Let’s get down to brass tacks: 2019 was a fucked-up year. So many people I know and love are riddled with anxiety, pent-up frustrations, and fear for the future. As a new decade approaches, it’s only natural to take stock of where we are and what we’ve achieved collectively, and a lot of us don’t like the tally. Perhaps that’s why so many of the songs you’ll see on this list offer us either a glimpse behind or a counter to the veil of existential dread and ennui that so many of us are experiencing. Art is a mirror, after all.

Still, the best music inspires hope and healing; it illuminates our dreams, sheds light on our failures, and spurs us to continue fighting. In a fucked-up year, music is the great mitigator. And in 2o19 these 50 songs brought us motivation, helped us find solace, and made us laugh and dance with sounds that continue to feel inventive and thrilling. 2020 can’t come fast enough. But if I could have one wish for the local scene it’s that it remains every bit as generous as it was in 2019. – Guillermo Castro

Algiers

“Dispossession”

Algiers’ fervid, existential songwriting continues to ring with undeniable clarity on “Dispossession,” the lead single from the gospel punks’ upcoming third full length, There is No Year. Here, soul-stirring melodies collide with spacious piano as the reckoning for America approaches. In true Algiers fashion, the band ratchet up the tension with increasingly frantic energy until the track culminates in sobering silence. – Russell Rockwell

There Is No Year by Algiers

All the Saints

“Creak”

Every All the Saints song is a buckle-up and hold-on-tight affair. They aren’t so much roller-coaster rides as they are mind-melting excursions into a nebulous unknown where drone, punk, noise, and metal are contorted into psychedelic knots. The lock-step groove that drives “Creak” may show the trio at their most direct and accessible, but the convulsive riffs and plumes of feedback that surround it point to something more ominous on the horizon. Nobody in the ATL combines fury and unease like All the Saints, so heed the warnings and strap yourself in. – GC

Look Like You're Going Somewhere by All The Saints

Arbor Labor Union

“Flowerhead”

On “Flowerhead,” Arbor Labor Union invoke the Grateful Dead’s seminal Workingman’s Dead with joyous abandon while smoothing over any post-punk elements with a layer of prickly pear Americana. Bubbly riffs condense all the blooming springtime plants into a single ecstatic time-lapse cut of positive energy as “Flowerhead” takes its energy from the earth and gives it back with open arms in a restorative act of rock and roll. Go ahead and let the sunshine in. – RR

New Petal Instants by ARBOR LABOR UNION

BOREGARD.

“Beyoncé Knows”



So much of rapping is about rhythm, inflection, and cadence, of finding the soft spots and launching points in a beat and using them to your strategic advantage. With “Beyoncé Knows,” Henry County rapper BOREGARD. shows off his dexterity and dynamism, using Ethan Lamb’s buoyant, springboard production to land a steady string of lyrical somersaults and verbal backflips. It’s a banger in the best sense of the term: rousing, infectious, and eminently repeatable. – Avery Shepherd

Brother Hawk

“Like Water”

Like all forms of rock and roll, grunge took it roots from blues music, channeling pain and existential despair into drop-tuned anti-anthems for the flanneled masses. On “Like Water,” guitarist and vocalist JB Brisendine taps into a similar spirit, offering a grief-stricken lament on the loss of his father while Brother Hawk’s majestic alt-blues rises and crashes in turbulent waves all around him. It’s a towering effort; a quavering, volcanic anthem borne from the sunken depths of despair—and the heights of love. – GC

Big Trouble Sessions by Brother Hawk