Top Ten Albums of 2019

No, there was no new music this year from Adele. Or Alison Moyet. Or Jessie Ware—at least not beyond a pair of new singles. So perhaps 2020 will bring me that holy trinity of new albums.  

In the interim that was 2019, there were quite a few excellent new releases—only two by artists who have made a previous year-end list. Included in this year’s ranking are four albums from bands, two from male artists, and four from female artists—three of which are the artists’ debut albums.

I share these year-end lists because I love music—and I love sharing my favorite music picks in the hope that something here may pique your interest and you’ll end up with a new artist or two that you end up really digging.

Without further comment, my picks for this year’s ten best albums:  

10- FEVER DREAM / Of Monsters and Men

If you’ve yet to discover Icelandic indie folk/pop band Of Monsters and Men, make this one of your New Year’s resolutions. And FEVER DREAM—the band’s third album—is a great place to get acquainted. Trading the orchestral folk sound around which earlier efforts were largely centered, the five-piece band opts for a complex, at time disjointed, synthpop soundscape—complete with propulsive basslines, shapeshifting drumbeats, and unpredictable song structures anchored by the band’s patent lyrical poeticism.

Lead vocalist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and singer/guitarist Ragnar "Raggi" Þórhallsson alternate vocal duties on some tracks and are paired together on others to great harmonious effect.  Overall, FEVER DREAM is a bold departure from the band, bringing it out of the musical realm of Mumford & Sons and into the edgier dominion occupied by Arcade Fire.

Standout tracks: “Alligator,” “Wars,” and “Soothsayer”

9- FINE LINE / Harry Styles

The former One Direction singer earned high praise on my 2017 year-end ranking, with his eponymous debut album coming in at #2. He returned just before the strike of midnight this year with FINE LINE, the much-anticipated follow-up to that well-received set.

Tapping into a new flock of rock influences here like David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, and even Pink Floyd, the album breathes musically a little more than the decidedly sparser, Beatles-esque classic rock stylings of his debut. Incorporating some more jaunty tempos and lean funk-pop grooves, FINE LINE is a solid sophomore set that confirms Styles won’t be a one-note artist with a reliable formula. He’s the kind of singer-songwriter who’s going to dabble and stretch musically until he’s satisfied—and even then such satisfaction’s not likely.

Standout tracks: “Watermelon Sugar,” “Adore You,” and “She”

8- TRANSCENDANCE / Berlin

Marking the band’s first album with all three original members—vocalist Terri Nunn and co-founders John Crawford (bass, synthesizer) and David Diamond (synthesizer, guitar)—since 1984’s LOVE LIFE, the original incarnation of Berlin returned in 2019 with TRANSCENDANCE. The 80s New Wave darlings, who scored both an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Song for “Take My Breath Away” from the juggernaut TOP GUN soundtrack, are in fine form on the ten synth-pop tracks here, proving that creative lightning can indeed strike more than once.

On this eighth studio album (over the span of 41 years), Berlin employs much of what worked on their earlier efforts, not straying too far from the synthesizer-laden electro-pop formula that earned them legions of fans back in their heyday. Nunn still coos sensually, an enduring vixen of the first video generation. And there’s even a bombastic trance re-tooling of one of their earliest hits, the radio-banned “Sex (I’m A…).”

True story: This longtime fan saw Berlin (first band I ever saw live in concert) open in ’84 for Thompson Twins on the latter’s INTO THE GAP world tour. Year’s later, when I interviewed Terri Nunn for AUTOGRAPH magazine and shared that factoid, she laughed and claimed to have stolen my musical cherry!

Standout tracks: “Lust,” “All for Love,” and the title track

7- IN THE END / The Cranberries

Would it sound cliché to say that The Cranberries have saved their best for last? The aptly-titled IN THE END indeed draws the curtain on the venerable Irish alt-rock outfit that rose to international fame in the 1990s and now takes its final bow following last year’s tragic drowning death of lead singer Dolores O’Riordan—inarguably the distinctive voice of The Cranberries.

Thematically, IN THE END resounds with finality, giving the album a funereal chill and added poignancy since there was no way for the band to know that this eighth album would also be its last. The effort is so polished that it’s almost impossible to tell that O’Riordan’s vocals were demo recordings, with her surviving bandmates later bringing the tracks to fruition with producer Stephen Street. My best advice is to resist the urge to dissect the lyrics and songs through the lens of O’Riordan’s untimely passing and let the tracks bring you back to the band’s heyday. That said, don’t fight against the tears that will inevitably form at the corners of your eyes during the album’s last track—and title track—when O’Riordan’s exquisite, singular voice laments, “All I know / Time is a valuable thing / Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings / Watch it count down to the end of the day / The clock ticks life away… / But in the end /
It doesn't even matter.”

Standout tracks: “Lost,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Summer Song,” and the exquisite title track

6- WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? / Billie Eilish

Original and avant-garde, Billie Eilish’s debut album is a tasty, trippy treat for the ears. With a deceptive sparseness that ingratiates upon repeated listen, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? is a hyper-modern, musically complex album with a macabre, almost-sinister aesthetic that feels like the soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic new dystopia. Eilish wears her weirdness—and her heart—on her sleeve on the dozen tracks here, many of which defy genre classification. She—and brother Finneas, who shares writing and producing credits—have crafted a musical journey that’s the equivalent of going through a carnival funhouse on ‘shrooms. It’s freakishly fun, a little creepy at times, and layered with just enough distortion that will leave you teetering between daydream and night terror.

Eilish sings with a dreamy detachment, an occasional nuanced jazziness in her vocals evoking a modern-day Billie Holiday at times that at once contradicts and complements her impish tomboy persona. In the continuing era of manufactured, carefully sculpted recording artist-artifices, Billie Eilish is seemingly poised to burn the whole building to the ground with her freshness and authenticity.

Standout tracks: “Bury a Friend,” “My Strange Addiction,” and “Bad Guy”

5- NORMAN FUCKING ROCKWELL! / Lana Del Rey

On her sixth studio album in the nine years since her 2010 eponymous debut, Lana Del Rey sticks to her distinctive, winning formula—gravelly, slurred vocals, the glamour and melancholia of Hollywood noir, and cultural references to 1950s and 1960s Americana. With her patent vocal languor intact, NORMAN FUCKING ROCKWELL! finds the 34-year-old artist stepping into her own—presenting an authentic sense of self versus the carefully construed persona of past efforts.

The abstracted cinematic quality of her music remains but the lyrical pastiche of previous albums has been replaced with something darker, something closer to the truth. This is particularly relevant in an era where “alternate facts” and “fake news” are helping to rewrite American history. Del Rey takes aim at this cultural devolution—an aim that’s lyrically sharp and fine-pointed. From the album’s title itself—where even the name of the SATURDAY EVENING POST’s famed cover artist is interrupted by profane expletive—Del Rey endeavors to deconstruct the idealized Americana she’s spent nearly a decade crooning about and Rockwell immortalized through his iconic series of magazine covers. And she does so with beguilingly vicious songwriting chops. Complex and elegant, NORMAN FUCKING ROCKWELL! ushers in a new era in the Del Rey songbook.

Standout tracks: “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman to Have,” “Doin’ Time,” and “The Greatest”

4- MINT / Alice Merton

This electrifyingly eclectic indie pop-rock collection from the nomadic German-born, Canadian-raised, English-based, singer-songwriter-pianist Merton was one of 2019’s earliest treats, dropping in January and preceded by single releases of four tracks from the album.

The fifteen infectious tracks on MINT (eleven on the album proper, four additional tracks on the album add-on MINT +4) are primarily dance-rock confections with an indie vibe, chockful of thumping bass lines and clapping backbeats, sing-along choruses and uplifting synths. Rising and falling between cool-calm-collected and pure rampage, Merton employs vocal pitch and the tempo of the music itself to both appease and agitate. Lyrically, the collection is one of positivity and youthful nomadism, striking a perfect balance between realism and idealism. Vocally, Merton may call to mind Florence Welch (of Florence + The Machine), especially on softer tracks like “Back to Berlin” and “Honeymoon Heartbreak.”

Standout tracks: “Learn to Live,” “No Roots,” “Funny Business,” and “Lash Out”

3- WALK THROUGH FIRE / Yola

Musical fusion is the gift that British singer-songwriter Yola brings to her dramatic country-soul debut, WALK THROUGH FIRE. With a lyrical bent that veers decidedly more Americana coupled with a retro country-western musicality—complete with fiddles and steel guitars, organs and glockenspiels—WALK THROUGH FIRE is a glorious genre-busting musical journey anchored by Yola’s powerful sonic palette that she instinctively knows when to harness and when to let loose and her poignant songwriting, which alternates between susceptibility to circumstance and chest-pounding emancipation from the past.

Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys uses his penchant for indulgence in a retro, pre-synthesizer vintage sound quality to great effect on WALK THROUGH FIRE and his robust production is nothing short of a glorious throwback to Nashville’s 60’s sound—that musical moment in time when country-western music went pop. One reason for this authenticity is Auerbach’s use of vintage session musicians like drummer Gene Chrisman and pianist Bobby Wood, both of The Memphis Boys—the original house band from American Sound Studio in Memphis, which was the musical point of origination for classic recordings like Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” and Dusty Springfield’s DUSTY IN MEMPHIS album. One listen and you’ll swear you’ve emerged from a time capsule circa 1969.

Standout tracks: “Faraway Look,” “Lonely the Night,” and “Love Is Light.”

2- CAUSE & EFFECT / Keane

On their first studio album in seven years, British foursome Keane returned this year with their most accomplished and authentic album to date. Musically, all of Keane’s trademarks remain intact: Sunny, radio-friendly fare punctuated by irresistibly swelling choruses, emotive piano chords, and Tom Chaplin’s soaring voice. But lyrically, the band goes deeper—daresay, darker—on this fifth effort, with the real-life addiction of one band member and the failed marriage and subsequent depression of another winding subtly through the proceedings. The result is a newfound depth and vulnerability that make CAUSE & EFFECT a standout effort while adhering to the band’s winning formula of sophisticated British pop rock that harkens as far back to the 1980s with predecessors like Spandau Ballet and Johnny Hates Jazz.

Standout tracks: “Love Too Much,” “Stupid Things,” “Phases,” and “Chase the Night Away”

1- WESTERN STARS / Bruce Springsteen

Confession time: I’ve never owned a Bruce Springsteen album. Nope—never been a fan of The Boss or, more specifically, his music. While my high school classmates were popping cassettes of his 80’s juggernaut BORN IN THE USA into their boomboxes, I was jamming out to bands from the second wave of the British invasion like Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Eurythmics.

But that all changed this year with Springsteen’s release of WESTERN STARS, a gorgeous, achingly contemplative musical reflection on life told through the eyes of an artist who’s lived one. The down-and-out male narrators of the thirteen country-tinged folk pop tracks that comprise the lush orchestral landscape of WESTERN STARS all have a similar story to tell—tales of failure and missed opportunities, reflections on their life choices and the mental, physical, and spiritual tolls of those choices. A pervading sense of being older yet still restless, lost and still wandering, while life has somehow quickly passed by gives the album an elegiac nod to the shortening timeline that each of us—and Springsteen as well—face in the never-ending succession of sunrises and sunsets that mark off each elapsing day. It’s an album about looking back on shadows long cast and the quest to find our own relevancy in life. And while the broken raconteurs of WESTERN STARS may lament being past their prime, Springsteen’s 19^th studio album proves he’s anything but.

Just ask his newest fan.

Standout tracks: “There Goes My Miracle,” “Chasin’ Wild Horses,” “Tucson Train,” and “Sleepy Joe’s Café”



Not every album I enjoyed this year ranked within my Top Ten list but are nonetheless worthy of mention. Here are my Honorable Mentions of 2019 (in no particular order):

LOVE + FEAR / Marina

A BATH FULL OF ECSTASY / Hot Chip

THE MEDICINE SHOW / Melissa Etheridge

EVERYTHING LOST WILL NOT BE SAVED, PARTS 1 and 2 / Foals

DAYLIGHT / Grace Potter

CHAMPION / Bishop Briggs

BLUE EYED SOUL / Simply Red

COURAGE / Celine Dion

REMIND ME TOMORROW / Sharon Van Etten

CHEAP QUEEN / King Princess

ON THE LINE / Jenny Lewis

HOLLYWOOD’S BLEEDING / Post Malone

CUZ I LOVE YOU / Lizzo

CHIP TOOTH SMILE / Rob Thomas