Beyoncé’s two most popular albums of the past year renaissancea return to late 20th-century disco and house music, and Taylor Swift’s midnight, returned to the fun of the club nights that helped her become a pop star. An impressive number of artists are looking the other way: inward, to create new works that aim in various ways to address personal and enigmatic issues of the heart and mind. Here are 10 of the year’s best and 10 more worth listening to. (The list is alphabetical by album title, not ranked by preference.)
With her latest album, Olsen is no longer interested in proving her indie edge, this time shifting her musical mode towards country rock. The well-crafted song touches on the enduring themes of finding love and losing loved ones in the music of a big band.
You don’t have to know the crazy ambitious conceit of this song cycle to enjoy its sheer beauty and emotion. Her five composers of contemporary significance (all women) collaborated to set to music Carolyn an excerpt from her Forche epic poem “On Earth”. Through her 40 short tracks composed by Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw and Sarah Kirkland Snider, the music of this song cycle forms a kind of map between life and death.
The albums on this list have me coming back to play again and again for the pleasure they proudly provide. Quesada, a multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Black Puma, nods to bolero and mariachi in this original collection of sounds, fresh enough to feel like the original, like a cover. A cover with a lot of inventions.
Multicultural English pop group Ibibio Sound Machine are known for their frenzied fusion of Afrobeat funk and electro, mixing elements of traditional West African music with disco. For their fourth album, the eight-piece ensemble handed over production to London synthpop team Hot Chip. Fun hypnosis.
In every song she sings, Salvanto has always welcomed ghosts. It’s the spirit of her predecessors in jazz, theater music, pop, and the various folk spheres she draws on, sometimes defying with steely aims. On most of the songs on this album, her sixth album, Spectral her image is almost self-reflective. 7 of the 12 tracks are original songs, mostly Salvanto’s inner stories.
Like many of history’s most important pop stars, Rosalia has a rare ability to use her fame to create ever more adventurous art and elevate her audience in the process. She has made a name for herself by modernizing flamenco, becoming an increasingly sophisticated hybrid player since her debut, combining and recombining elements of reggaeton, electro and minimalist her trap while also creating The Weeknd’s music. We are producing experimental bachata with help.
This art-pop project from Welsh singer-songwriter Kate Le Bon is angular and catchy, boring and subdued, and at the same time engrossingly elusive. Written in the early stages of the pandemic, Pompeii Named after the realm of inevitable doom evoked by its understated and eerie music. Still, something positive is spread through Le Bon’s creative imagination and the joy of tinkering with what can still be done in the time before the lava flows.
In metal music, as in Gregorian chant, polka, and all categories of rigidly fixed, highly formalized music, good is generally measured in fine gradations of variation and nuance. Five-piece British metal band Ithaca not only excel in the right increments, but also stand out among modern vintage groups with the formidable Dark Goddess vocals by lead her singer Djamila Azzouz.
Composed as the score for a new production by his partner Alan Weifels’ Dance Company, ugly season A collection of random-sounding non-linear compositions by multi-instrumentalist and singer Michael Hadreas. It wouldn’t be a failure if Hadreas wasn’t decidedly more serious than his previous five offbeat pop albums, which he released under the name Perfume Genius. Bursting with queer-friendly ideas and aural surprises.
Frenzy dream fantasy of day and night in the impossible Caribbean Sea, summer without you It works playfully with an unlikely variety of Latin music styles, including reggaeton, denbow, mambo, merengue, bomba, and bachata. Bunny is also a solid rapper, with an easy flow and natural, unpretentious rhymes.
Also worth listening to:
Chloe and the next 20th centuryFather John Misty. FosalaBjörk. from a bird’s eye view,heart. talentedcoffee; In the spirit of NtuNduduzo Makhathini; JudeJulian Lennon. sick!earl sweatshirt. sometimes foreversoccer mom. Song of Ascension: Volume 1—Distancethe Dave Douglas Quintet. view with roomTrish Clowes.