The 11 Best Albums Of 2016

2016: It was a rough one.

Usually, music is our escape from the world around us. But what happens when reality intrudes? Like when our favourite artists die? Or when pop stars turn political? Or when Kanye West needs to be rushed to hospital for mental health support?

Whatever music you enjoyed listening to this year, there was no isolating it from the events going down around us. Two of the year’s biggest songs—Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” and Twenty-One Pilots’ “Stressed Out”, which, full disclosure, I despised—drearily dealt with millennial future panic, indicating, truly, that pop is not about bubble-gum anymore.

The only way out is through. Being a music fan in 2016 meant embracing the cavernous, swirling darkness, and looking for the glimmer of light at the other end of the tunnel. Did anyone find it? The Knowles sisters gave it a red hot go. Frank Ocean had two separate cracks. Even The Avalanches and A Tribe Called Quest ended their decades-long droughts to offer their assistance.

Some efforts worked. Some efforts… didn’t.

(The Lonely Island tackled the year in their own unique way: They devoted an entire soundtrack to spoofing self-important pop music.)

Consider the below a time capsule for 2016. If we’re lucky, many of our favourites—and the themes they’re dealing with—will sound dated and irrelevant in the near future. Fingers crossed.

Runners Up (Alphabetically, By Artist): Wildflower by The Avalanches, Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest, “Awaken, My Love!” by Childish Gambino, Islah by Kevin Gates, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine by Hamilton Leithauser / Rostam, 99.9% by Kaytranada, Puberty 2 by Mitski, Blastoma by Ngaiire, Endless by Frank Ocean, My Woman by Angel Olsen, Anti by Rihanna, Birds in the Trap Sing Brian McKnight by Travis Scott, We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest, The Get Down OST by Various Artists.

Woulda Made The List, But We Preferred Them As Movies: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping by The Lonely Island, The Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (in One More Time With Feeling.

Best Song Of The Year That Unfortunately Wasn’t On Any Album: “Keep Your Name” by Dirty Projectors.

The Top 11:

(Coarse language warning for the following music videos.)

11. Malibu by Anderson .Paak

After stealing Compton out from under Dr. Dre in 2015, Anderson .Paak delivered his breakout record at the top of 2016. Malibu is indeed an ‘anytime’ kind-of album. There’s no better party-starter than “Come Down”; nothing better to chill-out to than “Put Me Thru”; nothing better for quiet contemplation than “The Bird”. Rather than sounding frenzied, it’s wholly satisfying; Paak's cry-howl of a voice the connective tissue.

10. Next Thing by Frankie Cosmos

The Weeknd and Drake delivered two of 2016’s biggest disappointments, partly due to bloat: both neared a ruinous 80 minutes. They should have taken a page out of Frankie Cosmos’ book. On Next Thing, she delivered 15 earworms in under 30 minutes. The creative project of Greta Kline (yes, daughter of Kevin Kline) was littered with catchy hooks and sweetly-funny observations.

9. One Day All Of This Won’t Matter Anymore by Slow Club

There were more important releases this year, and many were more memorable. But this Sheffield duo, which has historically bounced between folk and pop with mixed results, finally found equilibrium on One Day All Of This Won’t Matter Anymore. It gave us the best ‘easy listening’ record of ’16—and we mean that as a compliment. It doesn’t get finer than “Where The Light Gets Lost”, on which Charles Watson sings about crippling, romantic inaction, atop gentle slide-guitar, with Rebecca Taylor harmonising beside him. If this is the club, where do we join?

8. Coloring Book by Chance the Rapper

Technically, it’s a mixtape, and you can’t even buy it (Coloring Book is a streaming exclusive), but in 2016, the music industry finally caught up to Chance the Rapper and decided, for his third free tape, they should shower him in Grammy nominations anyway. (It’s the first streaming exclusive to achieve such a feat.) His energetic, buoyant gospel album was an unlikely burst of joy, courtesy of instant anthems “No Problem” and “All Night”, not to mention an unofficial sequel to Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam”, with the Chicago Children’s Choir-bolstered opener “All We Got”. On “Beam”, where Chance guested, he sang, “I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the Grammy.” Nope. You just gotta be this good.

7. Blackstar by David Bowie

The death of David Bowie was a surprise to everyone but those closest to the glam rock legend. Coming on January 10, it heralded the cosmic joke of 2016: that things were already bad and only going to get worse. Two days before dying, he shared Blackstar, a jazzy, Kendrick Lamar-inspired meditation on death and the great beyond. Though, it wasn't without a sense of humour. On "Lazarus", from heaven high, he sings: “Dropped my cell phone down below. Ain’t that just like me?” How many get to say they went out on top?

6. Freetown Sound by Blood Orange

This year, American musicians responded in force to the continued killings of young black men by their police. Dev Hynes, the accomplished multi-instrumentalist (and Carly Rae Jepsen producer), did so with help from Ta-Nehisi Coates, slam poet Ashlee Haze and, yes, Carly Rae. On Freetown Sound (named after the capital of Sierra Leone; a striking parallel to make with the U.S.), he combines slinky soul with heartbreaking tales of lives taken too soon. He dedicated it to “everyone told they’re not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way." Not one week after its release, there were further shootings (of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile), culminating with the murder of five officers in Texas. Freetown Sound was the soundtrack to the continued, cyclical tragedy of 2016.

5. A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead

Back in May, Thom Yorke and the rest of his dour pals licked their fingers, held them up to the wind and recognised that things were about to change for good, though not necessarily for the better. A Moon Shaped Pool is a grim endeavour—and by Radiohead’s standards, that is saying something—one with even greater resonance after the Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election. When Donald Trump was voted President-elect, Yorke simply shared lyrics to booming opener “Burn the Witch” on Twitter. What else needed to be said? This is a low flying panic attack.

Read the full review.

4. Lemonade by Beyoncé

I may subjectively prefer three other albums, but there’s no denying that this was the most seismic, significant release of 2016. Lemonade changed the game so significantly, I wasn’t sure if I should include it in my Top 10 Albums or Top 10 Movies. A seeming take-down of husband Jay Z and tribute to black womanhood, all in one, it thrust Beyoncé into the middle of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and helped her to transcend ‘girl power’ iconography to achieve full-on activist status. The only moment that rang false on Lemonade was the happy ending. However, if Beyoncé—the one remaining global superstar adored across the board (boycotters aside)—had gone full on apocalyptic with her long day’s journey into night, I don’t think we could have taken it. Not in 2016.

Read the full review.

3. A Seat at the Table by Solange

A #1 album. A guest spot on SNL. A better record than her more high-profile sis. In 2016, Solange finally shook off the perception that she was second banana to Beyoncé (and proved she had more to offer than high-kicks in an elevator). And yet, none of these seemed like actual concerns on the album itself, which, again, is less about one, singular Knowles, and more about an entire community. On A Seat at the Table, she demands respect, protection and representation. And in its most heartbreaking moment, Lil Wayne offers a rare, lucid confession, talking about how he once considered suicide. Success, fame and recognisable family names offer little peace in black America.

Read the full review.

2. Blond by Frank Ocean

“Where’s the album, Frank?” Ocean could have sat out the rest of the decade, left us to survive on the rations of Channel Orange, and remained the most beguiling R&B artist of the new millennium. Instead, after much teasing, more delays and an Apple-exclusive fake-out titled Endless, which simply saw him croon half-finished mood pieces over video of him making a staircase (still good enough to reach the honourable mentions), he dropped Blond, an expansive hymnbook of gargantuan achievement. At the time of its unveiling, in my rapturous, flowery review, I called it “a collage of sound and poetry,” and “a communion with the dead,” and it is indeed both of those things. Four months, and many listens, later, it is one thing above all: just beautiful.

Read the full review.

1. The Life of Pablo by Kanye West

While the Knowles sisters looked outward, Kanye went inward, delivering a bizarre, paranoid manifesto from the absolute upper echelon of fame, detachment and, admit it, genius. Good thing he, as a personality, remains the most fascinating figure in pop. Even the tabloid narratives that were weaved around the periphery of his music—a $53 million debt, repaid; an actual diamond heist; Snapchat-related revenge; a harrowing breakdown—were utterly compelling. Most significantly, Pablo demonstrated his immense talents, and immediately ranked among his best works, despite him never “officially” publishing a final version. In fact, several weeks after it debuted, he tacked on the melancholy “Saint Pablo”, a response to the album’s reception. On it, he sings: “This generation’s closest thing to Einstein; so don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” We know the first thing’s true. We pray for the second.

Read the full review.

Over to you. What was your best album of 2016?

Photo: Student Edge illustration (Columbia/Boys Don’t Cry/HBO)