Our Favorite Albums of 2018

As 2018 comes to a close, Josh and Jack reflect on another year when artists stole our hearts and brought us into their worlds. Here, we tackle the difficult task of naming some of our favorite releases this year.

Be The Cowboy, Mitski

Mitski’s two previous albums— Bury Me at Makeout Creek and Puberty 2— captivated listeners with bleak rock songs about unrequited love and existential angst. In Be The Cowboy, she tells even more nuanced stories of emotional repression and loneliness, while her experimentation with piano and synthesizers results in her catchiest music to date.  – Josh

Bloom, Troye Sivan

You could fill an entire stadium with albums recounting stories of teenage love, but rarely are they told as well as on Troye Sivan’s sophomore effort, Bloom. From a reflection of his first sexual encounter as a queer teen in “Seventeen” to his empathetic commentary on the uneven ending of a relationship (“The Good Side”), Sivan reveals a remarkably fresh and frank perspective on the topic. The wonderfully lush production work creates a dreamy, ethereal soundscape that mirrors the euphoric highs of love. At the age of 23, Troye Sivan continues to raise the bar for his rising generation of music talents.  -Jack

Clean, Soccer Mommy

Soccer Mommy’s first LP is not concerned with the intricacies of “modern love.” In Clean, love is animalistic and elemental, expressed through claws and teeth, blood and bone, changing seasons and orbiting planets. Beautiful guitar melodies and songs about evading parents on a summer night keep the album grounded in the traditions of great rock music. – Josh

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, The 1975

The Internet Age has tested our ability to forge and maintain deep, meaningful connections with each other. It’s a challenge that yields no clear answers, but The 1975’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships shines a brutally honest spotlight on its emotional consequences. With a an eclectic juxtaposition of glimmering electronic synths, classic jazz, folk, and R&B, the record’s musical styles treads along the very boundary of artifice and reality, past and present, that society has increasingly confronted. Even when the production is cheerfully optimistic, the accompanying lyrics are frequently stark and pained (“Love It If We Made It”, “I Like America and America Likes Me”). The final result is a record that unmasks the often-confusing blend of thoughts and emotions that come with living in the digital age and ultimately humanizes that experience.  – Jack

Daytona, Pusha-T

After ending a five-year wait for his next opus, Pusha-T boasted of having “the luxury to drop when he want/’Cause nobody else can fuck with me.” His decision to rename his album after a Rolex watch was another way of celebrating this “luxury of time.” But DAYTONA also benefited from restrictions enforced by its producer, Kanye West. By limiting the album to seven tracks and sticking with sparse electronic beats throughout, Kanye makes Pusha T’s third studio album an airtight masterpiece, delivering ferocious disses and memorable glimpses into the dark underworld of drug dealers. – Josh

Caution, Mariah Carey

To say the least, it’s been an uneven couple of years for the legendary Mariah Carey. As her Christmas anthem “All I Want For Christmas Is You” continues to scale higher up the charts each holiday season, she has faced a number of career setbacks and flops – most notably her New Year’s’ Eve lip-syncing debacle in 2016 and continued coverage about the decline in her vocal ability. But her first LP in four years, an aptly-titled Caution, results in some of her best work in ages. As a legacy artist, there’s an inherent Catch-22 with each release: adapt too much and get called out for trend-following (and alienating your fan base). Or keep your classic sound intact and risk sounding out-of-touch. Mariah successfully navigates through both hurdles, experimenting with new producers (e.g., Skrillex, Nineteen85) with surprisingly fresh results while ensuring the finished product is “Mariah-certified”. This is best exemplified with the album’s highlight, “A No No”, which sees her deliver fierce and sassy lines over a sample of Lil Kim’s 1997 classic,  “Crush on You”. – Jack

Lush, Snail Mail

Lush weaves together feelings of exuberance and melancholy to create a perfect indie rock soundtrack for the summer. With thoughtful lyrics and dreamy guitar lines, Snail Mail brings listeners into the confusing moments between loving someone and letting them go.   –Josh

Black Panther: The Album, Kendrick Lamar and various artists

2018’s biggest blockbuster film was accompanied by an equally adventurous soundtrack. Curated by Kendrick Lamar, Black Panther: The Album pushed beyond the boundaries of traditional soundtrack fare and instead delivered a bold collection of songs that stand just as well alone. The highlight of the album is the Kendrick, Vince Staples, Yugen Blackrok collab “Opps”, which immerses you into 3 minutes of non-stop pounding energy and unexpected rhythmic twists. This is hip-hop, pop, Afro-soul, and R&B styles blended together at its best.  –Jack

Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves

Already known as a rebellious free spirit (by Nashville standards), Kacey Musgraves added to that reputation on “Golden Hour” by bringing elements of disco and psychedelic rock into her upbeat country songwriting. In an era of widespread cynicism, the album is a moving ode to going through life with an open heart and a sense of wonder. – Josh

Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B

A top albums list for 2018 wouldn’t be complete without Cardi B, arguably the year’s biggest star. After hitting the top of the charts late last year “Bodak Yellow”, the big question on everyone’s mind was how she would back up that monster hit in 2018. Would live up to the hype and pressure? If there were any doubts, she quickly dispelled them with Invasion of Privacy. One of the strongest debuts in recent memory, Invasion of Privacy shows off Cardi B’s versatility as an artist. While she boasts about “diamonds on my wrist” in “Drip” and “run[ning] this shit like cardio” on the Latin-infused summer jam, “I Like It”, other tracks reveal much more vulnerability and introspection. The gradual musical crescendo of “Get Up 10” mirrors her unabashed account of her own rise to fame, while “Be Careful” provides an deeply personal “warning” (not a threat) about past dealings with infidelity. With more Hot 100 #1’s already than any other female rapper and five Grammy nominations, the future certainly looks bright for this Bronx native.  –Jack

Voicenotes, Charlie Puth

Charlie Puth is an incredibly gifted musician and producer— and he’s not shy about it, either. That talent wasn’t evident in the bland ballads that made him famous. But Puth won over many of his most disparaging critics this year with Voicenotes,  an album full of irresistible riffs on old-school R&B and pop.  – Josh

Grammy Nominations Preview

Believe it or not, it’s that time of year again. On Friday morning, nominations for the 61st Grammy Awards are set to be released. It’s been another year of incredible releases across multiple genres along with some of the most significant changes to the Recording Academy in history. Here are the top 3 things to expect when the nominations come out.

1. The Most Diverse Grammys Ever

For the first time in Grammy history, the number of nominees for the top four categories – Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist – will be expanded from 5 to 8 nominees. While this change may appear insignificant at face value, its purpose is clear – to allow an increasingly diverse universe of music to be appropriately recognized for the Recording Academy’s top honors. It follows a similar move made by the Oscars in 2010,  when they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10.

But that’s not the only change the Grammy’s have made. The Grammy’s have long been criticized for their lack of representation. After a particularly egregious comment from Grammy Awards President Neil Portnow earlier this year that women need to “step up” to be successful, multiple changes have been instituted to promote a more diverse voting body in the Academy. Over the past few months, more than 900 women, people of color, and/or people under 39 were invited to join the Academy.

Diversity in the Grammy Awards’ “Nominations Review Committees” – which ultimately determine who gets nominated for their associated music genre – has increased dramatically as well. The percent of women on the committee has nearly doubled, from 28% to 51%, while the percent of people of color is at 48%, up from 36%. But just as shocking as the growth in representation over just one year is the fact that the previously undisclosed numbers were so low to begin with.

2. More R&B, Hip-Hop, and Country in the Mix

Hip-hop/R&B was the most popular genre in America in 2017, making up 25% of all music consumption. That trend has continued into 2018, and we fully anticipate the Grammy Awards to reflect these evolving trends, with perhaps an unprecedented number of hip-hop/R&B albums nominated in the general categories. Top picks for this year include works from Cardi B (Invasion of Privacy), Drake (Scorpion), Janelle Monae (Dirty Computer), Kendrick Lamar (Black Panther: The Album), and Beyonce/Jay-Z (Everything Is Love).

After being completely snubbed among the previous year’s general category nominees, country music is back with two strong contenders. Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour melted fans and critics’ hearts alike with a modern country album exuding a winsome combination of warmth and wit. At the same time, Chris Stapleton could make a run for his second Album of the Year nomination in three years with his husky, deeply emotive From a Room: Volume 2.

(Note: the eligibility period for the Grammys goes from Oct 1, 2017 to Sep 30, 2018, which means Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow” from the A Star is Born soundtrack is eligible while the rest of the album will have to wait until next year.)

3. Nomination Controversy

Regardless of who ends up being nominated, there will almost certainly still be controversy over the outcome. It certainly doesn’t help that the nomination process is big mystery box holding the Grammy’s best kept secret – that the Grammy nominations in key categories can be edited.

Yes – that’s right. The awards are not as democratic as one might expect. For all of the top general category awards as well as some genre-specific awards in R&B, Country, Latin, and others, Nominations Review Committees, comprised of select Recording Academy members, take the top 15-30 nominees based on initial voting, and make the ultimate decisions among those behind closed doors.

This is certainly troubling for the industry’s most prestigious awards. As an example of how this could come into play, it was rumored that Ed Sheeran’s Divide album ranked #3 for Album of the Year after initial voting; however, it was later dropped from the list by the committee. True or false, the potential for these situations to occur raises serious questions on the very legitimacy of these awards. A shift towards greater transparency in the awards process would be a likely next step as the organization continues to evolve and rectify the grievances expressed by music creators and followers alike.

Nominees for the Grammy Awards will be begin to be revealed on CBS This Morning and on Apple Music beginning on Friday at 8:30am EST. The full list of nominees will be revealed shortly afterwards on GRAMMY.com at 8:45am.

And last, but not least, here are our predictions for Album of the Year: