While I don’t think any of the albums of this year (well, last year seeing as it’s now March…) quite hit the highs of Magdalena Bay’s Imaginal Disk or Geordie Greep’s The New Sound, this was still a fantastic year for music overall. Like my move ranking, don’t put too much stock into the specific placements on the list, I adored all of these albums, the list is just because the format is fun.
Any of the honourable mentions I didn’t rate was because they either aren’t really albums, or I just never got around to given them a numbered rating.
The List
10. Laufey - A Matter of Time
After years of nagging from my friends, I gave Laufey’s previous album Bewitched a shot. It never managed to click with me, but after A Matter of Time I have to wonder if I was just in the wrong headspace when I first listened to her music. This album is enchanting in all the right ways, turning cleaning the house into a waltz through a magical winter forest. Laufey’s voice is incredible, the instrumentation is lush and layered, and it overall is captivating in a way many albums fail to be. It’s not groundbreaking in any way, but it does what it does so well it was only A Matter of Time before I fell in love with it.
4/5
9. Doja Cat - Vie
All of Doja Cat’s previously albums all failed to stick out as a cohesive set of songs, leaving the album experience hampered by the patter of a couple bangers and a lot of duds. Vie doesn’t really change that pattern all that much, there are still a couple of bangers, except this time the duds aren’t nearly as weak. The 90s throwback sound really works for me here, and lends the album an overall sonic consistency that makes it an easy listen all the way through. Turns out throwing a bunch of saxophone all over Doja Cat’s music makes it way better, who would have thought.
4/5
8. The Beths - Straight Line Was a Lie
The Beths’ previous album, Expert in a Dying Field was such a warm embrace of an album despite the cynical undertones. Straight Line Was a Lie turns up the darkness a little bit, but the grooves here are still infections and the vocals still make this a homely album to come back to.
4/5
7. Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
Some of the most soul crushing pop you can listen to. Of all the albums on this listen, this one probably paints the most clear picture of the ways shifting relationships can damage us. It’s earnest, it’s heartfelt, it will make you cry, and it still manages to be incredibly catchy. Hayley Williams has captured something really good here and I hope she iterates on this sound and these themes to create something more cohesive than this managed to be.
4/5
6. Miley Cyrus - Something Beautiful
Something Beautiful felt like a bit of a left turn for Miley Cyrus, given it was a move away from the more standard pop fare of Endless Summer Vacation to a more laid back, chill rock vibe that I just couldn’t help but be enamoured by. The instrumentation is lush and spacious, and gives so much room for her vocals to shine through, lending this album a very unique texture through the uniqueness of her voice. Throwing this on feels like watching the sunrise through a thick grey fog on an alien planet, completely enveloped in sound and yet not at all. Not much else sounds quite like this, and it’s a unique direction I’d love to see her explore more.
4/5
5. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island
Unfortunately for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Nintendo released a game with 278 tracks all just as good as “Deadstick” and occupying a similar sonic space. Fortunately for them however, Phantom Island provides a cohesive listening experience a game soundtrack can’t match, even if I couldn’t help but compare the orchestral arrangements of both albums.
Which isn’t to say that Phantom Island falls short in comparison; far from it, it is just as good as many of the arrangements on the Mario Kart World OST. Like I highlighted before, “Deadstick” is one of my favourite tracks of the year for the sheer energy it contains.
But the album can also slow down and get more atmospheric on tracks like “Lonely Cosmos” or “Eternal Return”, while the closer “Grow Wings and Fly” has a sweet callback to “Shanghai” from Butteryfly 3000.
Lyrically the highlight for me is on “Eternal Return”, with musings about a relationship and a child, which give this album such a saccharine feel.
It’s a little messy at times, but I deeply enjoyed my time with this album and I’d really like to hear King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard try out this sound some more.
4/5
4. Demi Lovato - It’s Not That Deep
A pop album without an outright dud in the tracklist is a rare thing and something to be celebrated. Even Carly Rae Jepsen manages a “Beach House” once in a blue moon, despite her overall consistency. But it’s that consistency that makes It’s Not That Deep so good, because there isn’t really a bad song of the bunch here. It’s just a really solid, danceable pop album that can slip on in the background, or provide just enough depth to listen attentively to. “Let You Go” and “Little Bit” are the highlight for me, with the former being a great earworm about letting go of a failing relationship, and the latter being a great teasy song about wanting someone just a “little bit”. The closer “Ghost” is also a sweet metaphor about wanting your partner to stick around and haunt you if you were to lose them.
I don’t think this album will stick out for most people, but if you enjoy the lyrical space that Carly Rae Jepsen occupies and enjoy a good dance-pop album, there really aren’t many better options than this.
4/5
3. Mario Kart World OST
This is 278 (!) tracks of some of the best music that gaming has to offer, and it’s criminal that there isn’t an official way to listen to the music in-game, let alone outside of it. Were this game’s soundtrack just the fifty-odd tracks in the base game it would be one of the best soundtracks of the year, and there just so happens to be another 10 hours of some of the best music ever written for a game, period.
The combination of the strong musical history of the Mario Kart and general Super Mario franchise makes for such a strong base to begin with, and pretty well every remix here is either an objective improvement to the original song or a unique and interesting companion to the original. In a lot of ways some of these remixes, particularly the EDM remix of “Baby Park” or the various ska remixes around the soundtrack feel like direct acknowledgement of work that fans have done remixing Nintendo music. Seriously though, go listen to that “Baby Park” remix. The choice to make it an EDM track was an inspired one, to say the least.
The only reason this doesn’t rank higher is because it’s not an album, but the amount of talent and artistry on display here is just breathtaking to witness. This is a generation soundtrack, the sort of thing that needs to be savoured and the miracle that it exists at all appreciated. I can scarcely even talk about this further, both because I lack the vocabulary to properly articulate why this is so good, but also because the scope is just so large that to even try would provide little benefit than just listening to the soundtrack would.
5/5
2. twenty one pilots - Breach
As the culmination of the story started in Blurryface through my favourite Trench along with Scaled and Icy and Clancy, Breach has a lot to live up to. While I don’t think this quite hits the highs of Trench, that it comes as close as it does while being as consistently good as it is says a lot.
Unlike Clancy, there aren’t any big missteps along the lines of “Lavish”, nor is the pacing slowed by a song like “The Craving” in the middle of the album. No, Breach keeps up the energy almost all the way through without feeling tiring while packing in so many lyrical and musical references to previous moments in the band’s catalogue while still managing to carve out its own identity.
The sound of this album manages to be a little bit heavier and rock heavy than Clancy, echoing back to Trench while not just copying it. This is while still having some of the bands best hooks, like the choruses on “Robot Voices” and “Tally”. “Drum Show” and “Center Mass” feature Josh Dun’s drumming at its best, and in general the mixing of the drums on this album lend it such a unique feel.
It’s been said before but lyrically this album feels like a much tighter Vessel or even Regional at Best. Having gone back to listen to those albums this one really feels like a maturation of the ideas on those albums, echoed by the album’s themes of the cyclical nature of mental health struggles.
This theme is hard to talk about though without talking about “Drag Path”, whose exclusion from the base album is baffling given how strong the song is and how strongly it feeds into the themes of the album. It’s my favourite on the album after “Tally”, and I wish it was on the base album.
That oddity aside, this really is a phenomenal album that champions such an optimistic outlook on what it looks like to grapple with depression and other mental health struggles, while not being preachy or overt with its themes. It’s content to let the metaphors and the lore sit there, waiting to be understood and rewarding the listener all the more for it. It meant a great deal to me this year, and I suspect it will continue to much in the same way Trench has for me in years past.
5/5
1. Rosalía - LUX
While not as personal for me as Breach was, LUX is such a stunning display of artistry that it was by far the most I was impressed by an album this year. Rosalía gives an outstanding vocal performance across this album, accompanied by some incredible orchestration. Orchestral Pop has never sounded as good as it does on this album. And this isn’t some bog-standard pop album even, Rosalía is very content to mix things up both sonically and structurally, from the choppy strings on “Reliquia” to whatever is going on in “Berghain”. I lack the words to articulate what makes this album so good, but I think the artistry on display is more than apparent just by listening to it, so if nothing else from this list I implore you to give it a shot.
5/5
Honourable Mentions
Magdalena Bay - Nice Day
While they may have released a compilation of the eight songs they released this year, I didn’t feel they fit cohesively enough to deserve a spot on the top 10 list. This is despite these eight tracks being among some of the finest music released this year, in my humble opinion. The strings on “Star Eyes”, the bass on “Paint Me a Picture”, the Steely Dan-esque “Black Eyed-Susan Climb”; so many moments on these songs are incredibly memorable and demonstrate that Magdalena Bay are operating on another plane of existence from everyone else and I’m incredibly excited to see what these songs are foreshadowing from them.
Christopher Larkin - Hollow Knight: Silksong OST
Hollow Knight had one of the best game soundtracks of all time, and Silksong takes everything great about it and just does more of it, much like the game itself. It feels like a more refined Hollow Knight soundtrack which was all it needed to be. Hearing “Choral Chambers” for the first time was a transcendent experience not unlike hearing “City of Tears” for the first time, and that such an experience could be replicated is an achievement all in itself.
Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons
Who knew that all you needed to make the Stardew Valley soundtrack even better was simply making some of the finest orchestral arrangements of the songs? These versions of the tracks really make the soundtrack sing, and I’d rather listen to nothing else while sitting inside on a rainy day.
C418 - Wanderstop OST
After years of dreaming of Minecraft: Volume Gamma, this isn’t that but it may as well be. It certainly scratched that itch more than enough, making this soundtrack one of my most played albums of the year and leaving me all the more confused as to how Mojang could leave such a talented composer in the dust.
Sonic Racing Crossworlds OST
The third best major racing game soundtrack of the year, it still manages to continue the Sonic franchise’s streak of having incredible music (if we ignore this crime). The lows here aren’t great, but the highs, like Ocean View interpolating the Sonic R theme, are some of the best game music around.
Aly & AJ - Silver Deliverer
It’s certainly no a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun, but after I struggled to get into With Love From this was a welcome return to form.
3/5
Ava Max - Don’t Click Play
Don’t Click Play might be a bit of an exaggeration, this album is worth at least a little bit of a listen, particularly if you’re into Ava Max’s particular brand of dance-pop. It’s nothing ground-breaking, and certainly not nearly as consistent as It’s Not That Deep, but bangers like Take My Call are more than worth given this album a play.
2/5
Sam Fender - People Watching
The War on Drugs is one of my favourite bands of all time, so the highest praise I can give this is that it feels just like a follow-up to I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Given the frontman of The War on Drugs, Adam Granduciel, produced this album, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but his work on Craig Finn’s Always Been didn’t hit me nearly as hard. While this album doesn’t manage to quite hit the high of moments like “Strangest Thing” or “I Don’t Live Here Any More”, the title track “People Watching” does more than enough to invoke the drive to race forward, blitzing headfirst into whatever problems you current face just as well as the of The War on Drugs.
4/5