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Top Albums Of The Year

Last year felt particularly cruel as we watched so many of our pop-culture icons get taken from us without warning. By December, we all yearned for a pause, an ending, a reset. However, none of the comforts that come with the hopeful act of flipping a calendar page lasted long into 2017. Instead, we’ve felt the pain more acutely and more personally than a year ago. Most of us have witnessed our core values challenged, felt our realities shaken, and endured daily reminders that who we are in our most basic integrity remains very much at stake. For that reason, it’s been a year in which we’ve turned to music out of necessity perhaps more than ever. The albums you find on this list aren’t just records we admired or caught ourselves dancing to. In many cases, they’re part of the reason we’re still here. They’ve consoled and empowered us, understood how we’ve felt, and in a time of such ugly, bitter divisiveness, reminded us that we’re never truly alone in mind, heart, or spirit.

소유, 봄에 돌아온 ‘음색 여신’…새 앨범 수록곡 티저 공개

 

These are the 50 albums we’ve leaned on most this year. Here’s hoping they don’t have to do such heavy lifting in 2018.

–Matt Melis
Editorial Director

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50. JOHNNY JEWEL – WINDSWEPT

Top Albums

Origin: Los Angeles, California

The Gist: After placing Chromatics’ Dear Tommy in the Red Room, Italians Do It Better producer and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Jewel issued this daring solo album mostly inspired by his work behind the scenes on Twin Peaks: The Return.

Why It Rules: With Windswept, Jewel sounds more assured as a producer than ever, conjuring up a moody amalgamation of his signature brooding synthpop and a style of free-form jazz akin to David Lynch go-to Angelo Badalamenti.

Essential Tracks: “Windswept”, “Slow Dreams”, and “Between Worlds”

–Michael Roffman

 

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49. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER – GOOD TIME

Origin: Wayland, Massachusetts

 

The Gist: Two years after the interstellar, metallic Garden of Delete, esoteric electronic experimentalist Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never) returned to score a crime drama starring Robert Pattinson. Retaining his own burning palette and pushing it through a Vangelis/Carpenter mesh, Lopatin continues to find new ways to inject anxiety and awe under the skin.

Why It Rules: A somber, piano-heavy collaboration with Iggy Pop in which the Stooge dreams about petting crocodiles is a good place to start, but Lopatin delivers the high-voltage thrills all on his own.

Essential Tracks: “Hospital Escape / Access-A-Ride”, “The Acid Hits”, and “The Pure and the Damned”

 

–Lior Phillips

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48. JAY SOM – EVERYBODY WORKS

Origin: Oakland, California

The Gist: Multiple-instrumentalist Melina Duterte (aka Jay Som) rode her production and recording acumen on debut LP, Turn Into, to a deal with indie major Polyvinyl for Everybody Works.

Why It Rules: In what can only be described as bedroom maximalism, Duterte dug her lyrics into the granular, banalities of existence and aimed her production at expansive soundscapes. On “The Bus Song”, Duterte sings, “I can be whoever I want to be,” and that’s exactly who she is on Everybody Works.

 

Essential Tracks: “The Bus Song”, “Everybody Works”, and “For Light”

–Geoff Nelson

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47. THE JUJU – EXCHANGE

Origin: Chicago, Illinois

The Gist: After rising to session-player fame by collaborating with Chance the Rapper, Kanye West, and Vic Mensa, 24-year-old trumpeter Segal (FKA Donnie Trumpet) wrangled three fellow Chicago musicians together to expand his interest in experimental jazz, ultimately showcasing how the backbeat of hip-hop’s new sound is worthy of its own spotlight.

Why It Rules: On their debut LP, The Juju Exchange follow in the footsteps of producers like Flying Lotus and Knxwledge — not in sound, but in audience awareness, drawing listeners out of their usual jazz associations and into a world of smooth, free-form, low-key musings that inspire with their use of ample space.

Essential Tracks: “The Circuit”, “We Good”, and “Morning Of”

–Nina Corcoran

‘싸이 그룹’ TNX, 데뷔 앨범 ‘WAY UP’ 포스터 공개

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The Best And Worst Musical Hosts

This weekend, Chance the Rapper will take the stage to host Saturday Night Live, leaving the musical guest duties to Eminem. Last weekend, Taylor Swift rejoined the late-night sketch institution for a couple of songs, but she also handled full hosting responsibilities back in 2009. Ever since Paul Simon emceed the second-ever episode back in 1975, SNL has granted adventurous musicians the opportunity to try their hand at sketch work.

Episodes hosted by non-professional actors are always dicey; there are few experiences more exquisitely painful than watching a good-natured quarterback stumble his way through a commercial parody. Musicians generally have a better go of things, channeling their natural stage presence into a more precise format. But when they tank, they tank hard. We’ve surveyed Saturday Night Live’s long history of turning the host’s mic over to music stars.

The Good
Debbie Harry

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On Valentine’s Day 1981, Debbie Harry’s acting career (she had memorable roles in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and John Waters’ Hairspray) mostly lay ahead of her. America knew her as the lead singer of the new wave outfit Blondie and an emblem of post-punk glamour, but a winningly game performance heralded bright things to come. She bounds onstage for the monologue in her sporty tux and works the crowd like she’s bantering between sets, and beams like the proud kid she is when she shows off her parents in the crowd. For sheer surrealist magnificence, there’s no matching the Waxmans in SoHo sketch, in which Harry tentatively attempts to come out as a lesbian to her uncle Gilbert Gottfried.

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton on SNL.
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Dolly Parton on SNL. Photograph: NBC
The country and western superstar’s entire schtick revolves around having a sense of humor about herself – about her manners, about her assorted surgical upkeep, about her trashy-made-flashy style. Accordingly, she was a good sport as the host of an April 1989 episode that took potshots at her spotty career on the silver screen (her film Rhinestone was still an instant punchline) and, more than anything, her breasts. The virtue of Parton’s performance was in transcending otherwise repugnant material, including a monologue revolving entirely around her boobs and another sketch titled Planet of the Enormous Hooters. All through it, Parton remains a consummate professional, grinning and rolling with the blows.

Justin Timberlake

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The live-wire stakes of Saturday Night Live are perfectly suited to the charismatic showman’s skill set. From his earliest days as a Mouseketeer through his stint with ’NSync, Timberlake has thrived on the nourishment of an adoring crowd, and the routinely glowing reception he gets at Studio 6H has powered him through five appearances as host. In his recurring Bring It on Down to ______ville sketches, Timberlake hits a positive feedback loop with the audience, going bigger and getting bigger laughs, which in turn amplify his energy even more. But his finest work has taken place outside NBC’s facilities, in his regular appearances on the Lonely Island’s digital shorts. The 90s-R&B lothario of Motherlover and Dick in a Box could sustain his solo career.

The Bad
MC Hammer

MC Hammer and David Spade
MC Hammer and David Spade. Photograph: NBC
In December 1991, MC Hammer was on top of the world. He had scored a chart-topping hit with U Can’t Touch This, and the song had made history earlier that year as the first rap track to crack the Record of the Year category at the Grammys. He had his own cartoon featuring a pair of talking shoes. What could go wrong? As it turns out, a wooden and uncomfortable style of acting, paired with some limp writing from a staff that clearly knew precious little about hip-hop. One sketch revolves around Hammer playing himself as he tries to get past a pushy receptionist to see Dick Clark, and even that seems like a tall order.

Justin Bieber

The swishy-haired Canadian singing sensation pulled double duty in a February 2013 episode, and while the cast member Bill Hader has already gone on record to confirm that the youngster was a backstage terror, he didn’t fare much better in front of the cameras. He couldn’t fit in on the regular sketches The Californians and The Miley Cyrus Show, and in the sketches that played on his heartthrob status, such as Valentine’s Dance and 50s Romance, he comes across first and foremost as … Justin Bieber. Perhaps it was impossible from the start for a boy already a parody of himself to lampoon his own persona – best to leave the Justin Bieber appearances to resident impersonator Kate McKinnon.

The Brooks
Garth Brooks

Tracey Morgan and Garth Brooks
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Tracey Morgan and Garth Brooks. Photograph: NBC
Brooks wasn’t the worst host SNL has ever seen, but his gig on 13 November 1999 was certainly one of the strangest. The country megastar turned SNL into another phase of his bizarre career pivot to “Chris Gaines”, a rock’n’roll alter ego Brooks had invented as part of a studio album that had debuted two months prior. Gaines, for whom Brooks created an entire fictional identity and planned an aborted film vehicle, performed as the musical guest and was credited independently. In one sketch from that evening, Tracy Morgan confronts Brooks and tells him to ditch the act, referring to the somewhat heavier-set character’s look as “Girth Brooks”. Brooks eventually came to his senses, but that episode remains a bizarre pop-cultural footnote.

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Beyonce: Album Review

What does it mean for Beyoncé to drop a new surprise album on the world within days of a giant like Prince leaving us? It’s a welcome reminder that giants still walk among us. Lemonade is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world’s most famous celebrity; it’s also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game. All over these songs, she rolls through heartbreak and betrayal and infidelity and the hangover that follows “Drunk In Love.” Yet despite all the rage and pain in the music, she makes it all seem affirming, just another chapter in the gospel according to Beyoncé: the life-changing magic of making a great big loud bloody mess.

There’s nothing as blissed-out on Lemonade as “XO” or “Countdown” or “Love On Top” – this is the queen in middle-fingers-up mode. When the first four songs on an album add up to “you cheated on me and you will pay,” then there’s a country song about her daddy teaching her to solve her problems with a gun, it’s hard not to believe Mrs. Carter might mean it when she sings about regretting the night she put that ring on it. Whatever she’s going through, she’s feeling it deep in these songs, and it brings out her wildest, rawest vocals ever, as when she rasps, “Who the fuck do you think I is? You ain’t married to no average bitch, boy!” She’s always elided the boundaries between her art and her life – especially since she really did grow up in public. But by the time she gets around to telling her husband “Suck on my balls, I’ve had enough,” there’s an unmistakable hint that Jay-Z might be living the hard-knock life these days.

Beyoncé dropped Lemonade on Saturday night right after her HBO special – one of those “world, stop” moments that she’s made her specialty. But the public spectacle can’t hide the intimate anguish in the music, especially in the powerhouse first half. She begins as a supplicant in “Pray You Can Hear Me,” alone with her wounded heart, and then explodes in “Hold Up,” which takes the staccato strings from Andy Williams’ Vegas-crooner classic “Can’t Get Used To Losing You” and a chorus hook from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ NYC punk ballad “Maps” (“They don’t love you like I love you”), with a Soulja Boy coda, as she mourns a husband who let all her good love go to waste.

Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous, from the Kendrick Lamar showcase “Freedom” to the country murder yarn that struts like buckskin-era early-1970s Cher (“Daddy Lessons”). She mixes in a spoken-word snippet from Jay-Z’s grandmother Hattie White, the obscure 1960s Mexican garage band Kaleidoscope, indie slop like Father John Misty, Animal Collective and (with a production credit) Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. Her guests range from James Blake (“Forward”) to the Weeknd (“6 Inch”). She goes full-on rock-queen in “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” making Jack White sound feistier than he has in years, as she compares herself to a dragon breathing fire – that’s an understatement – and samples the John Bonham drum thunder from “When The Levee Breaks.”

Yet the most astounding sound is always Bey’s voice, as she pushes to her bluesiest extremes, like the hilariously nasty way she sneers, “He’s always got them fucking ex-cuuuu-ses.” She hits some Plastic Ono Band-style primal-scream moments in the devastating ballad “Love Drought.” (“Nine times out of ten I’m in my feelings / But ten times out of nine I’m only human” is a stunning confession from a diva who’s always made such a fetish out of emotional self-control.) “Freedom” and “Formation” reach out historically, connecting her personal pain to the trauma of American blackness, with the power of Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark or Nina Simone’s Silk and Soul. She can’t resist adding a happy ending with “All Night,” where the couple kisses and makes up and lives happily ever after, or at least until morning. But it’s an uneasy coda, with the word “forgive” noticeably absent and the future still in doubt.

Whether Beyoncé likes it or not – and everything about Lemonade suggests she lives for it – she’s the kind of artist whose voice people hear their own stories in, whatever our stories may be. She’s always aspired to superhero status, even from her earliest days in a girl group that was tellingly named Destiny’s Child. (Once upon a time, back in the Nineties, “No No No” was the only Destiny’s Child song in existence – but make no mistake, we could already hear she was Beyoncé.) She lives up to every inch of that superhero status on Lemonade. Like the professional heartbreaker she sings about in “6 Inch,” she murdered everybody and the world was her witness.

Beyoncé journeys from rage to redemption on her powerful new album, ‘Lemonade.’ Watch here.

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United States of Music Podcast #4

Spotify releases a new original podcast, “United States of Music,” hosted by comedian Sasheer Zamata. The podcast series consists of six episodes, and uses Spotify listening data to uncover stories about people who make music, people who love music and the stories that connect them, one city at a time.

Sasheer Zamata, who is herself a big music fan, explains, “I’m excited to help share this show with listeners. I talked to some cool people across the US to learn about the music in their city and the impact it had on their lives, and I got a deeper look into the communities in this country than I thought I would. I can’t wait for people to hear these unique stories from artists and music fans.”

 

Each episode will take listeners to a different city across the United States, as it explores interesting, in some cases previously untold music stories that are deeply rooted in place. In addition, episodes feature artists like Tyler Glenn and Elaine Bradley of electro-pop band Neon Trees, poet and rapper Malcolm London, and LeNard Brown of soul group The Controllers, in addition to venue owners, fans, and local legends.

The series tells stories that range from funny to weird to moving, in cities such as Birmingham, Tucson and Provo. Listeners will discover why Chicagoans want to dance in the rain, when most people just want to curl up and listen to mellow music. Other episodes head to Southeast L.A., which has the most loyal music fans in the country, those that listen to Regional Mexican music, and Provo, Utah, where some of the biggest acts in electro-pop, including Neon Trees and Imagine Dragons, have gotten their start in a club named Velour.

Explore these stories and more throughout “United States of Music,” only on Spotify.

All episodes are available for streaming now at https://open.spotify.com/show/3iYwphRGrIjQiF3dLxChUg

Episode descriptions:

Episode 1: Blood Brothers (Provo, UT):

At Brigham Young University, students love to listen to white noise, for studying, for sleeping, and to soothe their children. But just a few minutes outside of campus, there’s a club called Velour. The venue’s longtime owner Corey Fox is credited with fostering local talent like Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, and The Moth & The Flame. But Corey Fox has been keeping a secret. Something he’s been holding onto his whole life, that could affect not only his life, but the fate of his beloved Velour, and the entire music community.

Episode 2: A Mix Tape in the Rain (Chicago, IL):

In most of the country when it rains people put on mellow music. But when it rains in Chicago, people dance. WHY? What is it about Chicago? (Featuring Malcolm London, Ohmme and Whitney).

Episode 3: The Iranian Cowboy (Tucson, AZ):

Over the decades, country music has created many outlaws, rebels, gamblers and ramblers, superstars, and pop idols. But it has only produced ONE Iranian Cowboy.

Episode 4: Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN):

For a long time, Dawn Watley, of the band Black Kids, thought that her music wasn’t important. That it couldn’t make an impact in the world. Then, she met Andrew.

Episode 5: King of Corridos (Southeast LA, CA):

A true crime story about one of the most beloved Mexican singers…ever: Chalino Sanchez.

Episode 6: The Soul Controller (Birmingham, AL):

When he was just 15 years old, one musical moment changed LeNard Brown’s life forever. And after 40 years, there’s still one song he refuses to sing. No no no no.

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Eminem Revival

Few texts in hip-hop are as bizarre as Eminem’s debut LP, Infinite. Released on a local Detroit label in 1996, it was either ignored or dismissed by those who rejected his whiteness and his borrowed aesthetic. Were it released in 2017, it might be celebrated for its scholarship of the form’s early classics, a la Joey Bada$$ or Roc Marciano. Instead, he was written off as a swagger jacker who sounded too much like Nas and AZ.

The criticism burned, and from that fire he formed his alter ego, Slim Shady. A manifestation of Marshall Mathers’ inner turmoil, the persona served as a vehicle for his darkest, most violent thoughts and helped him step out from the shadow of his forebears to channel the darkest parts of himself. On 1998’s The Slim Shady EP, he found his unique and disturbing voice. It caught the ear of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, who spent the next five years molding him into one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

In those early years, for all the controversy his lyrics caused, Slim Shady helped Mathers focus his energy, a cathartic outlet that was both messy and intensely fascinating. But after more than two decades, he’s older, well-fed, and in possession of pretty much every accolade there is to acquire. The Slim Shady suit no longer fits; once the outsider, he’s now the establishment. If Slim Shady fed on hate, what does he do now that he’s beloved? What motivates a healthy, sober, 45-year-old father with enough money for several lifetimes?

And if the beats knocked, it would probably be tolerable, too. But legendary executive producers Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin managed to stuff a bloated tracklist with uninspired production and instantly forgettable pop hooks. Even Beyoncé couldn’t save “Walk on Water,” a stale piano ballad that undercuts Eminem’s attempt to explore the weight of his self-doubt. The Alicia-Keys-featuring “Like Home” is equally limp and toothless, defanging Eminem’s attempt to battle Donald Trump. He sees himself as a crusader against his influence, champion of the bullied, a notebook full of disses at the ready. It’s not his fault that all Trump has to do to beat him is ignore him, but it is his fault that the beat makes it so easy to do so. Rubin’s contributions are particularly embarrassing; his re-hash of hits from the Rush/Def Jam days (“Heat,” “Remind Me”) suggest he’s completely out of ideas.

But while the long tracklist and equally protracted verses make for an exhausting listen, there are rewards for those that endure. The eponymous interlude features a short verse from the late Alice and the Glass Lake that sounds like a sketch for something potentially great. And on an album full of poorly matched beats and verses, the delicately morose guitar melody and heavy fuzz of the Cranberries“Zombie” suits his flow on “In Your Head” perfectly—even if the hook was pretty much cut and pasted from the original.

Eminem’s consistent run of mediocrity over the last 15 years has not tempered his album sales, and it’s unlikely to start now—he remains one of the most bankable acts in pop. But sales and fame have never been his primary motivation. He’s always wanted to be the best, and ever since he conquered the music world in the early aughts, it’s as if he has no idea where to go. As he raps with precision on “Believe”:

Man, in my younger days
That dream was so much fun to chase
It’s like I run in place
While this shit dangled in front of my face
But how do you keep up the pace
And the hunger pangs once you’ve won the race?
When that fuel exhaust is coolin’ off
’Cause you don’t got nothin’ left to prove at all
’Cause you done already hit ’em with the coup de grâce

These fears are relatable—what artist hasn’t struggled to find motivation?—if not necessarily interesting. But Revival is ultimately plagued by the same pitfalls as Infinite, which found him shadowboxing against ghosts, unable to land any punches. This time he’s competing with a version of himself that no longer exists. And though it’s easy to empathize with his creeping self-doubt, it’s tougher to swallow in the context of an album that ultimately proves that those doubts are correct.