No one wants this! No one asked for this! And yet, here they are babeeeey!
Last year, I made a playlist of my favorite songs of 2018. They were both songs that actually came out in 2018, and songs that I discovered in 2018. This made it more fun (god, I really got into New Wave), but also took a very long time, of which I do not have at the end of this Hell Year.
So for 2019, you get my top 10 albums. And yes, they came out in 2019.
#1 Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow
Sharon's gotta be my top album of 2019 because there were just so. Many. Hits. She made Obama's Songs of the Summer List! Van Etten is truly incredible live, especially when she just SCREAMS in Seventeen. Her Song Exploder episode of this song is pretty good too.
Also worth listening to are "Comeback Kid," the mesmerizing "Jupiter 4," "No One's Easy to Love," and the slow intro track "I Told You Everything."
#2 Hozier, Wasteland, Baby!
Sharon Van Etten barely beat out Hozier's second album, because it too just had so many amazing tracks on it. Paigey and I got to see him live in concert this year and it was once of the best concerts I've been to in my entire life. Everyone in the audience was so nice, because Hozier is nice, and his voice is notoriously amazing live. Case in point, this live version of NFWMB.
Listen to everything on this album. Our favorite bog-residing cryptid is at it again, and oh boy is it a Wasteland. There's a great line in "No Plan" where he's talking about the eventual destruction of the universe and is strangely optimistic about living while we can. At one point he said "I know who I want to be with when the world ends" and I FELT that!
I also love "Movement," "Talk," "Almost." I don't love "To Noise Making (Sing)."
#3 The National, I Am Easy to Find
You know I love me some sad dad rock, and my Boys came out with another album this year, they rocked it live, and they seemed to remember that women exist!! Some people didn't like how, accompanying Matt Berninger's signature growl, were women's voices, but I thought it was a really neat direction to take the band.
I recommend "Still Got My Fear," about marriage and the constant fight, every day, to stay together as time passes; "Where is Her Head" which is a total BOP and Matt comes in off-beat and slightly rambling "I think I'm hitting a wall" and the music accompanies that mood perfectly; "Quiet Light" and "Light Years" are sad and pretty a-la The National; we FINALLY get a recorded version of "Rylan"; but I think my favorite song has to be "So Far So Fast."
There's a lyric that hits real close to home since I live so far from my friends, it's like I forget who I am when I'm not around them:
"Don't you know someday somebody will come and find you? If you don't know who you are anymore, they will remind you We don't see you around here anymore, it's okay I will say your name out loud and you will be home"
The idea that it's okay to not always be around them, there are people that Know you and will bring you back to them is just...so comforting. Ah, submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known!
SKIP: "Hey Rosie," "Roman Holiday," "Not in Kansas."
#4 James Blake, Assume Form
Sometimes James Blake is a little too experimental for me, but he took much more of an R&B lean with this one, which I guess makes sense because he produces a ton of rap music. Those relationships must have paid off because he gets Andre 3000 on "Where's the Catch" and it's very good, as is Travis Scott in "Mile High."
Assume Form is ostensibly about his girlfriend, actress Jameela Jamil, and the lyrics are so sweet! "Power On," for instance, has lyrics like "Have you every co-existed so easily? Let's go home and talk shit about everyone, let's go home, finally." "Into the Red" is similarly sweet, about how you're so dedicated to someone you go in the red for them...fairly obvious I suppose.
Skip "Don't Miss It," and maybe "Lullaby for my Insomniac," unless you're Meghan, who loves it.
#5 Maggie Rogers, Heard it in a Past Life
I found Maggie on an episode of Song Exploder, actually, before I heard Alaska, and THEN saw her adorable and INCREDIBLE Tiny Desk Concert. Her album, which came out after, did NOT disappoint.
It's impossible to name all my favorites because she's just so cool but "On + Off" just starts off amazing and keeps going, "Light On," and "Back in my Body."
But my favorite has to be "Fallingwater." How the hell does she hit that note right off the bat? And LIVE?
#6 Better Oblivion Community Center (Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst)
If "Stranger in the Alps" came out this year you'd best believe it would've been on this list. Phoebe Bridgers is a current favorite of mine, I love that Slytherin goth meme queen, and as far as albums/EPs go, she is 3 for 3: first her solo album, then boygenius, and now BOCC, with legendary Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst. They also have a Tiny Desk.
"Dylan Thomas" is their upbeat single, but I really love "Service Road," which is, of course, sad! "Sleepwalkin'" is also great. Honestly, everything is good, I love how much they use unison, great job kids.
#7 Lizzo, Cuz I Love You
Lizzo has been grinding so long and I'm so glad her singles from, like, 2016, are getting broad acclaim. You don't need links to her songs, you know it already. More people should listen to "Heaven Help Me" though.
#8 Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride
I still miss Rostam with my whole heart, but the addition of the ladies of Haim ALMOST made up for it. "This Life" is really, really great. "Flower Moon" is unlike anything Vampire Weekend has done before. I don't love "How Long?" in that way that like, you say a word too many times, it loses its meaning. Now I never wanna hear Ezra say "long" ever again.
#9 Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Does this album have any of my favorite LDR songs? NO. But it does have one of the most cohesive themes and I can listen to it forever. Maybe it's basic, but I really love the title track line "your poetry's bad and you blame the news."
"Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have" is also spectacular. AND "Doin Time" is an EXCELLENT cover.
I HATE how she responded to criticism but that doesn't make the album any less good, at least for now! But I do not care for "Bartender."
#10 Bon Iver, i,i
Listen, I am a huge 22, A Million evangelist, I think it is by far the best Bon Iver album out there, and I know a lot of people hate it. This...was not as good, in my opinion, but I would follow Justin Vernon to the ends of the earth and "Holyfields," "U (Man Like)," and "Hey, Ma" are enough to push this into my top ten. The lyric videos are also absolutely gorgeous. Vernon clearly puts a lot of thought into the totality of the album--he is a producer, after all.
Aaand in a postscript, here are some songs/albums that I just really like this year that either didn't make the album cut or came out in years past
Manchester Orchestra, Black Mile to the Surface (it is physically impossible to tell you how many times I streamed this incredible, depressing album. Listen to it in order, as each song transitions into the next! Refreshing that they still do that!)
Death Cab for Cutie, No Room in Frame
Boygenius
Phoebe Bridgers, in particular, this double feature with Noah Gunderson
Big Thief LISTEN I AM SORRY BIG THIEF, I KNOW YOU HAD TWO ALBUMS COME OUT THIS YEAR, BUT THEY WERE NOT MY PERSONAL TOP TEN EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE BOTH ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. Please, please please do yourself a favor and listen to this live version of Not
Love it if we made it, The 1975
Alvvays, Marry Me, Archie
Lucy Dacus, Night Shift
Bon Iver playing CREATURE FEAR live, will always be the most cathartic song
Robyn, Honey (already loved the album but I got super into the song)
Perfume Genius
In A River, Rostam
All that new Harry Styles stuff. I AM STILL LISTENING TO FINE LINE, IT ONLY DIDN'T MAKE MY TOP TEN BECAUSE I'M STILL SITTING WITH IT
Rosalía, Malamente, Con Altura
Cigarettes After Sex
Normani, Motivation (if you haven't seen the video what are you doing with your life)
Dua Lipa, Don't Start Now
When is SZA coming out with a new album
Got real in to Pink Floyd this year
Sufjan Stevens has the entire Carrie & Lowell album live on Youtube and it's my go-to study video, it's also live on Spotify!
Radiohead, always, forever.
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