Albums ran the gamut of sounds
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USA TODAY’s best albums of 2018 include quite a crowd of performers – charts-topping superstars, country music innovators, undersung pop heartthrobs, hip-hop firebrands, rock ’n’ roll teens and neo-flamenco queens, among many others.
Read on for the 2018 albums that writers Maeve McDermott and Patrick Ryan will be thinking about long after the year expires.
Travis Scott, ‘Astroworld’
In a year that saw the release of way too many overlong rap albums, one of the most exhausting music trends of 2018, Travis Scott made a 17-track trap epic that earns every minute of its prodigious run time. “Astroworld” is an ambitious and completely-engrossing project that puts to bed any question of his influence on hip-hop today, an album that cemented his status as a star and earned critics’ respect. – McDermott
Robyn, ‘Honey’
“Honey,” a release that took the Swedish pop innovator eight years to complete, is the slowest album of Robyn’s career. For an artist who has influenced a generation of younger stars with her fembot-with-feelings pop, it’s thrilling to hear the tracks on “Honey” unfolding at their leisurely pace. Inspired by various heartbreaks in her life, the album’s nine laser-focused tracks take their cues from club music rather than radio pop – sometimes building into an evocative climax, sometimes leaving the listener waiting for a big moment that Robyn chooses to never materialize – as she revels in her glittering sadness. – McDermott
Kacey Musgraves, ‘Golden Hour’
Country radio continues to do wrong by women. Just look at the Billboard Country Airplay chart from earlier this month, where female acts were missing from the top 20 for the first time in nearly 30 years. Thankfully for all of us, we have Texas native Kacey Musgraves, who is not only an outspoken activist for women and the LGBTQ community, but is moving the country genre forward in invigorating ways, trading banjo for disco on single “High Horse” and dabbling in psychfolk on “Golden Hour” highlight “Oh, What a World.” – Ryan
Mitski, ‘Be the Cowboy’
Don’t call Mitski’s music “self-confessional,” a phrase often used to describe the searing imagery and stripped-bare emotions in Mitski Miyawaki’s music. It undersells her creativity and, as seen on “Be The Cowboy,” her highly enjoyable theatricality.
Miyawaki further broadens her sonic palette on “Be The Cowboy torturing her songs’ narrators in ways so sharp and hyper-personal that listeners often assume she’s writing about herself. She’s not – just let her entertain you.
– McDermott
Ariana Grande, ‘Sweetener’
More than just being the best release of Ariana Grande’s career, “Sweetener” is easily the weirdest, thanks to Pharrell Williams’ characteristically offbeat production that gave many of her new songs their kooky levity this year. For fans that prefer Grande’s “Into You”style maximalist-pop bangers or sweeter vintage-R&B tracks, those also exist on “Sweetener,” courtesy of her longtime collaborators Max Martin and Tommy Brown, respectively. Taken as a whole, “Sweetener” is eccentrically paced and compulsively listenable, which portends well for Grande’s “Thank U, Next” follow-up album that’s rumored to be arriving soon. – McDermott
Cardi B, ‘Invasion of Privacy’
No one has captured our attention this year quite like Cardi B. Through a near-constant stream of delightfully unfiltered posts on social media, we’ve watched the Bronx rapper announce her marriage – and split – from rapper Offset, embrace new motherhood and sear her beef with Nicki Minaj. But none have slowed Cardi’s roll, as she made good on her 2017 breakthrough “Bodak Yellow” with an album of bangers as undeniable as her talent. She ferociously raps about her wealth on trap anthem “Drip” as effortlessly as she sings about heartache on the hypnotic “Be Careful,” and cements her status as a bonafide hit-maker with the J Balvin and Bad Bunny-assisted “I Like It,” an exuberant ode to her Latin roots. – Ryan
Charlie Puth, ‘Voicenotes’
Too many music writers seem to have the wrong idea about Charlie Puth, if the decidedly-meh critical reaction to his new album showed us everything this year. Puth isn’t just the earnest crooner that listeners heard on the Wiz Khalifa megahit “See You Again,” nor the bratty brightest-young-thing that he projected on such singles aslike “Attention” and “How Long.” Although, both personas show up on “Voicenotes” as he spends the album navigating fame and flings in Hollywood, on a handful of impeccablymade pop songs that should’ve spawned more hits than it did. – McDermott
Pusha T, ‘Daytona’
“Daytona” set a high bar for Kanye West and the rest of his G.O.O.D. Music label crew when it was released as the first entry of their multipart album series. Unfortunately for the rest of them, “Daytona” was the only album that executed the concept, with Pusha T’s dialed-in performance and cutting lyrics perfect for the short-and-sweet format. The release also provided some redeeming moments for West, whose production skills on “Daytona” were in classic form. But the album squarely belongs to Pusha T, even if the album’s controversial cover of Whitney Houston’s bathroom, as well as a certain Drake drama, threatened to overshadow the whole endeavor. – McDermott
Troye Sivan, ‘Bloom’
The 23-year-old Aussie star had the kind of well-curated rise to fame – a single with Ariana Grande here, a role in an Oscar-contender art-house film there – that can make artists seem like focusgrouped label plants. Then his album “Bloom” arrived, and was immediately one of the most compelling pop releases of the year, a set of unabashedly queer and intensely personal set of comingof-age songs with Sivan as their magnetic narrator. It’s the kind of collection of songs that immediately warrants a sequel. – McDermott
Future, ‘Beastmode 2’
Future’s visions of trap music’s excesses, vivid enough to fill one of the superlong albums that all his hip-hop contemporaries seemed to release this year, was condensed into an EP for “Beastmode 2.” The result is an album with a pitch-black heart that sticks to your lungs like tar, his tales of depravity getting a lift from producer Zaytoven’s showy classical flourishes. – McDermott
Snail Mail, ‘Lush’
For all the fawning accolades we can lay at the feet of Lindsay Jordan – that she’s a teenage prodigy making ’90s indie rock as good as some of the greats who influenced her – they might detract from the simpler, immediate pleasures of her music, such as how her debut album “Lush” absolutely rips with songs like “Heat Wave” that we just want to mainline straight into our veins.
– McDermott
Christine and the Queens, ‘Chris’
Hélöise Letissier is easily one of the most interesting figures in pop, and luckily for listeners, her second album “Chris” is a vivid showcase for her character – non-binary and deeply sensual with a penchant for smooth funk and whirling disco, articulated through a cheeky mix of English and French lyrics. – McDermott
Rosalia, ‘El Mal Querer’
Rosalia gave many English languagespeaking listeners an education in what the future of flamenco music sounds like with the release of her second album “El Mal Querer” this year. Easily one of the most imaginative pop albums of 2018 – a genre signifier that’s far too narrow for the kind of music Rosalia is making – “El Mar Querer” incorporates electronic music flourishes, hip-hop beats and samples from Justin Timberlake to Arthur Russell. As if that’s not impressive enough, “El Mal Querer” is a concept album that re-tells the story of 13th-century novel “The Romance of Flamenca,” about a woman trapped by love.
– McDermott
U.S. Girls, ‘In a Poem Unlimited’
Released in February, it may have been easy for critics to overlook “In a Poem Unlimited” in favor of newer, flashier pop releases on this month’s crop of year-end lists. That would be underselling the masterful disco-pop that Meg Remy made as U.S. Girls this year, channeling the euphoria of ABBA with the bite of Madonna and a quiet anger that feels relevant to 2018. – McDermott
Beach House, ‘7’
There’s a fine line between a band’s music being “consistent” and it all sounding the same, one that the beloved Baltimore indie rockers Beach House have toed since their 2006 debut. Their seventh album is less a different sound for the band than a different shade of the brilliantly melodic dream-pop that Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have perfected over their 14 years as a band – a deep blue, the color of a midnight desert sky, appropriate for an album as cooly-detached and cinematic as “7.” – McDermott