Recently, a reader suggested that I list my favourite albums by year. So here you are – I’ve mostly only listed albums I’ve already reviewed on this site. I don’t know some years very well – I’m dubious about including veteran artists in a couple of 1990s slots, and I don’t know the 2008-2012 era well enough for informed choices.
Amazingly, it took until 2022 for an artist to win take the title for best album for multiple years. Unlucky artists include The Replacements, Stevie Wonder, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Jamila Woods.
1960s
1963: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan 1964: Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy 1965: A Love Supreme by John Coltrane 1966: Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys 1967: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles 1968: Odessey & Oracle by The Zombies 1969: Liege & Lief by Fairport Convention
2010: The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe 2011: Let England Shake by PJ Harvey 2012: Devotion by Jessie Ware 2013: Modern Vampires Of The City by Vampire Weekend 2014: 1989 by Taylor Swift 2015: Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens 2016: I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It by The 1975 2017: Preservation by Nadia Reid 2018: Be The Cowboy by Mitski 2019: U.F.O.F. by Big Thief
2020s
2020: 真っ黒 [Makkuro] by Tricot 2021: Valentine by Snail Mail 2022: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You by Big Thief
Wow really glad you took my idea:) it’s been great to follow your website for 3 years now
We have nine in common, on first read
Cool, which 9?
1963, 1966 (how could it not, also have Sunflower in 1970), 1985, 1986, 1987, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2004. Beach House this year, 18 songs of great Dream Pop
Sigur Ros will get bumped for Soft Bulletin when I get around to making a Flaming Lips page. It’s very good though.
Good noticing – I meant to go back and reply to your comment, but I ran out of time yesterday.
I only have two in common with you I think. Sgt Pepper and Station to Station. And possibly LCD Sound System, but I’m not sure I did one for that year
That’s surprisingly low…
Not sure if you are interested:)
Your pick for 1989 led me to re-listen to Hats again, and now we have 10 and not 9 in common… I already liked it (but I now think it’s ‘great’ rather than just ‘really good). Was behind The Sensual World, which I kinda think you underrate…
A lot of people love Sensual World – I’m well aware that I’m an outlier. I didn’t hear Blue Nile until relatively recently- I always read about them but didn’t get to hear them until the streaming era.
Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person.
Graham Fyfe is probably the only music blogger to appreciate both Neil Diamond and Ariana Grande. Based in Fleet Street (New Zealand), he's been writing this blog since around 2000. Aphoristic Album Reviews features reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.
Review Pages
Read about the discographies of musical acts from the 1960s to the present day. Browse this site's review archives or enjoy these random selections:
Conventional wisdom suggests that Gordon Sumner surrendered his credibility when he left The Police, letting his pretentiousness overcome him as he dabbled in jazz and saved the rainforests. As a singles artist he couldn’t match the brilliant individual songs like ‘Message In A Bottle’ he wrote for The Police. But […]
Introduction The punk and new wave movements lowered the barriers to entry to a musical career, promising a more egalitarian future. Yet with the occasional exception, like Debbie Harry, The Go-Gos, and Tina Weymouth, guitar-based music remained a largely male domain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Raincoats […]
This page collects album reviews for 2010s artists for whom I’ve only reviewed one or two albums. In 2018 I started covering new albums regularly, so this page is very heavy on the last couple of years of the decade. (Sandy) Alex G | Michaela Anne | Big Big Train […]
Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens grew up in a small Welsh village. She sang in her school choir and played bass and drums in indie bands. She became an auxiliary nurse at a cancer treatment hospital in Manchester, but her patients encouraged her to pursue a career in music. […]
Named after a Talking Heads song, Radiohead are the most critically acclaimed band to emerge in the 1990s. They convened informally in 1986 as teenagers while attending Abingdon School in Oxford, and were originally known as On A Friday. Front-man Thom Yorke infuses his gorgeous voice with his neuroses, while the […]
After leaving Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould released a couple of solo albums, before forming another power trio. Unlike Hüsker Dü, where Grant Hart was an important songwriter and vocalist and Greg Norton was also central to the band’s sound, Sugar is Mould’s show; his two new recruits, bassist David Barbe […]
Blog Posts
I add new blog posts to this website every week. Browse the archives or enjoy these random selections:
When I was a teenager in the 1990s, the 1980s were often reviled as the decade that taste forgot. But I think this list is far less heinous than the 10 Worst Songs of the 1970s – the corporate vibes of the 1980s sound less dated than the hippie ethos […]
Birmingham band The Moody Blues have one of the most misleading names in popular music. It fit to start with – their early repertoire was based on American blues, and their cover of Bessie Banks’ ‘Go Now’ topped the UK charts in early 1965. They played on the Ed Sullivan […]
The Sex Pistols weren’t the first punk band to release an album – The Ramones beat them by 18 months. But Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Sid Vicious became the face of punk in the UK. Manager Malcolm McLaren successfully courted controversy – an infamous appearance on Bill […]
It took me a while to warm to Bruce Springsteen – the radio mostly played his 1980s hits from Born in the U.S.A., and I had him pigeon-holed as a lame, ultra-American, lowest common denominator rocker. But eventually I gave in to his critical reputation and gave a couple of […]
Judee Sill was a 1970s singer-songwriter from California. Her gentle songs were at odds with her tumultuous lifestyle. She spent time in prison for armed robbery and learnt music while serving as a Church organist at a reform school. She also worked as a hooker and struggled with heroin addiction […]
The Velvet Underground began as a collaboration between frustrated songwriter Lou Reed and classically trained John Cale. Cale had worked with experimental composers John Cage and LaMonte Young, and Reed’s interest in alternative guitar tunings and drone notes provided common ground. The pair recruited guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Moe Tucker and […]
Wow really glad you took my idea:) it’s been great to follow your website for 3 years now
We have nine in common, on first read
Cool, which 9?
1963, 1966 (how could it not, also have Sunflower in 1970), 1985, 1986, 1987, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2004. Beach House this year, 18 songs of great Dream Pop
Sigur Ros will get bumped for Soft Bulletin when I get around to making a Flaming Lips page. It’s very good though.
Good noticing – I meant to go back and reply to your comment, but I ran out of time yesterday.
I only have two in common with you I think. Sgt Pepper and Station to Station. And possibly LCD Sound System, but I’m not sure I did one for that year
That’s surprisingly low…
Not sure if you are interested:)
Your pick for 1989 led me to re-listen to Hats again, and now we have 10 and not 9 in common… I already liked it (but I now think it’s ‘great’ rather than just ‘really good). Was behind The Sensual World, which I kinda think you underrate…
A lot of people love Sensual World – I’m well aware that I’m an outlier. I didn’t hear Blue Nile until relatively recently- I always read about them but didn’t get to hear them until the streaming era.