electric Ursa, Shelley kept things simple, not by keeping things acoustic or foregoing distinctive production, but by focusing on spare storytelling. Details were scarce in her hypnotic voice, but what she did reveal was captivating.

Fantasize, Kye Kye: My feelings on mainstream Christian music are well-documented (in short: don’t like it). So when I find a band that’s even mildly interesting, I tend to overreact and hail it as the next great Christian band. Kye Kye wasn’t like that; Fantasize was a legitimately engrossing experience. Swathed in synths and drowning in longing, this album by Kye Kye’s Estonian siblings had a knack for getting under your skin and forcing you to consider the ramifications of your own unfulfilled desires.

Wild Onion, Twin Peaks: In a year that saw ostensible indie band The War on Drugs releasing the album of the year and artists like Spoon and Ryan Adams solidifying their place among rock’s older generation, it’s hard to parse through all the bands and determine what qualifies as “indie rock” or not. I think Twin Peaks qualified. They’re on an independent label, but that hardly matters anymore; it’s more important that no one was talking about Wild Onion. How an album of indie rock that drew on everything that used to define that phrase went unnoticed is beyond me.

Three Underrated Songs

“She Looks So Perfect”, 5 Seconds of Summer: I know “Fancy” and “Problem” were the official songs of the summer, but why did we have to forget about this one? I’m still obsessed with this 5SOS song. The main thing that lifts it above either of those other summer anthems? The lack of any terrible featured rap verses.

“NRG”, Duck Sauce: If you didn’t hear this song in 2014, do yourself a favor: Move your furniture. Carve about three hours out of your day. Play this on a loop. Forget about everything else.

“Hold On”, Lakes: Lakes’ Fire Ahead could have easily been in the above list of underrated albums. But “Hold On” was its best song as well as a song that deserved a wider audience. It’s an old-fashioned story about a self-destructive chorus reminiscent of a Steve Miller Band, complete with the unforgettable chorus.

September’s Notable Music

Hits

Hiss Golden Messenger, Lateness of Dancers: I have a vision of the future every now and again. It’s hazy, but I have faith in it. Someday, the clubbers and sorority girls will no longer dance to electronic music or hip-hop. Such over-produced tripe will have faded away along with the con artists who peddle it to the masses. No, in this future I see, the people will dance to folk music, glorious folk music. They will rediscover the instruments that first brought them music: the hallowed guitar and the sacred piano, accompanied by a chorus of percussive instruments. Yes, folk dance music is the future. FDM, we’ll call it. And Lateness of Dancers is the first of many heralds.

Lecrae, Anomaly: So far, Lecrae is the most well-known Christian rapper to the general public, and we should thank God it’s him for a lot of reasons. His albums consistently present the gospel clearly and passionately while remaining accessible and relatable to unbelievers. He’s on the forefront of the music side of things, drawing from his hip-hop heroes but constantly forging his own path ahead, refusing to submit to the whims of the industry. And he hangs out with mainstream rappers; this may be the most important reason of all, because it’s a template for how people who don’t rap for a living should treat their own lives. Lecrae has gotten flak for spending time around people like Kendrick Lamar or Big K.R.I.T. I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you that Jesus had the same charges brought against him for spending time around sinners. Anomaly is one more step on the narrow path God has for Lecrae, and he’s walking on it brilliantly.

Ryan Adams, Ryan Adams: It can be hard to draw a through-line from one Ryan Adams album to the next. His chameleonic nature has drawn accusations of fakery and phoniness for almost his entire career. I’m sure his marriage to a pop singer like Mandy Moore does nothing for his reputation among indie purists. But, for what it’s worth, my personal experience with Ryan Adams has been with his quieter, folk-rock side, and in that light, his new, self-titled album is his most purely rocking album to date. That’s not including the unfortunate metal EP Adams also released last month, but for my purposes Ryan Adams is the kind of classicized rock music only a dynamic personality like Adams could make.

Misses

Robert Plant, Lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar: Like, Robert Plant was in this band, Led Zeppelin, back in the day. And, like, they made real rock music. But he’s, like, so totally over making real rock music, because, like, rock music doesn’t really get at the heart of what music is really about, you know? So he did, like, folk music for a while, but it wasn’t real enough for him? So he’s exploring world music now, and I think he’s really found himself, like, in ways that you just can’t in rock music or music with that lady from the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. He’s expanding his horizons, man, and, well, I don’t really get it, but it’s just because he’s on a whole other level, you know? Because he’s Robert Plant? You know?

U2, Songs of Innocence: I can’t defend them anymore. You could argue that their early catalog is justification enough for their misguided latter days, and you’d be right. But in the here and now, as far removed from Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby as we are, U2 are insufferable. I’m not yet to the point where I want to barf when I think of Bono and his sunglasses, but something in my stomach definitely stirs. There are moments on Songs of Innocence with hints of the great music of their past, and there are other moments with only hints of music. None of it is worth what you have to pay for it. (Yes, I know.)

Under the Radar

Hazakim, Son of Man: This may not be the most high-profile Christian rap release of September, but Son of Man isn’t messing around. Hazakim is a duo of brothers with a background in the Messianic Jewish movement, and the Jewish influence is apparent in strong focus on the Old Testament and several songs that make use of Hebrew. (Or Yiddish. I freely admit I don’t know the difference.) They also fall under the tradition of their label, Lamp Mode Recordings, filled with artists with a bent toward intellectual hip-hop that seeks to explicate Scripture. Shai Linne is the most well-known of their artists, but Hazakim deserve their place alongside him.

Joan Shelley, Electric Ursa: Electric Ursa is the definition of “under the radar”. A slight album that threatens to float away if you don’t pay enough attention to it, Ursa is folk music at its most gorgeous. There seems to be this idea that folk music is all acoustic instruments and simple lyrics, that “folk” is a costume you can put on. Shelley’s music calls bullshit on that with the heavy layers in her production and her haunting, evocative lyrics. This is the perfect record for the onset of autumn.