1

Christine and the Queens – Chris

From Chris’s opening song, she sets out listening as a gesture of intimacy between her and her listeners. It’s a salvo that draws you close, preparing to plunge you into the sensations she sings about. Sometimes, those are lascivious, but most often they’re alienating – reflecting how even a steady sense of self can be undermined by rejection. It is a sadder conclusion than you’d expect from a record perceived as a raunchy flex, but a truthful one: what if self-belief isn’t always enough? This album runs counter to empowerment pop’s current doctrine but feels more truthful for it. Read our full review

2

Robyn – Honey

Soon after Robyn released her era-defining 2010 album Body Talk, similar armour-plated bangers about female empowerment duly took over the charts. But pop moves fast and a new, woozier kind of tune by the likes of Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa has made such coldly strident numbers seem old-fashioned. So how would Robyn stay ahead of the game? By making a looser, clubbier album, one which had the intensity of a full-on dance record and a less ruthless approach to melody; and which never sacrificed Robyn’s irresistible blend of sadness and euphoria. Read our full review

3

Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer

A record about womanhood, and black womanhood in particular. “Remember when they used to say I look too mannish?” Janelle Monáe asks on Django Jane, a song that celebrates “black girl magic” while also acknowledging she has been treated as less-than by a Eurocentric industry. Having starred in two acclaimed, black-led films (Moonlight and Hidden Figures), and been a vocal proponent of the Black Lives Matter movement, this was not new territory for Monáe, but it was more overt than ever in her music. In letting go of her old alter ego and opening up, she created her best work yet. Read our full review

Womanhood … Janelle Monáe

4

Cardi B – Invasion of Privacy

Before the Bronx rapper released her 2017-defining single Bodak Yellow, she was better known for snatching wigs on the VH1 reality show Love & Hip Hop. Bodak Yellow changed the script: a brilliant track that earned pop cultural momentum from the novelty of Cardi’s melodic, withering flow. But what has made Invasion of Privacy a success a year later, the novelty of her debut having worn off, is her personality: steely realness shot through with a bolt of humour. Read our full review

Nimble, pure voice … Mitski at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

5

Mitski – Be the Cowboy

With Be the Cowboy, Mitski continues to disrupt and update the conventions of indie rock. Gnarly guitars contrast with her extraordinarily nimble, pure voice; there are upbeat disco numbers and delicate, ethereal piano ballads. As a rule, the cheerier songs conceal the bleakest sentiments. The album has an arch, dark humour that echoes Marry Me-era St Vincent, paired with an underlying maelstrom of high drama, loneliness and psychosexual dysfunction. Yet Mitski does not simply portray a victim; there is a sense of fighting back against these forces. The title of the album exhorts the listener, and possibly the artist herself, to swagger. Read our full review.

6

Idles – Joy As An Act of Resistance

Addressing politics in pop can be a tricky balancing act, yet Idles frontman Joe Talbot charges across the tightrope in heavy boots, screaming in the face of the farce unfolding around him. There is untrammelled aggression in his voice, a directness that leaves spittle on your cheeks, but it is humour, not anger, that is his most devastating weapon. Beneath the rage and the humour, though, lie real human emotions: vulnerability, comradeship, warmth. Read our full review.

7

Kamasi Washington – Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth can sound like a shout of frustration at the world’s ills, but it also offers hope in the brightness of its harmonised voices and the endless breath of its wind instruments. It is a searching record, one that reflects an artist casting about for the beliefs behind his music, but also one with an underlying energy to enact change: whether that change takes place within the mind or without, or whether that constitutes a difference at all. Read our full review.

Underlying energy … Kamasi Washington. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

8

Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour

LSD and music are old bedfellows. You can hear the drug’s perspective-expanding effects on rock bands ranging from the Beatles to Tame Impala, while the word acid got added to house to describe the psychedelic weirdness of the squiggling basslines made by the Roland TR-303. Kacey Musgraves, who took LSD while writing her fourth album, Golden Hour, seems to use it to lightly expand her creativity. The results were not endless wig outs and lyrics about riding the snake to the ancient lake, but 13 excellent songs characterised by crystalline emotional and melodic clarity. Read our full review.

9

Low – Double Negative

No other woke pop or evisceration of Trump’s America sums up how 2018 frequently felt quite as well as Low’s Double Negative. The lyrics are oblique, but the music seems to be short-circuit and collapse in on itself, nothing working the way it was apparently supposed to. The album is marked by a sense of the familiar being snatched away. There are flashes of anger – as on Poor Sucker’s brutal depiction of a reactionary mindset in which the overriding aim is to make people you disagree with suffer – and even optimism. In a world of predictable political music, Double Negative seems unprecedented. Read our full review

10

Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Conceived intimately, on a piano received for his birthday, Alex Turner’s would-be solo album was significantly fleshed out by the rest of the band so the seams became invisible. Guitarist Jamie Cook slots inventively into the strange new shapes these songs took. Matt Helders caresses the drum kit with jazzbo sensitivity instead of pummelling it. The band’s collective backing falsettos never sounded so pitch- perfect. All these plush, disorienting textures – drawn from 60s France and film noir soundtracks, at once expansive and claustrophobic – speak of a small coterie of contributors and go-to producer James Ford going all in. Read our full review

Pitch-perfect … Arctic Monkeys. Photograph: Zackery Michael

11

Sophie – Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides

Along with the other producers in the PC Music stable, at first, Sophie brilliantly highlighted the euphoria in J-pop and trance – and then, on her debut full-length, invested it all with emotional depth. The dance tracks are formidable in their mechanised, lubricated precision, and fabulous in their mane-preening confidence. But it was the ballads that truly stunned: as big as Bonnie Tyler, they don’t so much wear their heart on their sleeve as offer it to you on a plate. Read our full review

12

Sons of Kemet – Your Queen is a Reptile

Saxophonist and bandleader Shabaka Hutchings charges through Sons of Kemet’s third album at a relentless pace, playfully referencing Illuminati conspiracy theories surrounding the British monarchy and positing his own selection of alternative queens in the process. Backed by two drummers and the rumbling sub-bass of tuba player Theon Cross, Your Queen is a Reptile is a sensory assault that earned the band a Mercury prize nomination and a reputation for coruscating, politicised live performances. Read more

Sons of Kemet. Photograph: Pierrick Guidou

13

The Internet – Hive Mind

A band fast-becoming known for their solo projects as much as for their group work, the Internet’s latest offering continues the Aaliyah-infused R&B and neo-soul grooves of their previous three LPs. Lead single Roll (Burbank Funk) plays off a Motown-inspired bassline to create a perfectly condensed three-minute earworm, while slower numbers like Hold On showcase singer Syd’s silken falsetto. Read our full review

14

Noname – Room 25

Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner, AKA Noname, has carved out a reputation as an heir to the socially conscious lyricism of A Tribe Called Quest ever since her debut mixtape, Telefone, in 2016. Room 25 progresses Warner’s blend of nonchalant yet eviscerating delivery over live instrumental backing and rich vocal melodies; highlights include the jazzy calypso of Montego Bae and the D’Angelo grooves of Don’t Forget About Me.

Nonchalant yet eviscerating … Noname. Photograph: Chantal Anderson

15

Natalie Prass – The Future and the Past

The 1970s soft-rock spirit of the likes of Nicolette Larson, Carly Simon and Laura Allan fill this sophisticated, superbly written collection of songs – but there are also touches of Haim’s pure pop (on the restless The Fire) and Erykah Badu’s jazz-funk (Hot for the Mountain and Ship Go Down). Lost, meanwhile, is one of the year’s best piano ballads. Read our full review

16

Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar

The music of Edinburgh trio Young Fathers can often feel like a lucid dream: equal parts joyous and unsettling. After winning the Mercury prize for their 2014 debut Dead, they have developed a distinct sound that blends earnest, infectious melodies with jittering, experimental backing. From the uplifting gospel vocals of Lord and the undulating high-bpm trance of Wire, Cocoa Sugar is bracing, and shows a band in their creative prime. Read our full review

Joyous and unsettling … Young Fathers. Photograph: Julia Noni

17

Pusha T – Daytona

The first – and, many said, the best – of the five Kanye West-produced albums released in five much-discussed weeks this spring, Pusha T brings his inimitable cadence to bear on more tales of dope dealing. He sounds brighter and more mischievous than he has in a while, enabled by West’s excellent production that played fast and loose with samples and bricolage beats. Read our full review

18

Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears

Few artists made a greater leap forward this year than this Norwich duo, who swapped the psych whimsy of their debut for monstrous electronic pop. Woven into their synth battalions – the Sophie and Faris Badwan collaboration Hot Pink being particularly of note – are some of the year’s most incisive lyrics, on intimacy in an age of technological disconnect and the perils of underestimating young women. Read our full review

Incisive … Let’s Eat Grandma. Photograph: Charlotte Patmore

19

Julia Holter – Aviary

Known for her immaculate chamber-pop poise, Holter subverted expectations with this disarming 90-minute maximalist assault, featuring bagpipes, Tibetan Buddhist chanting, medieval tradition and a good semester’s worth of literary references. There remains, true to form, beauty in the chaos she conjures, both in the cosseting string section and the sense of awe she exudes without affectation. Read our full review

20

Ariana Grande – Sweetener

Given the public support for Grande after her handling of the Manchester bombing, her fourth album could have been an easy victory lap. Instead, she pushes boundaries, particularly on Sweetener’s tracks with Pharrell: juxtaposing songwriterly piano ballads with trap, sampling angry right-wingers as she sings about hope, and documenting a panic attack with candour. Read our full review

21

Kali Uchis – Isolation

Kali Uchis has been a quiet yet insistent presence in today’s R&B scene. After providing the saccharine falsetto on Tyler, the Creator’s See You last year and taking a lower register on the G-funk of Snoop Dogg’s On Edge, Isolation sees Uchis in full flow, without the one-verse constraints of a feature slot. It’s a sun-drenched homage to 70s soul, providing playlist favourites in After the Storm and Tyrant. Read more

Sun-drenched soul … Kali Uchis Photograph: Felipe Q Nogueira

22

Yves Tumor – Safe in the Hands of Love

Having already made everything from the calmest ambient to the freakiest noise, Yves Tumor continued to trash any box you might try and put him in on his third album. Noid and Lifetime are blockbuster breakbeat dreampop; Honesty is a propulsive deep-house ballad; Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness) is as chaotic and fraught as it sounds. Read our full review

23

Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

On their eighth release in five years, the quality control still hasn’t dipped: the New York indie-punks, anchored by Andrew Savage’s erudite, declarative ranting, remain one of the best bands in the US. Their screwball energy is still there on Wide Awake, but diverted into a wider range of sound than ever before: bluesy rock’n’roll on Freebird II, a honky-tonk knees-up on Tenderness, punk-funk shimmying on the title track. Read our full review

Screwball energy … Parquet Courts Photograph: Ebru Yildiz/Rough Trade

24

Shame – Songs of Praise

Their setup is pure British indie, but there’s a prickly, counterintuitive attitude to the south London band that gave them real edge. On their debut, vocalist Charlie Steen rotates through sarky aloofness, sneering contempt and serious feeling, his band taking on glitter-glam, the psych end of Britpop and indie disco anthems around him. Read our full review

25

Virginia Wing – Ecstatic Arrow

A bolt from the blue – or rather, Manchester, from where this synthpop duo slipped out their remarkable third album. It hits like a cleansing Atlantic wave to the face, with Alice Merida Richards proposing a lucid, wry feminist utopia mirrored by the luscious clarity of the pair’s take on 80s avant-garde pop. Read our full review

26

Nao – Saturn

On her second album of sultry, scrunchily funky R&B, Nao writes about the so-called Saturn return: the point around age 27 when the planet returns to the position of your birth and causes spiritual upheaval. In her case, it provokes a reckoning about what’s important: namely respect, pleasure and, winningly, practicality. “I don’t care about this dog and you know I can’t afford it,” she states on Orbit. Read our full review

Scrunchily funky … Nao

27

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

The Melbourne native’s second album showcases her as a formidable guitarist as much as a softly spoken songwriter. All grungy fuzz and wailing melody, her playing veers from coolly nonchalant to intimate over the album’s 10 tracks. There’s a touch of 60s pop to Charity, while opener Hopefulessness evokes a Kurt Cobain dirge, and Need a Little Time playfully interjects dissonance into Barnett’s sweet chorus. Read our full review

28

Travis Scott – Astroworld

At only 26, Travis Scott has delivered the year’s most ambitious and excellent rap album, to vast success in the US. His astral-projected delivery, chopped and screwed or given Auto-Tuned warble, is a paradise of sing-song melody; the beats, which take in straightforward trap as well as ambient and psychedelic rock, are universally strong; and the guests, from a sunbaked Tame Impala to a glorious, vaginally fixated Weeknd, swim in and out in an affecting collage

Ambitious and excellent … Travis Scott Photograph: David Lachapelle

29

Blood Orange – Negro Swan

Dev Hynes has had the kind of career growth most artists dream of. Turning the kitsch dance-punk of his band Test Icicles into the off-kilter introspection of his first solo project as Lightspeed Champion, as Blood Orange he now negotiates identity as a black man in contemporary America. Negro Swan is a conceptual masterwork, samples and jazzy saxophone lines linking bedroom pop, neo-soul and downbeat hip-hop. Read our full review

30

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

In one sense, the debut by Melbourne’s RBCF sees them join a great lineage of Australian jangle-pop bands. But the bright precision and outward-looking lyricism of their long-awaited debut (following two acclaimed mini-albums) distinguished them from slouches and shoegazers past: their three singer-guitarists Tom Russo, Fran Keaney and Joey White elegantly countenance privilege, pleasure and the impact of colonialism on this moving and invigorating record. Read more

31

Rosalía – El Mal Querer

Over to James Blake, who tweeted of Rosalía’s second album:

“Just what the actual afjhkhhhhhdiquyhqkzjdhjsnbahjkbbsbdhsjajbaFfdfffdffffffffffffffffffff.” Indeed. El Mal Querer sounds like nothing else released this year: the 25-year-old Catalan trailblazer’s fiercely passionate and subversive concept album combines flamenco tradition with an avant-garde approach to R&B. Read our full review

Rosalía puts a fresh twist in flamenco. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

32

Confidence Man – Confident Music for Confident People

Australian four-piece Confidence Man make the kind of joyous, irreverent dance-pop that is sorely needed as an antidote to the political ills of 2018. Frontwoman Janet Planet’s speak-singing wryly counters infectious synth lines and rumbling bass grooves that bring to mind the best of Basement Jaxx and Hot Chip; or Arthur Russell reimagined for a Snapchatter’s attention span. Read our full review

33

Tirzah – Devotion

Listening to the south London songwriter’s debut feels almost voyeuristic: Tirzah’s chilly piano balladry and frank expressions of need in long-term relationships are unsettlingly stark. But that’s the source of Devotion’s intimacy. Tirzah and producer Mica Levi coax the listener into her world with cocooning loops and unobtrusively scratchy electronics that add to her portrayal of imperfection as beauty. Read our full review

Expressions of need … Tirzah Photograph: Clare Shilland/Domino

34

The 1975 – A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Post-punk, tropical house, We Didn’t Start the Fire-style diatribes, Siri stories, heroin love songs, Britpop anthems, sentimental jazzy reveries: there is no way the 1975’s scattershot third album should work, and yet, thanks to Matt Healy’s endearingly self-excoriating, unashamed presence, the four-piece pull it off yet again. Read our full review

35

Lonnie Holley – MITH

One of 27 children, sold by a burlesque dancer for a pint of whisky, ending up in a child labour camp and surviving a terrible car accident: Lonnie Holley’s life is extraordinary – but his music is even more so. MITH is a truly visionary trip through contemporary US politics, slavery, the cosmic order and the sheer joy of expression, with a kind of unravelled blues and gospel spinning around Holley’s glottal holler. Read our full review

Visionary trip … Lonnie Holley. Photograph: Ben Rollins/The Guardian

36

Snail Mail – Lush

Amid today’s strong slacker-indie scene, the debut album from 19-year-old Lindsey Jordan still stands out thanks to her voice – bell-clear at times, she modulates into a dismayed, yearning tone, topped with a touch of vocal fry. Her teenage angst is backed by dolefully strummed electric guitar, adding up to rainy-day music of the highest quality.

37

Troye Sivan – Bloom

As Years & Years did on this year’s Palo Santo, Australian solo artist Sivan took a step away from mainstream pop on his second album, Bloom, and one towards the queer avant-garde pop of Perfume Genius. The result is bracing: gothic touches and New Romantic grandeur create the perfect stage for Sivan’s songwriting, often rooted in his experiences of love and lust as a young gay man. Read our full review

Romantic grandeur … Troye Sivan. Photograph: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images for NGV

38

US Girls – In a Poem Unlimited

With a mulch of Abba-y disco-pop, trip-hop, rockabilly, glam rock and more, Meg Remy truly levelled up on her seventh release. A pissed-off scorn charges each track, whether she’s dealing with domestic violence, childhood trauma or industrial chemicals making families infertile, and Remy’s croon – like an embittered music hall singer – seals this stunningly original album. Read our full review

39

Gwenno – Le Kov

It’s likely that the Welsh songwriter’s second album will forever remain the world’s only Cornish language synth-pop album that reimagines the county as a cosmopolitan hive of industry. But even if anyone did fancy trying to steal Gwenno’s title, it is unlikely they’d pull it off as well as she does here, interweaving deeply researched history, emotionally resonant fantasy and utopia-within-reach into a cohesive and spellbinding whole. Read our full review

40

Lily Allen – No Shame

Allen’s revelatory memoir ended up overshadowing No Shame, but her fourth album warrants further attention, and not just because she makes many of the same confessions about her failings and unfaithfulness within its 14 tracks. Like her classic debut, Alright, Still, it seamlessly integrates the sound of contemporary London into smart pop music – and almost erases all memory of 2014’s dire Sheezus in the process. Read our full review

Confessions … Lily Allen. Photograph: David Titlow/The Guardian

41

Deafheaven – Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Nerds get bogged down in taxonomy when discussing Deafheaven – is it metal or not? – but the rest of us can get on with simply revelling in a gigantically heavy band at the peak of their powers. The solos are virtuosic and uplifting, the blast-beats cleansing, and the post-rock ballads so simple and affecting. Still anyone’s guess what George Clarke is roaring about, mind. Read our full review

42

Skee Mask – Compro

Junglism is the energy that churns deep under this massively atmospheric record from shadowy Munich producer Skee Mask: there are some straightforwardly ravey numbers, like Dial 274, but the breakbeats often mutate before they reach the surface. On 50 Euro to Break Boost they’re blown out and distorted; on Kozmic Flush they’re high-speed and skittering; on Rev8617 they’re slowed into pretty hip-hop. Fans of Metalheadz and classic Warp will find much to love here.

43

Courtney Marie Andrews – May Your Kindness Remain

Kindness is often wrongly considered a twee emotion, the sentiment of cross-stitched homilies and that weepy girl who sneaks into the reconciliation at the end of Mean Girls. But on this Arizona-born songwriter’s sixth album, Andrews summons Americana heft to give empathy the weight it deserves, advocating for extending tenderness to ex-lovers, strangers and refugees alike. Read our full review

Empathy … Courtney Marie Andrews

44

Neneh Cherry – Broken Politics

For her second collaboration with producer Four Tet, trip-hop queen Neneh Cherry takes a quieter turn, focusing her soulful voice on issues including the refugee crisis and the environment, set to twinkling bells and dub. Elements of the Bristol scene that first brought her to fame remain, with Massive Attack’s 3D stopping by, although it’s the steel drum-aided jazz of Natural Skin Deep where Cherry reaches her peak. Read our full review

45

Serpentwithfeet – Soil

A former choirboy, Josiah Wise sings gospel seemingly designed for 22nd-century pagans. In his debut full-length, Wise’s crystalline voice cuts through synthetic melodies, choral harmony and an unsettling rumble of experimental electronics to create an album of intimacy and challenging performativity. Read our full review

46

Tracey Thorn – Record

It’s been a great year for grown-up pop: Florence Welch, the 1975, Lily Allen and Neneh Cherry have all made boundary-pushing albums about, well, pushing boundaries as pop stars over the age of 30. Chief among them is Tracey Thorn’s fifth solo album, where her admirably plainspoken quotidian concerns anchor transcendent acid-tinged disco. Read our full review

47

Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo

Thai funk and Texan desert rock might not seem like usual bedfellows, but Houston-based trio Khruangbin have united the two in a cinematic instrumental blend over a series of releases since 2010. Con Todo El Mundo, their second album, is a soothing sunset ride: all infectious wah-wah guitar and languorous basslines underpinned by drum grooves that lay deep in the pocket.

Sunset ride … Khruangbin

48

Cat Power – Wanderer

Ignoring verse-chorus-verse rules in favour of lulling repetition and circuitous logic, Wanderer’s songs are as itinerant as the title suggests. Chan Marshall’s pumice-stone voice slinks around chiming notes on piano or acoustic guitar, resulting in bluesy ruminations. But there are moments of pop, too: the gathering rush of the chorus on Woman, a duet with Lana Del Rey, and her authoritative piano ballad cover of Rihanna’s Stay. Read our full review

49

Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Producer Jon Hopkins’ newfound love of meditation can be felt on this, his fifth album. The ambience of his previous work with Brian Eno is an underlying presence as Singularity brings in club atmospheres before maintaining emotional equilibrium with calmer moods. A manifesto for a new kind of dancefloor mindfulness, perhaps. Read our full review

50

Goat Girl – Goat Girl

Goat Girl’s first release in 2016 lamented: “How can an entire nation be so fucking thick?” Following this pithy post-Brexit-vote line, their debut album continues the disaffection, with singer Clottie Cream drawling through 19 tracks of fuzzy guitar, pounding drums and lyrics taking aim at everything from public transport sexual harassers to the Tories and the DUP, who they suggest could form a pyre in Burn the Stake. Read more



