The 30 best albums of 2020

Shelby Lynne is no stranger to movies: she played Johnny Cash's mother in a flashback sequence in 2005's Oscar-winning "Walk the Line", after all. While her still-unreleased movie "When We Kill the Creators" has yet to materialize, all we know is that she plays the lead role of "Tommy" and that the films' writer and director Cynthia Mort is listed as a co-writer on several songs on "Shelby Lynne", the 16th (!) studio album from the acclaimed singer-songwriter. While still considered a "country singer" by some, Lynne's long been trading in jazz and L.A. pop traditions for some time, and the soft-rock affectations of this new record show Lynne at her most inspired, making for what is easily her best full-length since 2011's bloodletting masterpiece "Revelation Road". With soft keyboards, angelic guitar plucks, and Lynne even trying out the sax, "Shelby Lynne" is a minimalist record that is still bursting with life and color, even as it touches on the ups and downs of romantic relationships, which itself is a topic that Lynne hasn't felt comfortable addressing in her songs. Ranging from the lithe pop of "I Got You" and the plainspoken sadness of "Revolving Broken Heart" to the gorgeously rendered "My Mind's Riot", Lynne happened to drop one of the finest albums of the year without anyone noticing. It's about time we paid attention.

When it became abundantly clear that concerts were going to be canceled at least temporarily in the Spring of 2020 (oh, we were so innocent then), many touring musicians were suddenly at a loss for income and were just sitting on their hands. Some, looking for something to do, made full albums in quarantine, but Rainer Maria's Kaia Fischer had a far more interesting idea. Signed to alt-rock mainstay Polyvinyl Records and knowing full well their label mates weren't doing anything, they arranged a way for all of these likeminded-but-sonically-distinct acts to collaborate, splitting into songwriting teams and stitching songs, synths, bass, and vocals together to create "Exquisite Corpse". What sounds like a kitschy way to pass the time, in all actuality, is one of the best indie-pop records to be released this year. Every song is its own unique entity but it all feels like it comes from the same joyous, artistic place. The strummy acoustic rock of "So Much to See" unites acts like Anamanaguchi, Beach Slang, and Tancred together for the first time, while the moody '80s goth pose of "Perfect Vision" has old buddies Owen and Matt Pond PA craft a gloriously surreal fantasy that feels familiar and brand new at the same time. Some of these artists had worked together before and others have yet to meet in real life, but we hope that someday soon, they can all get together and celebrate what they made, as this "Corpse" is really as "Exquisite" as pop music gets.

Megan Thee Stallion's debut studio record is so good she didn't even need to put "WAP" on it. While her sex-positive Cardi B collaboration dominated the summer, Megan -- finding time to record an album between serving as a judge on HBO Max's "Legendary" and recovering from being allegedly shot by rapper Tory Lanez -- still ushered in a record that was chock full of hard beats and remarkably clever verses. Sure, some of the collaborations fall flat (we're lookin' at you, DaBaby and Lil Durk), but the bounce-worthy "Circles" and the witty "Work That" point to how Megan knows her audience well, and they just want to have a good time. Whether she's referencing the beats of Missy Elliott with or providing actual great lines that are delivered like casual throwaways (see: "If my heart broke, it's nothin' that my jeweler won't fix / Put some ice on my chest just to cool my s---" from "Do It On the Tip"), Megan's delivered an opening salvo that just feels like the start of what will be a brilliant career.

On April 1 of 2020, it was announced that Adam Schlesinger -- the genius pop-rock songwriter behind the bands Fountains of Wayne and Ivy, the musical TV show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", and movies like "That Thing You Do!" and "Music & Lyrics" -- had passed away due to complications from Covid-19. The news was shocking, as it felt like Schlesinger, at only 52 years old, still had decades of tunes ahead of him. A few months later, Father/Daughter Records and Wax Nine put out a double-disc compilation in tribute of Schlesinger's work, featuring covers from artists and bands that loved and worked with Schlesinger, with all of the proceeds from the album sales going to musicians in need.

Nobility aside, hearing Schlesinger's bright and poppy songs filtered through a wide variety of styles only proved just how sturdy his songwriting was. Featuring covers of his entire songbook by the likes of Ted Leo, Jeff Rosenstock, Nada Surf, Tanya Donelly, and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" creator Rachel Bloom herself (tackling a loungey karaoke version of "Stacy's Mom", of course), the highlights are seemingly never-ending. Special shout out to Remember Sports for doing a wonderfully weird synth-pop take on "Just the Girl", Schlesinger's songwriting-for-hire tune for now-forgotten teen rockers The Click Five. It's bizarrely beautiful moments like this that remind us of the joy Schlesinger infused in his songs and how much we're all going to miss him.

"On one hand, I'm a Pharaoh / On the other hand Imma deal dope / Franklins on me, Los Santos / Diamonds on me, no Thanos," raps Denzel Curry on the track "Lay_Up.m4a", a "leaked track" off of his brilliant EP he released in collaboration with producer and YouTube star Kenny Beats. Clocking in at just under 18 minutes and created after the two resolved a dispute over beat-sharing, the brief-but-impactful "Unlocked" crams more ideas in its short timeframe than most rappers put into a year's worth of mixtapes. Sounding like a lost record from the early days of El-P's Definitive Jux label, the beats shift and evolve from street-ready bangers to scorched-earth apocalyptic pulses -- sometimes over the course of a single song. Throughout, Curry loops his rhymes with incredible rhythmic intricacy ("Packin' cannons to crack Atlantis" he raps at one point, "One billion and two cops can't find 2Pac" he rhymes on another), making for one of the most surprising and replayable rap releases of the year.

While Nick Momeni was born right in the heart of Manhattan, his Iranian immigrant parents are the ones who helped instill him the importance of his cultural heritage. On "Utopia", his second EP proper, Momeni finally comes into his own as a dance producer, soaring above the tired house minimalism of his 2019 effort "FATALE" to craft something deeply and profoundly felt. Although it's only three songs and a remix, "Utopia" feels like stepping into another world entirely, as the air between the thumping drum kicks is filled with mixed synth patterns, rolling live percussive hits, and Middle Eastern melodies that borrow heavily on folk instrumentation. It's a trip that would feel comfortable in both the club and your earbuds; it's world-worn and unabashedly contemporary at the same time. It's a living contradiction of a dance record that may very well be considered a pocket masterpiece. Momeni's promise is damn near limitless, and we can't wait to see the day when he unleashes those talents across a bristling full-length. Get in on the ground floor while you still can.

Our apologies to The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, and Jessie Ware, but Sam Sparro's "Boombox Eternal" is hands-down the best pop album of the year. While many people know the Australian songwriter for his 2008 hit "Black and Gold", the way his popularity has waned in the years following his breakthrough hit means that "Boombox Eternal" is where he put it all on the line. Largely producing, writing, and playing every instrument himself (to say nothing of the fact that it was self-released as well), "Boombox Eternal" is an explosion of bright early-'90s pastels, as he takes the sleek synth-pop and New Jack Swing records that he grew up with and filters his songwriting through those genres, evoking production greats like Teddy Riley and the untouchable Jam & Lewis in pursuit of the perfect pop song.

On one level, the sonic details are incredible: every drum machine, plastic guitar tone, and synthpad is teleported in from some 1989 recording studio with crystal clarity -- an astonishing feat of recreation. Yet what amazes us most about "Boombox Eternal" is how stunning every song is constructed. A rare record without a single bad track on it, tunes like the lush octagon-drum ballad "Eye to Eye", the beautifully Prince-indebted "Marvelous Lover", and the '90s club pastiche "THE PPL" are the kind of songs that get stuck in your head on one listen before burrowing into your brain for the rest of your life. Almost no one caught this record when it came out, which is a shame: the one time when no one was keeping their eye on Sam Sparro, he unleashed a masterpiece. End-to-end, wouldn't change a single note. It's just that good.

What exactly is Potatohead People's "Mellow Fantasy"? Is it a J Dilla-indebted beat showcase? Is it a throwback rap album? Is it a tight jazz excursion? The incredible thing about "Mellow Fantasy" is that it is all of these things and more. Consisting of Canadian producers Nick Wisdom & AstroLogical, "Mellow Fantasy" isn't their first record but it feels like it tumbled out of that same ether that birthed great albums by Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and '90s-era Common. Completely ignoring contemporary trends, "Mellow Fantasy" is the rare album that sounds exactly like its title, as even goofy 90-second excursions like the synth/bass/drum breezer "Proof Is In The Pudding" feel fully composed and delivered with intention. Somehow both danceable and relaxing at the same time, Potatohead People are going for a "vibe" and actually succeeding, bringing in great and unknown vocalists to help add incredible texture and color (just catch the way Vancouver's Bunnie adds a layer of sensuality to the alluring piano riff "Kettle Boiling"), "Mellow Fantasy" is exactly the kind of blissed-out record we needed this year, and 100 or so listens later, it still holds up.

When you think of the Detroit music scene, the first image that comes to mind is probably related to Motown -- and for good reason. It was a legendary culture-shifting institution that defined the very city in which it was housed. Yet as the decades rolled on, so did the music, and Jack White of The White Stripes certainly recalls the dirty garage rock scene in which he grew up and got his start. His label, Third Man Records, may be based in Nashville, but that didn't stop them from issuing the (inter)stellar "Southeast of Saturn": a collection of lost and nearly-forgotten space-rock and shoegaze singles from Detroit and its surrounding Michigan areas. The result is a stacked compilation of surprisingly diverse, inventive, and playful fuzzed-out psych explorations that touch on everything from goth-rock guitar tones to speaker-blowing waves of hard rock distortion. Glider's "Shift" sounds like a list 4AD seven-inch, Füxa's "Photon" grabs the best elements of '90s dream-pop and wraps them all up in warm satellite glow, and Auburn-Lull's "June-Tide" evokes My Bloody Valentine at their most ambient and blissed-out. Refracturing so many college-rock tentpoles into new and varied shapes, "Southeast of Saturn" is a sonic tapestry of bands you've never heard of that ends up sounding like a greatest hits record for the genre. Exemplary stuff.

At only 30 years old, Brothertiger's John Jagos is a synthwave pioneer, as his colorful 2012 debut "Golden Years" helped bring in a new audience to the emerging chilled-out vaporwave movement, refining his sound on subsequent records and even doing an album-length cover of Tears for Fears' legendary classic "Songs from the Big Chair". Yet while 2020 saw the release of his latest full-length "Paradise Lost", nestled in during the June "Bandcamp Friday" event was "Fundamentals, Vol. I", his first ever set set of instrumental compositions. Intricate, casual, and honestly just plain gorgeous, "Vol. I" is a stylized set of lush digital rhythms and patterns moving between each other, often backed by a simple yet effective beat. Undeniably moody -- this is the kind of set that is best experienced driving out at night with the sunroof down and the stars hanging above you -- it's still instantly accessible, satisfying just as much on its first listen as on its 50th. It works as an album-length experience, but if were to single out one moment, it's the simple percussion and keyboard patters that evolve into something close to catharsis on "Tide Pool". Surprising his fans once again, he released "Vol. II" in December and threatened that there may even be a "Vol. III" in the works, but for now, this first set, surprisingly, may very well go down as Jagos' finest work to date.

The thing about making a solo guitar record is that there is no room for error: it is you and every single note and absolutely nothing else to intrigue the listener. So for the Chicago-based Winter, he decided to go ambitious with his sophomore album, giving us a three-track LP that clocks in at over 39 minutes. More than half of this is taken up by his 22-minute opener "Either I Would Become Ash", wherein dry and dusty strums give way to methodical fingerpicking and a cinematic swell of emotion. This epic feels less like a single composition and more like an album's worth of ideas crammed into an unyielding space. For every moment when you think he's about to break his limiter with how heavily he's thudding on those acoustic strings a la peak-era The Microphones, he steps away and mellows things out, keeping the rhythm of his piece going while moving on to his next perfectly-segued movement. At times, his picking gets so intricate you may think he is in the room with another musician (and some band friends do join him on the light and lovely reverb-twang workout "Maroon"), but at the end of the day, "Unbecoming" is a raw, gorgeously paced record that may present challenges to some listeners, but make no mistake: you are well rewarded for every second you give this album.

With a somewhat bumbled rollout (it's streaming only on a website, the website got pulled, then it was everywhere, BTW there's no singles) and a divided response from fans who were upset that for the second album in a row Donald Glover wasn't really rapping, it's fair to say that "3.15.20" could've had a smoother introduction to the world, especially coming off of his first-ever chart-topper "This is America" (which, interestingly, isn't included here). Instead, "3.15.20" is a weird and wild psych-pop record which takes the Funkadelic inspiration of 2016's "Awaken, My Love!" and converts it into a sunny, colorful journey through Glover's troubles, inspirations, and flights of fancy. Containing one of the best songs he's ever written ("Feels Like Summer", here bizarrely stylized as the timestamp "42.26"), "3.15.20" sets its own agenda, running from stomp-clap folk-pop ("35.31"/"Little Foot"), sinister Prince-like whisper-funk ("Algorhythm"), and casual-beyond-words stoner rap (the 21 Savage-featuring "21.38"/"Vibrate"). Since going supernova, Glover has had a complicated relationship with fame, and on "3.15.20", he's still clearly working through his feelings, and even as his new album sounds unfocused, never has stumbling through your mind looking for the meaning to things sounded so blissful, tripped-out, and ferocious. It's a wild, pretentious, and downright goofy trip that we're happy to go on with him again and again.

Lady Gaga didn't need to go dance-pop again. She did her twangy album, her set of Tony Bennett duets, won an Oscar for "A Star is Born" -- she was set. Yet 2020 is a year of surprising events, and not only did Lady Gaga decide to become the weirdo queen of the dancefloor again, she went hard into it. Not a ballad in sight, "Chromatica" sees Gaga working with everyone from Elton John to Blackpink to Ariana Grande (on what may very well be the single of the year, "Rain on Me"), crafting a record that is filled with nothing but bangers. The orchestral interludes set the tone, and the transition of "Chromatica II" into the slamming beats of "911" is one of the most thrilling moments to happen in pop music already this decade. From the DayGlo synths of "Stupid Love" to the electro psychodrama of "Replay" to the who-cares-if-anyone-clocks-it Madonna rip "Babylon", Gaga is in top form here. Honestly, this is the album we've been wanting Gaga to make for about ten years. We're still surprised at how much we needed it.

If the stories are to be believed, "Homegrown", Neil Young's long-fabled, long-lost acoustic breakup album, was finished and ready to go over four decades ago -- but Young instead opted to put out his also-completed and emotionally harrowing "Tonight's the Night" instead. While "Homegrown" songs were reworked and hand-picked for other records (the strummer "Love Is a Rose" was a highlight from 1977 hit collection "Decade", released well after it became a hit for Linda Ronstadt), never before had anyone heard it in context of this heavily bootlegged record. Now, seeing its light of day long after the pain of his breakup with actress Carrie Snodgress, it's one of the most vulnerable and beautiful records in his catalog. Sometimes beautifully awkward with its confessions ("I'd like to take a chance / But s---, Mary, I can't dance / So here's to lookin' up your old address / Golly, what a mess" he sings on "Try"), at other times surprisingly warm while in a cloud of pot smoke ("We Don't Smoke It No More"), it feels like a classic record we've played so much we've worn out the vinyl grooves -- but so much here is still fresh, new, and unheard. A minor musical miracle in a year that desperately needed them.

Seattle, WA's Rafael Anton Irisarri and Argentina's Leandro Fresco have been considered ambient heroes for several years, even as both have used their solo time to dabble in everything from dub-techno to Latin pop (Fresco can even be heard playing keyboards on Shakira's "Oral Fixation, Vol. 2"). Yet the duo's 2017 collaboration "La Equidistancia" was nothing short of jaw-dropping: a nuanced, airy, and damn-near perfect ambient record that didn't have a texture, instrument, or second out of place. It was unspeakably beautiful, greeted to such a rapturous response that in 2020, they simply had to release another one. "Una Presencia En La Brisa" translates to "A Presence in the Breeze", and this new record takes on similarly cloud-like qualities, with compositions floating in suspended animation. Yet much like clouds themselves, the more time you spend observing them, the more you notice the gradual changes, and here, each of these six compositions evolves with such a natural fluidity it feels like there is no other direction they could've gone in. Capable of transporting your head to a completely different universe than the one it is in now, "Una Presencia En La Brisa" may very well be the record you need in your life right now. Quiet, powerful stuff.

For Yves Tumor (real name Sean Bowie), genre is less of a label and more of a challenge. Although his discography remains fairly light, he's still shown an album-to-album willingness to jump into whatever genre he feels like, and with "Heaven to a Tortured Mind", he decided to lean hard into fuzzed-out funk-rock, surprising most of his fans with this sudden change in direction but thrilling those who pushed through. Surprisingly lithe at times, "Tortured Mind" is more of a hips record than a head record, riding tight and sometimes scary grooves as Bowie lets his talent wander across a dozen trippy basslines and beautifully chaotic rhythm sections. Clocking in at only 36 minutes, "Tortured Mind" is, despite its occasional bursts of chaos, a surprisingly focused record, evoking the ghosts of Parliament and Funkadelic at their most horror-movie cool, resulting in a record that, unknowingly, served as a remarkably apt soundtrack to the year that was 2020.

Clocking in at 80 minutes, 22 tracks long, opening with a Greta Thunberg monologue and following it up with an aggressive boneheaded hard rock number -- these do not sound like the makings of a great album. Yet once the dust settled, The 1975's fourth full-length revealed itself to be a beautifully overstuffed pop album that was better than 2018's "A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships". Blowing up their fame-making plastic-funk experiments to see what genres they could make out of the confetti, "Conditional Form" careens between genres with surprising ease, where it be the sax-assisted synth party of "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)" bumping up next to the twangy travelogue of "Roadkill" or the "Kid A"-indebted IDM banger "Yeah I Know", this feels like the record where singer Matt Healy and co. fully realize their powers as songwriters. Healy, ever-observant, writes sweet paeans to male friendship ("Guys"), sarcastic Phoebe Bridgers-assisted tales of same-sex romance ("Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America"), and finding love in a post-addiction world strewn with hipsters ("The Birthday Party"). "Conditional Form" is littered with pop culture references, in-jokes both funny and nonsensical, and an overflowing number of chaotic songs. In other words, it couldn't possibly define our era more perfectly. Cheers, mates.

If you're going to put a ten-minute instrumental epic on your album, and then, three tracks later, follow it up with a 16-minute instrumental epic, then you better know what the hell you're doing. Thankfully, guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski have an incalculable musical chemistry together, and on their fourth studio full-length, they pull out all the stops. Yes, the title track uses all of its 16 minutes to build slowly and beautifully into a crashing rock crescendo, but the duo's best moments are when they take things down a notch, like on the desert-evoking acoustic number "Windows". Mixing up textures and styles, each of the Duo's tracks feels fully realized, Truscinski mixing up his patterns and playing styles while Gunn completely changes his fretwork from song to song, dropping finger-picked pleasantries one moment and making surf-rock chord changes sound dramatic the next. It is a genuinely awe-inspiring album that never rushes: every song is properly nurtured, given room to stretch and grow into the shapes they were born to be in. You know what, we're just gonna say it: it's the instrumental rock album of the year, hands down.

Since his last studio album proper in 2015, the joyful electro weirdo that is Dan Deacon has been getting more into film scores, working on everything from the quixotic 2016 documentary "Rat Film" to the much more mainstream HBO feature "Well Groomed" about competitive dog grooming (it's quite the lovely affair). Finally returning to his wonderfully demented and affecting pop creations with "Mystic Familiar", his overstuffed synth productions back genuinely sweet lyrics about talking trees, relaxing in ocean bottoms, and the beauty of friendship. The record reads as the mature synth-rock equivalent of an "Adventure Time" episode, full of eye-widening wonderment and naïvety. At its best moments, it feels like rediscovering your youth all over again and all the possibilities that are left lying out in front of you. "First you must relax before transcend," his multi-stacked vocals instruct you on "Fell Into the Ocean", but how can we relax when every song fills us with rainbow color and energy for days on end? Recommended listening for when you need a heavy dash of joy in your life.

Beatrice Laus of beabadoobee, by her admission, is still discovering her favorite music. It just so happens that her deep-seated love of big-budget '90s alt-rock has inspired her to filter these styles and textures through her worldview, so excited by the possibilities of her own band that she learned how to play guitar through YouTube tutorials. All of this biography would be fun trivia in any other context but her affection for a genre that effectively ended before she was born paints her as someone with great reverence for it, and with "Fake It Flowers", her debut album, she proves that there is no radio cosplay here: she's a fantastic rock songwriter. From the shuffle-drummed almost-ballad "Emo Song" to the blazing lead single "Care" to the shimmering "Worth It", Laus evokes everyone from The Smashing Pumpkins to Everclear to Placebo in her search for the perfect rock song, and throughout "Fake It Flowers", the production -- obsessed with every ringing guitar tone and every speck of speakerbox static -- evokes the era with surprising ease. It's a joyful, satisfying listen, proving that there's nothing "Fake" about these "Flowers".

When Margo Price dropped her debut album "Midwest Farmer's Daughter" in 2016, it sounded like nothing else in the country world at the time. With her crackshot band fully in sync with her vision, she conjured a classic country album out of thin air, sounding like a '70s-era Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn album with its sparse, pitch-perfect production and anchored by Price's untouchable vocal performances. Ghosts of her country icons danced alongside her -- and by the time 2020 hit, she was ready to rock. It might sound reductive to some, but "That's How Rumors Get Started" is low-key the best Stevie Nicks album released in the past 20 years. Airy backing vocals, Price's own pipes pitched ever-so-slightly upward, and her band adding a bit more pound to those pop pianos, there's something undeniably Fleetwood Mac-inspired about each and every number here, from the alluring mid-tempo title track to the stately reminisce of "Stone Me". Don't think of it as dressing up in her idols' many scarves, however: Price is having a blast in this role she wrote for herself, and we as listeners are lucky enough to be along for the ride.

Róisín Murphy has the incredible ability to do whatever she wants. We say that about a lot of artists, but for this Irish dance diva oddball, it's true. Her albums receive critical raves but her sales rarely match her level of acclaim -- at least until she dropped one of 2020's finest dance records, "Róisín Machine". Whether it was her goodwill finally swelling to the point that tastemakers caught on or that people were looking for sweaty four-on-the-floor escapism in the middle of a pandemic, "Róisín Machine" hit hard with its extended disco homages, cheeky lyrics, and moments of actual vulnerability. "Narcissus" pushes sawing string sections through guitar filters to create an indelible psychedelic effect, "Jealousy" burns the disco down with his fast-tempo Gloria Gaynor posturing, and "Something More" is a striking and emotional moment that gets better with every listen: the beating heart of the album that pulses to the beat. "Róisín Machine" is an album that leans hard into its quirks but never forgets to wrap its eccentricities around tight songs, resulting in one of the best times we've ever had within the confines of our earbuds.

Oakland's TONER doesn't need much of your time to make an impression. In fact, for "Silk Road", their first studio full-length, they only need about 20 minutes, because that's how quickly this alternative throwback album lasts. You'd think that unleashing ten songs with short run times would result in rushed tempos and furious speed, but the opposite is true: while TONER is unafraid to rock out, they take as much time as they need before getting out of their own way. They don't rush themselves on the Bauhaus-like goth rock of "Dark Ecstasy" and sure as hell don't waste a second of the gloriously sloppy fuzzed-out acoustic number "Always On Time". Evoking everything from Mazzy Star to Pavement to Dinosaur Jr. to Superchunk, "Silk Road" already feels like a greatest hits of alternative rock compilation, and with any luck, Samuelito Cruz's band is going to use this start to become the kind of band that other people are covering some decades down the line. "Silk Road" hits that alt-rock sweet spot.

At this point, finding out that Killer Mike and El-P made another great album as Run The Jewels shouldn't surprise anyone. What is surprising about their fourth studio full-length isn't so much that it's their most commercially accessible album or that Mavis Staples sounds fantastic on the stark "Pulling the Pin" but that after releasing so many acclaimed tracks and great singles, it is here, on this truly essential 2020 release, that they created their two best songs and put them right in the middle of the tracklist. "Walking in the Snow" features an all-timer verse from Killer Mike, wherein he walks us through what it's like growing up Black, and, chillingly, stating that "every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free / And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me / Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, 'I can't breathe'". It's a heart-stopping moment, and it's followed up by the pitch-perfect casting of Pharrell and Zack de la Rocha on the biting satire "JU$T", which features the instantly memorable refrain of "Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollars!" Four albums in and already RTJ have one of the most intimidating discographies in the game.

Mykele Deville is a very good rapper with a stylized flow and Jeffrey Michael Austin is a very good musician with an ear for a good, calming melody. Yet the reason why you need to listen to "BIG DARK BRIGHT FUTURES", the sophomore record from the Growing Concerns Poetry Collective, and the reason why it's one of the standout rap albums of the year, is because of McKenzie Chinn. The actress and writer has several pieces of pure, rhythmic, spoken word poetry on this album, and they are breathtaking in their effect. Best of all is "Peace After Revolution", an inspiring and hypnotic piece of political provocation that stuns with its elegant phrasing of our current societal ills. "If my body was free, my camera would be my camera and my camera wouldn't also be sometimes my only mean of defense." Whether she posits about the power of Black self-image in the transcendent "First You Need a Body" or filters her experiences in Chicago into a glorious view of the future in the Deville-assisted closer "Some Dawn", the entirety of the trio's work "BIG DARK BRIGHT FUTURES" hits you deeply and immediately. It is a record that surprises on first listen and sits in your thoughts for days and weeks after the fact. A quiet miracle, this album.

"Every emotion I felt that times two," coos Kali Uchis on her sophomore album, and, honestly? Same. While she blessed us with a lovely quarantine EP this past April, it's clear that "Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞" was her intended masterwork, and it is a striking, sultry, and rich record that takes on many forms. There's real heartbreak in songs like "vaya con dios" and the soft pulse of "quiero sentirme bien", but her words blend perfectly well with the silky smooth production that surrounds her, taking the listener to a warm place in which she can share her deepest secrets. Sung almost entirely in Spanish and featuring guest spots from the likes of PARTYNEXTDOOR and Rico Nasty, "Sin Miedo" serves as both a lushly romantic delight and songwriter confessional, proving that Uchis' talent is a lot like her albums: they contain multitudes.

Chicago's Angel Marcloid has carved a unique world for themselves under their distinct Fire-Toolz moniker, wherein screaming thrash metal can transform into '80s New Age records which turns into jazz-afflicted '90s rave music with barely any notice, and, somehow, it all sounds cohesive. Most Fire-Toolz albums sound like genre ouroboroses, eating themselves alive, but Nonlocal Forecast, Marcloid's other outfit, can be described as "Weather Channel-core." Sounding like the soundtrack to a "Bejeweled" game that gained both sentience and an addiction to John Tesh albums, there truly is little else that sounds like "Holographic Universe(s?)!". Mixing programmed beats that sound straight out of a Windows 95 video game with every tone of synthesizer you could imagine, "Holographic Universe(s?)!" has an air of cheeky nostalgia to it, but also a sense of deep terror as well. In making a deliberately-dated album such as this and only giving the most occasional of contemporary touches, each song hovers above a sinister entity, as you half expect each song to slowly melt away and show its demonic true form at any given moment -- and it never does. It's quite the tightrope that Marcloid walks with their music, and honestly, we can't get enough of it.

London's Jessie Ware has been working in electronica circles for some time, but her solo projects have largely been mature, stylized pop efforts that avoid camp and fads in favor of considered songwriting. Her records have always been great, but "What's Your Pleasure?" is truly the record we've always been waiting for. Serving as a tribute to the dance idols past, Ware gets downright frisky this time out, touching on styles that musically reference acts ranging from Vanity 6 ("Ooh La La") to Robyn (the sublime "Save A Kiss") to En Vogue (the sultry "Read My Lips"). Every performance is deliberate and delightful, with the production -- aided by her former collaborator and Simian Mobile Disco co-founder James Ford -- manages a perfect blend of vintage sounds (synth bass slaps, for example) and puts them in a digestible, contemporary context. It is as close to flawless as a pop record can be, and by so deftly pulling inspiration from dance music's rich and storied history, she's ensured her own place in it.

When Fiona Apple dropped "The Idler Wheel..." back in 2012, the piano songwriter produced the record herself, giving her typically biting songs a newfound bloody rawness, tossing in wild percussion, instruments that appeared in one verse and then never were heard from again, and lots of blown out and humane elements that made the songs feel like actual flesh creations, wounded and sweet and caring all the same. After its release, she tucked herself away for a while, and finally emerged in 2020 with an album of unbelievable power and brutality. "Fetch the Bolt Cutters", named after a throwaway line from the Gillian Anderson detective series "The Fall", is all about rawness. Reacting to the #MeToo movement, Apple uses layers of intricate percussion and pounding pianos (that are still susceptible to moments of whimsy and sweetness, mind you) to craft tales of women being controlled and lied to by the men who have forced themselves into their lives. With songs tackling everything from depression ("Heavy Balloon") to the male gaze ("Rack of His") to gender politics ("Under the Table"), Apple is unafraid to dive in to the most lurid of topics, and by the time she gets to the climax of "For Her", with its visceral attack to a male figure saying "Good morning, good morning / You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in," your heart is in your throat. This record is a knife stab. This record is a banquet. This record is a diary. This record is incredible.

As intriguing as Phoebe Bridgers' 2017 debut album "Stranger in the Alps" was, her 2020 sophomore effort displayed a quantum leap forward in her dynamic indie-rock songwriting prowess. "I've been running around in circles / Pretending to be myself," she sings on "Chinese Satellite", before continuing "Why would somebody do this on purpose / When they could do something else?". Filled with doubts, dismissals, cynicism, and acceptance, the lyrical ground Bridgers covers on "Punisher" is stunning. On the deeply-felt closer "I Know the End", her imagery of driving head-first into the apocalypse is striking in its beauty: "Windows down, scream along / To some America First rap country song / A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall / Slot machines, fear of God". Her writer's pen may dance in some of her wounds (as well as many of our own), but "Punisher" excels due to its wild variety of moods. While "Garden Song" moves us with its melodic guitar lines, tracks like "Kyoto" give us just a fine layer of guitar rock to keep things lively. A lot is going on in "Punisher", and whether you're dissecting is many references or bathing in the power of her performances or finding a new sonic detail that you're only noticing now on your 20th listen, it feels like the kind of record that will top a lot of Album of the Year lists but we'll continue talking about and referencing for years to come. It's really that good.