10 Best Albums of 2019

I didn’t enjoy any single album from 2019 as much as I liked Mitski‘s Be The Cowboy in 2018. Nevertheless, 2019 was a strong year – albums that I enjoyed by established favourites like The New Pornographers and Taylor Swift didn’t make the cut for this top 10 list. I can’t cover everything – as a one-person website I’ve only heard a tiny fraction of music released in 2019. In particular, I’m very light on hip hop and on releases from veteran acts – I missed out on acclaimed records by Nick Cave and Bruce Springsteen.

To show where my choices register among general critical consensus, I’ve included each album’s rankings from the end-of-year-list aggregator Album of the Year. Interestingly, I thought their top three albums for 2018 were all terrific, but I was less enthusiastic about the critical hivemind’s top handful of records for 2019.

This was originally a sixteen album list – to bring it down to 10, I had to cut records from The Highwomen, Mdou Moctar, Carly Rae Jepsen, Caroline Polachek, Solange, and Charly Bliss.

10 Best Albums of 2019

#10 Better Oblivion Community Centre – Better Oblivion Community Centre

Genre: Indie
Talented young singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst teamed up for Better Oblivion Community Centre. It’s a pleasingly fulfilling collaboration – the pair harmonise beautifully, and songs like ‘Dylan Thomas’ and ‘Forest Lawn’ are gorgeous.
AotY Position: #51


#9 Miss Universe – Nilüfer Yanya

Genre: ummm….
Billie Eilish claimed the best new artist Grammy among her massive pile of trophies, but for my money 2019’s best debutante was London’s Nilüfer Yanya. She’s incredibly versatile, from raw guitar rock like ‘In Your Head’ to Sade-like smoothness on ‘Melt’.
AotY Position: #67


#8 African Giant – Burna Boy

Genre: Afrobeats
Nigerian star Burna Boy brashly named his fourth studio album African Giant, a response to his low billing at Coachella. He lives up to his self-appointed title with African Giant, fusing modern sounds with African tradition and political lyrics.
AotY Position: #73


#7 Two Hands – Big Thief

Genre: Indie folk
Brooklyn indie quartet Big Thief had an impressive year, releasing two strong albums. Their second record of the year, Two Hands, was recorded in the desert near the Mexican border and crackles with dusty tension. The best tracks, electric epics like ‘Not’ and ‘Shoulders’, recall the rough-hewn and intuitive interplay of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
AotY Position: #18


#6 All Mirrors – Angel Olsen

Genre: Art pop
Angel Olsen initially planned her fourth album as a low-key, back-to-basics record. Unsatisfied with the results, she re-recorded All Mirrors with strings, giving her songs an epic sweep. Tracks like ‘Lark’ and ‘Chance’ are lush and beautiful, sometimes recalling the romance of 1960s Roy Orbison.
AotY Position: #6


#5 Igor – Tyler, the Creator

Genre: Neo-soul/hip hop
Tyler, the Creator followed up 2017’s Flower Boy with another acclaimed effort. He started in hip hop, but here he’s cross-pollinating genres like a mad scientist, on a concept album about a love triangle. The single ‘Earfquake’ is full of hooks, while ambitious tracks like ‘A Boy is a Gun’ show a wide-ranging imagination.
AotY Position: #5


#4 Father of the Bride – Vampire Weekend

Genre: Pop/rock
After a six-year absence, during which Ezra Koenig wrote and produced an anime series, Vampire Weekend returned with Father of the Bride. Koenig had relocated to California, and multi-instrumentalist and producer Rostam Batmanglij had left the band, and the 2019 version of the band is substantively different. Collaborating with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Koenig’s songs reflect Californian sunshine, and Father of the Bride joins the celebrated pantheon of sprawling double albums.
AotY Position: #11


#3 Legacy! Legacy! – Jamila Woods

Genre: Neo-soul
Chicago’s Jamila Woods returned ub 2918 with an ambitious sophomore record, its songs painting portraits of thirteen of her role models. Musically the tunes recall the 1990s R&B of Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu, but lyrically they’re fascinating. The portraits of ‘Frida’, ‘Basquiat’, and ‘Baldwin’ are lyrically incisive and musically satisfying.
AotY Position: #26


#2 Titanic Rising – Weyes Blood

Genre: Arty singer-songwriter
Pennsylvania’s Natalie Mering returned with a lush record. There are moments of artiness, like the space of ‘Andromeda’ and the twinkling synths of ‘Movies’, but the lingering mood is created by gorgeous songs that recall the 1970s records of The Carpenters and Karla Bonoff.
AotY Position: #7


#1 U.F.O.F. – Big Thief

Genre: Indie folk
2019 was a banner year for Big Thief, releasing two excellent records. The first was U.F.O.F., recorded in a damp cabin in the woods of Washington State. U.F.O.F. is charming and rustic, Big Thief’s intuitive interplay recalls The Band, while Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting perspective is intimate and unique.
AotY Position: #13

Bonus Awards

Most Charismatic Newcomer: Billie Eilish
Great Record, but made me too sad to play it often: Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains
Great Record, but way too long: Lana Del Rey – Norman F***ing Rockwell
Favourite New Zealand Record: Tiny Ruins – Olympic Girls

Did I neglect your favourite 2019 record?

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16 Comments

  1. I know some of these folk, most not. I have no best of anything as I don’t follow current music closely enough. Glad you put a Spotify list so I can give a listen to all.

      • Why would you assume I’ll dislike a lot of it? Wouldn’t it have been easier to let me listen to it and decide for myself? Now I don’t feel like listening to any of it at all. Nice job pal.

  2. I must admit, I’m living in the past musically – I quite liked Frank Turner’s No Man’s Land but I’m not sure how many other 2019 albums I’ve heard.
    Which is why I appreciate these lists, to help keep me informed!

    • Once you’ve finished your 1001 assignment you’ll be free to check out new music. I had a few weeks of listening to 2019 music almost exclusively, which was weird – normally my blog format allows me to listen to whatever I feel like.

    • I only picked up on Jamila Woods very late in the year, but it’s really good. And I wasn’t really a Vampire Weekend fan until the newest one – I’ve gone back and really like the third one in particular now – but it’s very different from their other stuff. Kind of like a Koenig solo album.

  3. Listening to Burna Boy this morning so i will call that my fave of your list, not that I’ve listened all of them but a couple have been on my own tooo listen to list for awhile now! i don’t think any albums i named in my very own AOTY list i posted last year is above so i guess we might just have totally diff taste? do you wanna look at again anyway? most likely not! it’s wicked you just waited doing it until Feb. i guess just because everyone does it in Dec/Jan doesn’t mean anything, cool list man! 🙂

    • I saw your list when it came out, and liked it then. I would have assumed we’d have had a couple of things in common, but nope! A few artists on your list (Cave, Forster, Swans) who I enjoy earlier records by but haven’t kept up with.

  4. Great list: those two Big Thief albums are just immense – two good albums in one year is crazy enough but two albums so distinctly brilliant is unheard of, so glad I discovered them last year

    • I only caught on last year, but it was a good time to discover them – a lot of people loved their debut, but I think they’ve come a long way since then. Drummer upgrade helped them a lot.
      I’m trying to think of other artists with multiple great albums in a year. The Beatles with Sgt. Peppers and Magical Mystery Tour. Dylan with Bringing it all Back Home and Highway 61.

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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.

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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.

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