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T he morning after our interview I get a call from Jackson Browne. I stare at my phone in bleary-eyed confusion, trying to remember if one of the all-time great singer-songwriters had let slip anything scandalous he might be eager to recant, but when I pick up I hear his warm Californian tones overflowing with enthusiasm. “I just realised I didn’t finish telling you about Rick!”
Rick appears in the third verse of Browne’s song “Love Is Love”, the lead single from a new benefit album, Let the Rhythm Lead , which he recorded in Haiti along with a group of fellow musicians to support the charity Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ). Browne has been passionate about their work since playing a benefit concert after the devastating 2010 earthquake, and was impressed by APJ’s ability to swiftly build a school in Port-au-Prince that now provides free education to 2,600 of the most impoverished children in the western hemisphere. Moved by the stories he heard from Haiti, Browne wrote “Standing in the Breach”, the title track of his 2014 album about the disaster and the long history of colonialism and slavery that preceded it. “It’s a difficult subject, so it took me a long time to finish that song,” he says. “I think it took me longer to write than it took them to build the school.”
Browne made his name in the Seventies as a writer of deeply introspective songs about love, death and desire. He had his first hit in in March 1972 with “Doctor My Eyes”, which was soon covered by The Jackson 5 . A few months later, Eagles frontman Glenn Frey completed Browne’s unfinished song “Take It Easy” and the track launched his band’s career. As rock lore has it, Browne was stuck on the line: “Well, I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…”, before Frey provided: “Such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.”
The 40 best albums to listen to before you dieShow all 40 1 /40The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), The Velvet Underground It was Andy Warhol who wanted Lou Reed and John Cale to let his beautiful new friend Nico sing with their avant-garde rock band. Truthfully, though, Victor Frankenstein himself couldn’t have sewed together a creature out of more mismatched body parts than this album. It starts with a child’s glockenspiel and ends in deafening feedback, noise, and distortion. Side one track one, “Sunday Morning”, is a wistful ballad fit for a cool European chanteuse sung by a surly Brooklynite. “Venus in Furs” is a jangling, jagged-edge drone about a sex whipping not given lightly. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is a love song. European Son is rock’n’roll turned sonic shockwave. That’s before you even get on to the song about buying and shooting heroin that David Bowie heard on a test pressing and called “the future of music”. Half a century on, all you have to do is put electricity through The Velvet Underground & Nico to realise that he was right. Chris Harvey
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), Aretha Franklin When Jerry Wexler signed the daughter of a violent, philandering preacher to Atlantic records, he "took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself". The Queen of Soul gave herself the same space. You can hear her listening to the band, biding her time before firing up her voice to demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T 50 years before the #MeToo movement. Helen Brown
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Master of Puppets (1986), Metallica Despite not featuring any singles, Metallica’s third album was the UK rock radio breakthrough they’d been looking for. In 1986, they released one of the best metal records of all time, which dealt with the potency and very nature of control, meshing beauty and raw human ugliness together on tracks like “Damage Inc” and “Orion”. This album is about storytelling – the medieval-influenced guitar picks on opener “Battery” should be enough to tell you that. Although that was really the only medieval imagery they conjured up – they ripped Dungeons & Dragons clichés out of the lyrics and replaced them with the apocalypse, with bassist Cliff Burton, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer/rhythm guitarist James Hetfield serving as the four horsemen. Roisin O’Connor
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Remain in Light (1980), Talking Heads “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late…” sang David Byrne, submerging personal and planetary anxieties about fake news and conspicuous consumption in dense, layers and loops of Afrobeat-indebted funk. Propulsive polyrhythms drive against the lyrical pleas for us to stop and take stock. Same as it ever was. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Catch a Fire (Jamaican version) (1973), Bob Marley and the Wailers The album that carried reggae music to the four corners of the Earth and made Bob Marley an international superstar also set the political tone for many artists to follow. Marley sang of life “where the living is hardest” in “Concrete Jungle” and looked back to Jamaica’s ignoble slaving past – “No chains around my feet but I’m not free”. He packed the album with beautiful melodic numbers, such as “High Tide and Low Tide”, and rhythmic dance tracks like “Kinky Reggae”. Released outside of Jamaica by Island Records with guitar overdubs and ornamentation, the original Jamaican version is a stripped-down masterpiece. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Revolver (1966), The Beatles An unprecedented 220 hours of studio experimentation saw George Martin and The Beatles looping, speeding, slowing and spooling tapes backwards to create a terrifically trippy new sound. The mournful enigma of McCartney’s “For No One” and the psychedelia of Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “She Said, She Said” can still leave you standing hypnotised over the spinning vinyl, wondering if the music is coming out or being sucked back in. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna It may be the most “serious” album she’s ever made, yet Like a Prayer is still Madonna at her most accessible – pulling no punches in topics from religion to the dissolution of her marriage. In 1989, Madonna’s personal life was tabloid fodder: a tumultuous marriage to actor Sean Penn finally ended in divorce, and she was causing controversy with the “Like a Prayer” video and its burning crosses. On the gospel abandon of the title track, she takes the listener’s breath away with her sheer ambition. Where her past records had been reflections of the modern music that influenced her – Like a Prayer saw her pay homage to bands like Sly & the Family Stone, and Simon & Garfunkel. The album was also about an artist taking control over her own narrative, after releasing records that asked the audience – and the press – to like her. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Led Zeppelin IV (1971), Led Zeppelin Millennials coming at this album can end up feeling like the guy who saw Hamlet and complained it was all quotations. Jimmy Page’s juggernaut riffs and Robert Plant’s hedonistic wails set the bench mark for all subsequent heavy, hedonistic rock. But it’s worth playing the whole thing to experience the full mystic, monolithic ritual of the thing. Stairway? Undeniable. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Best of the Shangri-Las (1996), The Shangri-Las Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no, no one ever did teen heartbreak quite like the Shangri-Las. Long before the Spice Girls packaged attitude for popular consumption, songwriter Ellie Greenwich was having trouble with a group of teenagers who had grown up in a tough part of Queen’s – “with their gestures, and language, and chewing the gum and the stockings ripped up their legs”. But the Shangri-Las sang with an ardour that was so streetwise, passionate and raw that it still reaches across more than half a century without losing any of its power. "Leader of the Pack" (co-written by Greenwich) may be their best-known song, but they were never a novelty act. This compilation captures them at their early Sixties peak. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), David Bowie Flamboyance, excess, eccentricity – this is the breakthrough album that asserted Bowie as glam rock’s new icon, surpassing T Rex. He may have come to rue his Ziggy Stardust character, but with it, Bowie transcended artists seeking authenticity via more mundane means. It was his most ambitious album – musically and thematically – that, like Prince, saw him unite his greatest strengths from previous works and pull off one of the great rock and roll albums without losing his sense of humour, or the wish to continue entertaining his fans. “I’m out to bloody entertain, not just get up onstage and knock out a few songs,” he declared. “I’m the last person to pretend I’m a radio. I’d rather go out and be a colour television set.” RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Unknown Pleasures (1979), Joy Division In their brief career, ended by the suicide of 23-year-old singer Ian Curtis, Joy Division created two candidates for the best album by anyone ever. Closer may be a final flowering, but Unknown Pleasures is more tonally consistent, utterly unlike anything before or since. The mood is an all-pervading ink-black darkness, but there is a spiritual force coming out of the grooves that is so far beyond pop or rock, it feels almost Dostoevskyan. There are classic songs – "Disorder", "She’s Lost Control" and "New Dawn Fades" – and for those who’d swap every note Eric Clapton ever played for one of Peter Hook’s basslines, the sequence at 4:20 on "I Remember Nothing" is perhaps the single most thrilling moment in the entire Joy Division catalogue. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hejira (1976), Joni Mitchell Though her 1971 album, Blue, is usually chosen for these kinds of lists, Mitchell surpassed its silvery, heartbroken folk five years later with a record that found her confidently questioning its culturally conditioned expectations of womanhood. Against an ambiguous, jazzy landscape, her deepening, difficult voice weighs romance and domesticity against the adventure of “strange pillows” and solitude. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Body Talk (2010), Robyn The answer to whether Robyn could follow up the brilliance of her self-titled 2005 album came in a burst of releases in 2010, the EPs Body Talk Pt 1, Pt 2 and Pt3, and this 15-track effort, essentially a compilation album. It includes different versions of some tracks, such as the non-acoustic version of “Hang With Me” (and we can argue all night about that one), but leaves well alone when it comes to the single greatest electronic dance track since “I Feel Love”, “Dancing On My Own”. Body Talk is simply jammed with great songs. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Off The Wall (1979), Michael Jackson “I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment and perfect it,” wrote Jackson as he turned 21 and shook off his cute, controlled child-star imagery to release his jubilant, fourth solo album. Produced by Quincy Jones, the sophisticated disco funk nails the balance between tight, tendon-twanging grooves and liberated euphoria. Glitter ball magic. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Illmatic (1994), Nas How good can rap get? This good. There are albums where the myth can transcend the music – not on Illmatic, where Nas vaulted himself into the ranks of the greatest MCs in 1994, with an album that countless artists since have tried – and failed – to emulate. Enlisting the hottest producers around – Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Q-Tip, L.E.S and Large Professor – was a move that Complex blamed for “ruining hip hop”, while still praising Nas’s record, because it had a lasting impact on the use of multiple producers on rap albums. Nas used the sounds of the densely-populated New York streets he grew up on. You hear the rattle of the steel train that opens the record, along with the cassette tape hissing the verse from a teenage Nasty Nas on Main Source’s 1991 track “Live at the BBQ”: ‘When I was 12, I went to Hell for snuffing Jesus.” RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Trans-Europe Express (1977), Kraftwerk This is the album that changes everything. The synthesised sounds coming out of Kraftwerk’s Kling-Klang studios had already become pure and beautiful on 1975’s Radio-Activity, but on Trans-Europe Express, their sophistication subtly shifts all future possibilities. The familiar quality of human sweetness and melancholy in Ralf Hutter’s voice is subsumed into the machine as rhythms interlock and bloom in side two’s mini-symphony that begins with the title track. Released four months before Giorgio Moroder’s "I Feel Love", Trans-Europe Express influenced everything from hip-hop to techno. All electronic dance music starts here. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Kind of Blue (1959), Miles Davis With the sketches of melody only written down hours before recording, the world’s best-selling jazz record still feels spontaneous and unpredictable. Davis’s friend George Russell once explained that the secret of its tonal jazz was to use every note in a scale “without having to meet the deadline of a particular chord”. Kind of Blue is unrepeatably cool. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Astral Weeks (1968), Van Morrison “If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream…” To enter this musical cathedral, where folk, jazz and blue-eyed soul meet is always to feel a sense of awe. Recorded in just two eight-hour sessions, in which Morrison first played the songs to the assembled musicians then told them to do their own thing, Astral Weeks still feels as if it was made yesterday. Morrison’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics within the richness of the acoustic setting – double bass, classical guitar and flute – make this as emotionally affecting an album as any in rock and pop. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die West Side Story Soundtrack (1961) “Life is all right in America / If you're all white in America” yelp the immigrants in this passionate and political musical relocating of Romeo and Juliet to Fifites New York. Leonard Bernstein’s sophisticated score is a melting pot of pop, classical and Latin music; Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics sharp as a flick knife. An unanswered prayer for a united and forgiving USA. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Sign o' the Times (1987), Prince Sign o’ the Times is Prince’s magnum opus from a catalogue of masterworks – a double album spanning funk, rock, R&B and most essentially, soul. It is the greatest articulation of his alchemic experiments with musical fusion – the sum of several projects Prince was working on during his most creatively fruitful year. On Sign o’ the Times, the bass is king – Prince cemented his guitar god status on Purple Rain. There are tracks that drip with sex, and love songs like “Adore”, which remains one of the greatest of all time. Stitched together with the utmost care, as if he were writing a play with a beginning, a middle and an end, the album is a landmark in both pop and in art. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Pet Sounds (1966), The Beach Boys Caught in the psychological undertow of family trauma and all those commercial surf songs, 23-year-old Brian Wilson had a panic attack and retreated to the studio to write this dreamlike series of songs whose structural tides washed them way beyond the preppy formulas of drugstore jukeboxes. Notes pinged from vibraphones and coke cans gleam in the strange, sad waves of bittersweet melody. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Ys (2006), Joanna Newsom Weave a circle round her thrice… Joanna Newsom is dismissed by some as kookily faux-naif, but her second album, before she trained out the childlike quality from her voice, may be the most enchanted record ever made. At times, she sounds other-worldly, sitting at her harp, singing to herself of sassafras and Sisyphus, but then a phrase will carry you off suddenly to the heart’s depths – “Still, my dear, I’d have walked you to the edge of the water”. Ys’s pleasures are not simple or immediate. Newsom’s unusual song structures, with their fragmented melodies, and strange and beautiful orchestral arrangements by 63-year-old Van Dyke Parks, take time to work their magic. But once you’re bewitched, Ys’s spell never wears off. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), Public Enemy Public Enemy’s second album is hip-hop’s game-changing moment, where a new musical form that arrived fully born after years of development away from meddling outsiders found its radical voice. It Takes a Nation of Millions… is still one of the most powerful, provocative albums ever made, “Here is a land that never gave a damn / About a brother like me,” raps Chuck D on “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”. Producer Hank Shocklee creates a hard-edged sound from samples that pay homage to soul greats such as James Brown and Isaac Hayes, and Flavor Flav gives it an unmistakeable zest. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Pink Floyd It’s easy to knock these white, male, middle-class proggers, with their spaceship full of technology and their monolithic ambitions. But the walloping drums, operatic howls and “quiet desperation” of this concept album about the various forms of madness still resonates with the unbalanced, overwhelmed and alienated parts of us all. Play loud, alone and after dark. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill raised the game for an entire genre with this immense and groundbreaking work. Flipping between two tones – sharp and cold, and sensual and smoky – the former Fugees member stepped out from rap’s misogynist status quo and drew an audience outside of hip hop thanks to her melding of soul, reggae and R&B, and the recruitment of the likes of Mary J Blige and D’Angelo. Its sonic appeal has a lot to do with the lo-fi production and warm instrumentation, often comprised of a low thrumming bass, tight snares and doo-wop harmonies. But Hill’s reggae influences are what drive the album’s spirit: preaching love and peace but also speaking out against unrighteous oppression. Even today, it’s one of the most uplifting and inspiring records around. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971), Serge Gainsbourg The great French singer-songwriter provocateur probably wouldn’t get too many takers today for a concept album about a tender love between his middle-aged self and a teenage girl he knocks off her bicycle in his Rolls-Royce. But, musically, this cult album is sublime, an extraordinary collision of funk bass, spoken-word lyrics and Jean-Claude Vannier’s heavenly string arrangements. “Ballade de Melody Nelson”, sung by Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, is one of his most sublimely gorgeous songs. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In My Own Time (1971), Karen Dalton There’s nothing contrived about Karen Dalton’s ability to flip out the guts of familiar songs and give them a dry, cracked folk-blues twist. Expanding the emotional and narrative boundaries of songs like Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman is just what she did. Why has it taken the world so long to appreciate her? HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Let England Shake (2011), PJ Harvey “Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England.” PJ Harvey may have sounded like she was channelling Boris and Nige when she made this striking album in 2015, but few Brexiteers would want to take this journey with her. Let England Shake digs deep into the soil of the land, where buried plowshares lie waiting to be beaten into swords. Death is everywhere, sometimes in its most visceral form: “I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat,” she sings on “The Words That Maketh Murder”, “Arms and legs are in the trees.” Musically, though, it’s ravishing: Harvey employs autoharp, zither, rhodes piano, xylophone and trombone to create a futuristic folk sound that’s strikingly original yet could almost be from an earlier century. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Boy in da Corner (2003), Dizzee Rascal It’s staggering to listen back to this album and remember Dizzee was just 18-years-old when he released it. Rising through the UK garage scene as a member of east London’s Roll Deep crew, the MC born Dylan Mills allegedly honed his skills in production after being excluded from every one of his classes, apart from music. If you want any sense of how ahead of the game Dizzee was, just listen to the opening track “Sittin’ Here”. While 2018 has suffered a spate of half-hearted singles playing on the listener’s sense of nostalgia for simpler times, 15 years ago Dizzee longed for the innocence of childhood because of what he was seeing in the present day: teenage pregnancies, police brutality, his friends murdered on the streets or lost to a lifestyle of crime and cash. Boy in da Corner goes heavy on cold, uncomfortably disjointed beats, synths that emulate arcade games and police sirens, and Dizzee himself delivering bars in his trademark, high-pitched squawk. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hounds of Love (1985), Kate Bush Proof that a woman could satisfy her unique artistic vision and top the charts without kowtowing to industry expectations, Kate Bush’s self-produced masterpiece explored the extreme range of her oceanic emotions from the seclusion of a cutting-edge studio built in the garden of her 17th-century farmhouse. The human vulnerability of her voice and traditional instruments are given an electrical charge by her pioneering use of synthesisers. Thrilling and immersive. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Blue Lines (1991), Massive Attack A uniquely British take on hip hop and soul that continues to influence booming modern genres like grime and dubstep, the Bristol collective’s debut gave a cool new pulse to the nation’s grit and grey. You can smell ashtrays on greasy spoon tables in Tricky’s whisper and feel the rain on your face in Shara Nelson’s exhilarating improvisations. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Surfer Rosa (1987), Pixies It only takes 20 seconds of opening track Bone Machine to realise Pixies and producer Steve Albini have stripped down the sound of rock ’n’ roll and rebuilt it piece by piece. The angry smack of Led Zep drums, ripe bass, and sheet metal guitar straight off the Stooges’ Detroit production line are separated and recombined. Pixies’ sound is already complete before Black Francis embarks on one of his elusive pop cult narratives (“your bone’s got a little machine”). The tension between the savagery of his vocals and Kim Deal’s softer melodic tone won’t reach its perfect balance until their next album but their debut, Surfer Rosa is gigantic, and deserving of big, big love. Its “loud, quiet, loud” tectonics would prove so influential that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain would later say he “was basically trying to rip off the Pixies”. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Talking Timbuktu (1994), Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder If you ever doubt the possibility of relaxed and respectful conversation across the world’s cultural divisions, then give yourself an hour with this astonishing collaboration between Mali’s Ali Farka Toure (who wrote all but one of the tracks) and California’s Ry Cooder (whose slide guitar travels through them like a pilgrim). Desert meets Delta Blues. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die The Great Gospel Men (1993), Various artists Compared to the blues, the incalculable influence of gospel music on pop, soul and rock ’n’ roll has been underplayed. It can be found in every song on this brilliant 27-track compilation. If you can’t hear James Brown in the foot-stomping opener “Move on Up a Little Higher” by Brother Joe May, you’re not listening hard enough. The road to Motown from “Lord, Lord, Lord” by Professor Alex Bradford is narrow indeed, but you could still take a side-turning and follow his ecstatic whoops straight to Little Richard, who borrowed them, and on to the Beatles who copied them from him. The swooping chord changes in James Cleveland’s “My Soul Looks Back” are magnificent. All the irreplaceable soul voices, from Aretha Franklin to Bobby Womack, were steeped in gospel. This is a great place to hear where they came from. Companion album The Great Gospel Women is a marvel, too. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Hopelessness (2016), Anonhi “A lot of the music scene is just a wanking, self-congratulatory boys club,” said this angel-voiced, transgender artist in 2012. Four years later, the seismic drums and radical ecofeminist agenda of Hopelessness shook that club’s crumbling foundations to dust. The horrors of drone warfare, paedophilia and global warming are held up to the bright lights in disconcertingly beautiful rage. HB
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die In Utero (1993), Nirvana Kurt Cobain had one goal with In Utero: to pull Nirvana away from what he dubbed the “candy-ass” sound on Nevermind – the album that had turned them into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet – and take them back to punk-rock. He asked Pixies’ producer Steve Albini to oversee production. It didn’t exactly eschew commercial success upon release (it went on to sell 15m copies worldwide), but the heaviness the band felt as they recorded it bears down on the listener from the opening track. Disheartened by the media obsession with his personal life and the fans clamouring for the same old shit, In Utero is pure, undiluted rage. “GO AWAYYYYYYYYYYY” he screams on “Scentless Apprentice”, capturing the essence of Patrick Suskind’s novel Perfume: Story of a Murderer and using it as a metaphor for his disgust at the music industry, and the press. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Curtis (1971), Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield had been spinning golden soul music from doo-wop roots with The Impressions for more than a decade before releasing his first solo album, which contains some of his greatest songs. While some point to the 1972 Blaxploitation soundtrack Superfly as the definitive Mayfield album, Curtis is deeper and more joyous, its complex arrangements masterly. Mayfield’s sweet falsetto sings of Nixon’s bland reassurances over the fuzz-bass of “(Don’t Worry) If There Is a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go”; doleful horns give the politically conscious “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue” a profound emotional undertow; “Move On Up” is simply one of the most exhilarating songs in pop. To spend time with Curtis is to be in the presence of a beautiful soul. CH
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Rumours (1977), Fleetwood Mac Before they went their own way, Fleetwood Mac decided to tell a story that would be the quintessential marker for American rock culture in the Seventies. As Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks tossed the charred remains of their relationship at one another on “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way”, the rest of the band conjured up the warm West Coast harmonies, the laid back California vibes of the rhythm section and the clear highs on “Gold Dust Woman”, in such a way that Rumours would become the definitive sound of the era. At the time of its release, it was the fastest-selling LP of all time; its success turned Fleetwood Mac into a cultural phenomenon. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die Are You Experienced? (1967), Jimi Hendrix A virtual unknown to rock fans just a year before – Hendrix used Are You Experienced? to assert himself as a guitar genius who could combine pop, blues, rock, R&B, funk and psychedelia in a way no other artist had before. That’s even without the essential contributions of drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, who handed Are You Experienced? the rhythmic bridge between jazz and rock. Few album openers are as exquisite as “Purple Haze”. Few tracks are as gratifying, as sexy, as the strut on “Foxy Lady”. And few songs come close to the existential bliss caused by “The Wind Cries Mary”. Hendrix’s attack on the guitar contrasted against the more polished virtuosos in rock at the time – yet it is his raw ferocity that we find ourselves coming back to. Few debuts have changed the course of rock music as Hendrix did with his. RO
The 40 best albums to listen to before you die We Are Family (1979), Sister Sledge Disco’s crowning glory is this album that Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards made with Kathy Sledge and her sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim. Nile and ’Nard were at the peak of their powers, classic songs were pouring out of them – We Are Family was released in the same year as the epochal “Good Times” by Chic – and this album has four of them, “Lost in Music”, “He’s the Greatest Dancer”, “Thinking of You” and the title track itself. Sister Sledge gave Rodgers a chance to work with warmer, gutsier vocals than the cool voices he used to give Chic records such laid-back style and the result is a floor-filling dance party, punctuated by mellow ballads. CH
Browne filled the remainder of the decade with a string of classic albums: 1973’s For Everyman , 1974’s Late for the Sky , 1976’s The Pretender and 1977’s Running On Empty, a portrait of life on the road which gave him his biggest commercial success. In the Eighties, Browne’s songwriting became more overtly political as he began to turn his lacerating gaze outward.
It was only when he arrived in Haiti to visit the school that APJ built that Browne learned they’d also constructed an artist’s institute in the south coast town of Jacmel, where young people were learning to become sound engineers in a modern studio. “When I saw it I thought, well, people from outside of Haiti should come here and work,” he says. “So I asked some people if they wanted to come.”
The group he rounded up included the songwriter and producer Jonathan Wilson (“A very willing partner and accomplice”) and former Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis (“One of my heroes. I love her music”) as well as Paul Beaubrun, Habib Koite, Raul Rodriguez and Jonathan Russell. On the island they also teamed up with members of the Haitian roots band Lakou Mizik. They set about trying to capture the reality of the country in song, which brings us back to Rick, who Browne didn’t finish telling us about. In the song he’s riding a motorbike through the slums: “The father and the doctor to the poorest of the poor / Raising up the future from the rubble of the past”. As it turns out, he’s a real person.
“Father Rick Frechette is a major figure in this whole story,” explains Browne. “He’s a Catholic priest, but when he arrived in Haiti it was so rough he said: ‘These people don’t need a priest, they need a doctor.’ He went away, became a doctor and then came back to Haiti and built a hospital. He’s an inspiration, and he was instrumental in starting the school.”
Browne’s determination to shine a light on Rick and the work still being done in Haiti is in part motivated by the knowledge that the world’s attention has long since moved on. “It’s such a vibrant culture,” he says. “But the art and music and the incredible resilience of these people is matched by the environmental problems which have come with global warming, the hurricanes and the effects of centuries of deforestation. The problems are formidable.”
Jackson Browne (fourth left) with the musicians who worked on charity album ‘Let the Rhythm Lead’ Browne is fiercely passionate about the environment. He lives in an off-grid ranch supported by wind and solar power, and since 2008 has banned plastic bottles from his tours. His 1974 song “Before the Deluge” spoke of anger at those who had forged the earth’s “beauty into power”, and warned of the “magnitude of her fury in the final hour”. It could almost have been written today, although Browne sadly points out our situation is now even more dangerous. “That song was inspired by a writer named Paul Ehrlich,” he says. “He laid forth a scenario in which the world’s dysfunctions compound and create an apocalyptic outcome, but even he couldn’t have predicted the calamitous situation we’re in now where we have a world leader who is flagrantly disregarding information from the scientific community.”
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Sign up As if to underscore his point, the day we speak the Trump administration announces it is scrapping pollution protections for America’s streams and wetlands. Browne says he doesn’t believe America will re-elect their president this year, but his optimism is shaded with caution. “I don’t think it’s in the bag or anything, but I have to hope,” he says. “He didn’t win the popular vote, and he only has a 30 per cent approval rating, but that 30 per cent of people are the ones I’m worried about. I saw a photograph of him at a rally, and there was a sign saying: ‘Thank Baby Jesus for President Trump’. Holy s**t! He’s telling these wild lies and still receiving that sort of adoration.”
All of these issues will filter into his next album, which he plans to release in September. He’s currently finishing a track called “Downhill from Everywhere”, inspired by the oceanographer Captain Charles Moore’s remark that “the ocean is downhill from everywhere”. Another new song is called “A Little Soon to Say”. He recites a few lines of it: “I want to see you holding out your light / I want to see you find your way / Beyond the sirens in the broken night / Beyond the sickness of our day / And after all we’ve come to live with / I want to know if you’re OK / I have to think it’s gonna be alright / It’s just a little soon to say.”
“That’s my way of touching upon what I’m worried about most,” he explains. “I wonder how young people coming into positions of authority in this world are going to deal with what we’re leaving them. Even as my generation were somewhat myopic or idealistic or naive, we were right about so many things. It’s the same people that opposed the Vietnam War, who wanted to protect the planet, who want to feed the hungry and educate the uneducated.”
He sees echoes of that Sixties idealism in the “very inspiring” activism of Greta Thunberg . “This generation coming into the world taking these problems seriously is exactly what’s needed,” he says. “I don’t feel I have the right to be pessimistic or feel defeated, but it’s a struggle I have every day because the news is so unremittingly bad. Activism by young people is one of the brighter spots.”
For Browne, America’s problems are manifold but intertwined. He brings up the failings of the criminal justice system and the unchecked power of the industrial war complex that he sang about on 1986’s “Lives in the Balance”. “This is the worry I have about democracy,” he says. “It can be gamed by private interests, whether they be robber barons in the 1800s or the fossil fuel industry today. They get us to drag our feet so they can keep making their corporate fortunes. As Warren Zevon said in his great song: our s**t’s f***ed up.”
That would be Zevon’s “My S**t’s F***ed Up”, released in 2000, which is about a man hearing bad news from his doctor. Two years later Zevon received his own terminal diagnosis, learning of the cancer that would kill him in 2003. Browne and Zevon had been friends and collaborators since the Seventies, and they shared a knack for sharply prescient songwriting. When Browne was on his most recent tour, with the headlines full of Russia’s attempts to influence American politics, he took to covering Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. It opens with the line: “I went home with the waitress / The way I always do / How was I to know / She was with the Russians, too?” Browne clearly got a kick out of its continued relevance. “If you didn’t know that song you’d think it was written last week,” he laughs. “That song is 40 years old. It was funny then, and it’s even funnier now.”
Let the Rhythm Lead interpolates languages like Creole and Spanish, much as Zevon did on his 1982 track “The Hula Hula Boys”. When I remind Browne of this he howls with delight. “Do you know what the chorus of ‘The Hula Hula Boys’ actually means?” he asks mischievously. “It’s a saying in Hawaii that loosely means ‘get to the point’, but literally means ‘sing the chorus’. So when they sing the chorus, they’re singing ‘sing the chorus’. That is the funniest f***ing thing I have ever f***ing heard! That’s Warren Zevon at his best. With one stroke, he’s saying nothing and everything. Zevon is a singular writer.”
The 50 best albums of 2019Show all 50 1 /50The 50 best albums of 2019 The 50 best albums of 2019 50) Kim Gordon – No Home Record The debut solo album of the art-punk pioneer was never going to be predictable, easy-listening. No Home Record channels the dissonance and avant-garde vibe of New York’s experimental no-wave movement in a nine-song, genre-defiant collection that jumps between industrial, minimal electro-rock and abrasive art punk. Uniting the tracks is their creator’s restlessly questing, non-conformist spirit. It’s great to have her back. (EB)
Natalia Mantini
The 50 best albums of 2019 49) Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe Nilüfer Yanya isn’t down with the “wellness” industry. On her debut album, Miss Universe, the singer-songwriter makes this perfectly clear, tearing into all those “improve yourself” schemes littered across social media and parcelling up that angst as cerebral, skewed alt-rock. Synths and saxophone play their part on the smoother, more soulful “Paradise” and “Baby Blu”. Listen to the driving groove of “Heat Rises”, meanwhile, and you’ll be instantly reminded of Kelis and Andre 3000’s “Millionaire”. That said, Yanya is very much her own artist: original and bold. (PS)
Molly Daniel
The 50 best albums of 2019 48) The Black Keys – Let's Rock Five years since their last album, the Ohioan duo have gone back to basics. Gone are the subtle inflections and lacquered psychedelia of Turn Blue; Let’s Rock is all about simple hooks and nagging choruses, “an homage”, in the words of drummer Patrick Carney, “to the electric guitar”. Get past the terrible title, and you’ll be rewarded with a viscerally entertaining album that never lingers for more than four minutes per song. If this is genre pastiche, it’s genre pastiche done with skill and savvy. (PS)
The 50 best albums of 2019 47) Bat for Lashes – Lost Girls Musically, Lost Girls couldn’t be more Eighties if it were playing a Commodore 64 while eating Angel Delight. Like Stranger Things, everything about it is unashamedly nostalgic: the power drums, the moody atmospherics, the arpeggiated synths. Close your eyes and you can practically see Jason Patric on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in The Lost Boys. Yes, nostalgia is a fairly generic formula. But listened to as a whole, the album positively thrums with sonic invention, managing to feel both fresh and full of intrigue. Khan once again demonstrates a knack for uncanny storytelling. (PS)
Jen Ewbank
The 50 best albums of 2019 46) Collard – Unholy On his debut album, the 24-year-old mixes sultry jams that recall the electronic funk of MGMT with nods to the greats: Prince, James Brown, Led Zeppelin and Marvin Gaye. Throughout, Collard exhibits his extraordinary voice, which swoops to a devilishly low murmur or soars to an ecstatic falsetto. On the lustful “Hell Song” he sings “less is more… but more is good”. You’re inclined to agree with him. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 45) Angel Olsen – All Mirrors When the Missouri singer broke out in 2014, she became known for her lo-fi, introspective sound and the staggering range and power of her voice. On All Mirrors, she dials things up even further than 2016’s Sixties-leaning My Woman, and turns her focus outwards – it is an album, she says, “about losing empathy, trust, love for destructive people” and “owning up to your darkest side”. It is also balletic and haywire, refusing to follow traditional rules of song structure. Listening to it feels like accidentally pressing play on two songs at once, and finding the combination strangely inebriating. (AP)
Cameron McCool
The 50 best albums of 2019 44) Lizzo – Cuz I Love You This is a polished, playful album, though it has a DIY edge to it: “S**t, f**k, I didn’t know it was ending right there,” she chuckles in the final few moments of “Like a Girl”. “Girl, run this s**t back,” she says after a vivacious flute solo on “Tempo” – a song featuring a guest verse from Missy Elliott, the person who, Lizzo said on Twitter, “made this chubby, weird, black girl believe that ANYTHING was possible”. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 43) Skepta – Ignorance is Bliss There’s no attempt to chase someone else’s wave here; no token drill, afroswing or trap beats to satisfy playlist algorithms. Instead, his cold grime sonics are rendered down to their no-frills essentials – brutalist blocks of sad angular melodies and hard, spacious drums. The result is a quintessentially London record, as dark and moody as it is brash and innovative. “We used to do young and stupid,” Skepta concludes on “Gangsta”. “Now we do grown.” (IM)
Boy Better Know
The 50 best albums of 2019 42) Ariana Grande – Thank U, Next It lacks a centrepiece to match the arresting depth and space of Sweetener’s “God Is A Woman”, but Grande handles its shifting moods and cast of producers (including pop machines Max Martin and Tommy Brown) with engaging class and momentum. One minute you’re skanking along to the party brass of “Bloodline”; the next floating into the semi-detached, heartbreak of “Ghostin’”, which appears to address Grande’s guilt at being with Davidson while pining for Miller. She sings of the late rapper as a “wingless angel” with featherlight high notes that will drop the sternest jaw. (HB)
Youtube / Ariana Grande
The 50 best albums of 2019 41) Ezra Furman – Twelve Nudes The Chicago-born singer’s ninth album is a furious reaction to the social and political events of 2018 – over 11 breathless tracks, he turns that anger into a howl of resistance. Each song feels personal yet relatable – the deep-rooted despair felt on “Trauma” at the sight of wealthy bullies rising to power is a universal one, as is the sense of liberation in just letting go on “What Can You Do But Rock n Roll”. Twelve Nudes is Furman’s most urgent and cathartic record. (RO)
Jessica Lehrman
The 50 best albums of 2019 40) YBN Cordae – The Lost Boy On his studio debut, YBN shows off his versatility, but not to the point that it distracts from the underlying message of each song. You have the menacing “Broke as F***”, where the beats and stark piano hook contrasts with Cordae’s rags-to-riches rap. Aged 21, the North Carolina artist flecks songs such as the Anderson .Paak-featuring “RNP” with an endearing kind of nonchalance; over the woozy, psychedelic soul of opener “Wintertime”, meanwhile, he wonders how Corretta Scott King felt upon learning Martin Luther had cheated on her. It’s by no means a perfect album in the grand sense of the term, but it is a perfect demonstration of everything Cordae is capable of. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 39) Big Thief – UFOF Big Thief’s frontwoman Adrianne Lenker has an uncanny ability to make you feel like you’re in on a secret. Her whispering, spectral delivery and deeply personal lyrics are the key to this. Even on the band’s third album UFOF, with an audience that has grown exponentially in the past few years, the songs are still immensely intimate affairs. The album’s deathly intrigue is drawn from her own personal traumas, which she successfully spins into something that feels universal. But you don’t come away from this record feeling downcast. It’s more a reminder of how fleeting yet beautiful life is, and an appeal to make the most of it. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 38) Jenny Lewis – On the Line Here, Lewis does what she does best: adds the glossy sparkle of Hollywood and a sunny Californian sheen to melancholy and nostalgia, with her most luxuriantly orchestrated album yet. Even when she’s singing, “I’ve wasted my youth”, it’s in that sweet voice, with carefree “doo doo doo doo doo doos”, and at a pace that’s so upbeat that it masks the sentiment. It’s a bittersweet mourning of her past. (EB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 37) Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Few people have had as big a year as Billie Eilish. The first – and currently only – artist born in the Noughties to have a US number one single, she also released her double platinum debut album, the innovative and multifarious, if irksomely titled, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? There are some missteps – “Wish You Were Gay” being one of them – but for the most part this is an album as full of charm and bite as Eilish herself. And with a melody that ducks and dives in between the beat like a bank robber dodging lasers, the dark, dank pop-trap masterpiece “Bad Guy” is surely a contender for song of the year. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 36) AJ Tracey – AJ Tracey One of the biggest new rap stars to emerge in 2019, AJ Tracey’s variety and the scale of his ambition on this album is breathtaking. Fans will be surprised to discover he sings almost as much as he raps, in pleasingly gruff tones. Each track is a standout, none more so than “Ladbroke Grove”, a hat-tip to classic garage in which Tracey switches up his flow to emulate a Nineties MC. It’s a thrilling work. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 35) Caroline Polachek – Pang The former Chairlift frontwoman’s solo debut (at least, her first under her own name) is an eccentric, experimental delight – PC music by way of classical pop. The product of a divorce and a series of adrenal rushes she refers to as “pangs”, the album is musically agile and often lyrically stark: Sometimes I wonder/ Do I love you too much? Then I tell myself ‘Caroline, shut up’”, she sings on “Caroline Shut Up”. Polachek’s voice is her secret weapon – so jolting and elastic she had to prove it wasn’t autotuned in an astonishing Twitter video. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 34) Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury Simpson recently said he wanted Sound & Fury to “hit like a Wu-Tang record”, so each intro is like a one-two punch loaded with brilliant hooks. Then there’s the rollicking “A Good Look” and “Last Man Standing” – it’s pure rock and roll: sleazy, slick and lots of fun. Sound & Fury marks another milestone for a remarkable artist. (RO)
Semi Song
The 50 best albums of 2019 33) Fontaines DC – Dogrel Of all the excellent bands to emerge out of Dublin’s booming music scene over the past few years, Fontaines DC are the best of them. Perhaps it’s the fact that they’re technically outsiders, having grown up on the borders of the city (or in their guitarist Carlos O’Connell’s case, between there and Spain). Frontman Grian Chatten eschews punk’s tradition of valuing shock value over songcraft and instead offers searing, literary observations of a city with which he has a love/hate relationship. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 32) Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride Already subject to manic shifts in style and tempo, this hour-long LP roams in lounge pants from Deadhead jams to Zombies-catchy hooks, infectiously kitsch prog, highlife samples and – on “Sunflower” – a scat breakdown. An unfashionable record, then, and that may be its best asset. With such low stakes and barely any emotional intensity, Father of the Bride won’t cement Vampire Weekend’s legacy. But after a highly strung decade on the indie-rock A-list, it gives them room to breathe. (JM)
The 50 best albums of 2019 31) FKA twigs – MAGDALENE “Making this album has allowed me, for the first time, to find compassion when I have been at my most ungraceful, confused and fractured,” FKA twigs writes in the album’s press notes. “I stopped judging myself, and at that moment found hope in MAGDALENE.” At times, MAGDALENE is just as ungraceful, confused and fractured as its creator was – a rush of baroque electronics, industrial noise, opera, synths, autotune and precarious falsetto. The follow-up to 2014’s LP1 is the sound of a woman teetering on the brink of collapse, gathering herself, and then erupting into a kind of defiance. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 30) Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest Bill Callahan returns after six years with this homely, career-best album in which he sings of his own contentment. “The panic room is now a nursery,” he observes on “Son of the Sea”. Death still looms – often in the form of a black dog that follows Callahan around various tracks – but its inevitability seems more of a comfort than something to be feared: “Everybody must walk the lonesome valley,” he sings firmly. “Yeah, they must walk it by themselves.” (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 29) Shura – Forevher Arriving three years after the release of her debut, Nothing’s Real, Shura’s excellent second record is camp and theatrical, pivoting between a big, poppy sensibility and a minimalist, lo-fi one – sometimes on the same track. Lead single “Religion (U Can Lay Your Hands On Me)” is a slinky shoulder roll of a song, laden with passionate blasphemy: “I wanna consecrate your body, turn the water to wine, I know you’re thinking about kissing, too.” It’s laced, too, with piano – an instrument she’d always been “allergic to” before this record – and opulent orchestral strings. (AP)
Hollie Fernando
The 50 best albums of 2019 28) Cage the Elephant – Social Cues On Cage the Elephant’s fifth album, Social Cues, frontman Matt Shultz reacts to the breakdown of his marriage and the loss of three close friends. He undergoes a kind of Jekyll and Hyde transition through the 13 tracks, the result of which is the band’s best work to date. Single “Ready to let Go” is by far the most explicit – a moody swamp-rock jam where Shultz comes to terms with his impending divorce. He bares his soul on Social Cues, and apparently shakes off a few demons in the process. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 27) Brittany Howard – Jaime Howard listened to Brazilian artist Jorge Ben – “where there’s literally, like, 18 different things happening in the song” – while she was making the album, and it shows. “13th Century Metal” builds like an alarm, while “Baby” is scatty and scattered, like something off The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Sometimes, there is one instrument too many, but usually the components crash together well. (AP)
Brantley Gutierrez
The 50 best albums of 2019 26) Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow Written during her recent pregnancy and the birth of her first child, Remind Me Tomorrow shows Van Etten dimming her spotlight on toxicity and instead casting a warm glow behind the record’s psychic overview. As well as expectations of confessional singers, she subverts folk music’s focus on bare-bones songwriting. But the daintiest composition “Stay” is her most perfectly realised yet, over music box chimes and heel-clicking percussion she coos: “You won’t let me go astray/ You will let me find my way.” After years of making peace with drift and uncertainty, she’s never sounded more sure of anything. (JM)
Ryan Pfluger
The 50 best albums of 2019 25) Floating Points – Crush Inspired by the improvisations he was creating while on tour with The xx in 2017, Sam Shepherd found himself making “some of the most obtuse and aggressive music I’ve ever made”. This newfound drive can be heard in singles such as “LesAlpx”, a mind-melting track that climbs breathlessly towards its summit with a pounding bass beat and high, whistling chirps that punctuate the tension. It’s an insight into his brilliant mind and – such is the sheer variety of the album – a way to inspire one’s own imagination. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 24) Stormzy – Heavy is the Head There are three themes that run through the record: his defiance in the face of doubt; the pressure of high expectations; and his efforts to lift others up as his success continues to grow. He reminds himself constantly of who he is beneath the gloss that fame has brought: he’s “Rachael’s Little Brother”, “Big Michael”, a guy who likes to watch Avengers and Game of Thrones. All of his best traits are present and correct: sincerity, a smooth flow and forensic-like analysis of societal ills, laced with pathos and humour. The lasting impression is of an artist whose only way is up. (RO)
Mark Mattock
The 50 best albums of 2019 23) Marika Hackman – Any Human Friend A blunt, bold album on which Hackman’s beatific voice sits atop methodically messy instrumentals. Songs such as “All Night” are so candidly carnal it feels inappropriate to listen to them in public; notes of riot grrrl, pop and rock come together throughout the record to create something that is, at times, quite striking. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 22) Solange – When I Get Home The decade’s second great Solange album churns several deformed, jazzy aesthetics – including Brainfeeder’s gloopy electro-funk and the concoctions of DJ Screw – into a lustrous cloud of R&B. The result hints at Seventies soul voyagers like Stevie Wonder yet retains its future-shock, celebrating Houston futurism without pandering to fans of its explicitly political predecessor. (JM)
The 50 best albums of 2019 21) Cate Le Bon – Reward For her fifth studio album, Cate Le Bon went to live in a secluded cottage in the Lake District, where she sang to an empty house and took lessons in wood-carving. Yet her compositions on Reward are lush, warm and whimsical; opener “Miami” is resplendent with stately horns and percussion that reminds you of childhood. There’s a fantastic sense of space, too, spun from diaphanous arrangements such as “The Light”, where she meanders delightfully from a clear, lilting call to a deep vocal rumble. It’s an album by an artist intent on readdressing her relationship with her own existence. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 20) Sam Fender – Hypersonic Missiles Fender drew plenty of early comparisons to Bruce Springsteen – on Hypersonic Missiles they’re entirely warranted, as much for the instrumentation as the lyricism and his vignettes of working-class struggle. There are sax solos (more than one), and pounding rhythms that make you want to jump in a car and drive down a highway at sunset, and blistering electric guitars next to classic troubadour acoustics. He has Springsteen’s rousing holler, and the early indications of someone who could be the voice of a generation – not because he wants to be, but because he sees things and understands. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 19) Taylor Swift – Lover Swift’s sixth album Reputation was camp and melodramatic, killing off “the old Taylor” and waging war on anyone and everyone who dared to criticise her. It was sincerity veiled as self-parody, insecurity veiled as breeziness – and all the better for that uneasy paradox. But Lover, her new, seventh album, feels like a partial resurrection of the Swift of old: moony romance and earnest earworms abound. It’s the sound of a singer excited to be earnest again. Taylor Swift is dead. Long live Taylor Swift. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 18) Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia. Its influences span decades; Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar and Bobby Womack are all recalled. “I’m not going to have an alter ego, or becomes Sasha Fierce or Ziggy Stardust,” says Kiwanuka. “I can just be Michael Kiwanuka.” With an album this good, it’s hard to argue with that. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 17) Kano – Hoodies All Summer On his sixth album, Kano’s powers of observation are at their peak. Home has always been at the heart of his music, so he maintains the close-quarters perspective of his 2005 debut Home Sweet Home; the swaggering confidence of that record, though, is replaced by a more thoughtful gravitas. He’s an elder statesman of grime, and you can almost see his furrowed brow and shake of his head on “Trouble”, while the frenetic “Class of Deja”, starring fellow veterans D Double E and Ghetts, reminds the listener how he lit the path for future generations. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 16) Hot Chip – A Bath Full of Ecstasy Lyrically, the band offer up some of their most poignant phrases to date on this – their seventh and best record. Second single “Hungry Child”, a trance-y floor-filler, contains the plaintive, “Dreaming never felt so bad/ Lonely never felt so wrong before” while, over the shuffling beats of “Echo”, Alexis Taylor sings of leaving your regrets behind while seeming to understand the effort required to achieve this. For all its glimmering synths and the robotic pathos of Taylor’s idiosyncratic vocals, this is a record with both heart and soul. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 15) MUNA – Saves the World Saves the World should see MUNA joining the ranks of those who have brazenly borrowed their sound. Lead single “Number One Fan” banishes intrusive thoughts – “Nobody likes me and I’m gonna die” – just in time for a lavish, self-celebratory chorus, one part earnest, one part tongue-in-cheek. Elsewhere, they are downright defeatist, laments the inevitable pull back to a recent ex (“Stayaway”) or reflecting on a lover’s similarity to an adulterous father (“Taken”). “Hands Off”, meanwhile, toys with temptation before slamming the door shut. It is fierce and forthright. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 14) Slipknot – We Are Not Your Kind Fans have already drawn comparisons between We Are Not Your Kind and Slipknot’s seminal 2001 album Iowa. While the latter was even heavier (it would be difficult if not impossible to outdo), the sheer ambition on We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering. If anything, the dynamic created by placing a bigger emphasis on melody allows you to consider everything without being engulfed by noise. Critics may question how relevant Slipknot are in 2019. The pummelling force of We Are Not Your Kind should be enough to silence them – this may be one of the band’s most personal records, but the rage they capture is universally felt. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 13) Rapsody – Eve Each song is titled after a black woman Rapsody admires: Serena Williams, Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Aaliyah, Oprah Winfrey… and for each one she explores these women’s traits, successes and strife. As on Laila’s Wisdom, Eve conveys Rapsody’s natural feel for funk – “Michelle” (Obama) bounces in on a jaunty piano riff – but other tracks, such as “Afeni”, are pure soul. Nina Simone said an artist’s duty, “as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times”. This is precisely what Rapsody has done, in the most resonant way possible. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 12) Julia Jacklin – Crushing There’s a deeper sense of personal connection to anchor Julia Jacklin’s lyrical and melodic smarts. That snare drum on “Pressure to Party” keeps a relentless, nerve-snapping pulse throughout, while “Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You” nails a depth of intimacy while acknowledging relationship ennui. Grunge-rinsed, feminist-flipped, upcycled Fifties guitar an’ all: Crushing is a triumph. (HB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 11) Foals – Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1 Philippakis’s voice is shrouded in the smoke from society’s wreckage. Lead single “Exits”, six scintillating minutes of Eighties “sledgehammer” pop that lumbers into view like a heavy artillery vehicle covered in sequins, concerns the one percenters building underground cities to escape global warming. “Syrups” has Yannis howling a passionate post-apocalyptic vision of robot invasions and sand-clogged towns over a corroded Gorillaz dub that builds to a motoric charge as global panic sets in. An inspired album of scorched earth music. (MB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 10) Dave – Psychodrama A talented pianist as well as a rapper and singer, Dave often spits over discordant chords to amplify the urgency of his chosen subject, or else raps in gruff, assertive tones across an emotional sequence that complements his stoic intensity. On “Environment”, he talks about the conflict between what people see of his apparently glamorous life, and the reality behind the scenes where the blood and sweat is drawn out of him. He’s put everything into this album. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 9) Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising Weyes Blood, whose real name is Natalie Mering, accompanies her instrumental idiosyncrasies with strong, luscious melodies and unfussy lyrics. “No one’s ever gonna give you a trophy for all the pain and the things you’ve been through,” she sings on “Mirror Forever”. “No one knows but you.”And then there’s that voice – at once warm and haunting, controlled and untethered. It’s no wonder she’s lent it to the likes of Perfume Genius, Drugdealer and Ariel Pink: it adds a touch of profundity to everything it meets. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 8) James Blake – Assume Form The warm splashes of piano that washed over that song also break through the anxious rattle of dance beats on the album’s eponymous opener, the singer so regularly reviewed as “vaporous” promises to “leave the ether, assume form” and “be touchable, be reachable”. His own sharpest critic, he winks at the journalists who’ve called him glacial as he drops from remote, icy falsetto into a richly grained, deeper tone to ask: “Doesn’t it seem much warmer?” (HB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 7) Nick Cave – Ghosteen Following the traumatised chaos of 2016’s Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen is a warm cloud of ambient solace – a sonic evocation of the communion he has experienced through his newly porous relationship with his audience. He sounds buoyed, not weakened, by exposing his wounds. (HB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 6) Tyler, the Creator – IGOR The production here is superb. Tyler has never been one for traditional song structure, but on IGOR, which is undoubtedly a break-up album, he’s like the Minotaur – luring you through a maze that twists and turns around seemingly impossible corners, drawing you into the thrilling unknown. Its lack of resolution at the close – surely the most torturous element of a great love lost – makes it all the more powerful. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 5) Big Thief – Two Hands The indie-rock band’s second album in the space of five months (the first being UFOF), was described as the “earth twin” and, indeed, they sound utterly grounded – to each other, and to their surroundings in the arid Chihuahuan Desert of Texas, near the Mexico border. In contrast to her fragile performance on UFOF, here Adrianne Lenker sings in lusty whoops and calls on “Forgotten Eyes”, while “Not”, the record’s dark, brooding soul, caterwauls with feedback screeches and a merciless, two-minute guitar solo that leaves you simultaneously devastated and enthralled. (RO)
The 50 best albums of 2019 4) Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars Bruce Springsteen seems to have told almost every tale in the grand old storybook of American mythologies, except perhaps one: a wide-eyed Californian dreamer finds the Golden State turns sour and flees back east, to some romantic speck of a town, to pine and rehabilitate. It’s the classic pop plotline of Bacharach and David’s “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”, and it’s a tale Springsteen taps repeatedly here, on his sumptuous, cinematic 19th album, which is nothing short of a late-period masterpiece. (MB)
The 50 best albums of 2019 3) Little Simz – GREY Area Few albums in 2019 have been as eclectic, or with as singular a vision, as Simz’s GREY Area. She flips between two tones: formidable and reflective. On tracks such as “Offence” and “Boss” she drips with venom; delivering lines in a low, deadly buzz over killer bass hooks and punk distortion. On “Selfish” and “Flowers” she’s softer – allowing herself to be vulnerable because she knows she doesn’t have to ditch all sentiment to compete with her male peers. She’s better because she embraces every facet of herself, and offers it to the listener in as clear a statement as possible. (RO)
Jen Ewbank
The 50 best albums of 2019 2) Lana Del Rey – Norman F***ing Rockwell! Lana Del Rey has always been obsessed with the past. Hers is a sound rooted in nostalgia, a paean to everything she was born too late to live through: old Hollywood, Sinatra, beat poetry, Sylvia Plath and Fifties Americana. At her best, she mines something fresh from it all. At her worst, she wallows in it. Her new album Norman F**king Rockwell!, named after a 20th-century American artist, does both. (AP)
The 50 best albums of 2019 1) Aldous Harding – Designer When Aldous Harding performed in London this month, an enamoured fan cried out that they loved her. “I appreciate that,” she replied softly. “But, I’m busy.” The response is Harding to a T – wry, weird, introspective, focused. Her spectacular, singular third album, Designer, is all of those things. Taking the left-field folk that made her name and splashing post-psych pop and jittery orchestral flourishes onto the canvas, the New Zealander harbours secrets while beckoning you in. “It's better to live with melody and have an honest time/ Isn't that right?” she asks on “Fixture Picture”, before wearily concluding that “you can't be pure and in love”. On “Zoo Eyes”, on which her voice plummets to its lowest register, she asks two questions in succession, as if they’re of equal import: “What am I doing in Dubai in the prime of my life? Do you love me?” It is an exquisite, enigmatic record. (AP)
Claire Shilland
Now 71, after more than half a century of songwriting, Browne still believes in the power of music to change lives. He was just 16 when he wrote “These Days”, which is made all the more remarkable by the fact it contains one of the most devastating lyrics ever committed to song: “Don’t confront me with my failures/ I had not forgotten them”. Was the teenage Browne really that tortured, or was it a case of art imitating art?
“I don’t know,” he says after a pause. “I listened to a lot of old men making music when I was a kid. Blues and folk, as well as Bob Dylan, who sounded old. I was emulating them to an extent, but I wasn’t just posing as an old person. That thought resonated with me. I’ve had therapists say to me: ‘What the hell happened to you when you were young?’” He thinks he was just always an old soul. He remembers reading a book of blues lyrics his mother had given him. “There was a lyric where it arrived at the place: ‘I got so old,’” he says. “It hit me really hard. I thought: ‘F***, that’s going to happen.’ You get to a place where you can’t believe how old you are. No one ever thinks it’s gonna happen to them, isn’t that wild?”
He may be of their generation, but The Who’s line about hoping they’d die before they got old never rang true for Browne. “I’ve always disputed that inwardly,” he says. “I’ve had a problem with my back most of my life. In my thirties it got to where it was so painful I could barely lean over the sink when I brushed my teeth. I thought: ‘This is the onset of decrepitude,’ but I hadn’t tried anything! With yoga and chiropractic doctors I eradicated the problem. I remember thinking with amusement: ‘You were really ready to accept the idea that you were decrepit and there was nothing to be done about it.’ That’s maybe a metaphor for what we’re talking about, about hope in the world. Things are so bad, but I still don’t hope the world dies before it gets older.”
‘Let the Rhythm Lead: Haiti Song Summit Vol 1’ by Artists for Peace and Justice is released today (31 January)
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