I know that time is arbitrary but I do love end of the year lists as a time of accounting for things loved and obsessed over. 2016 as has been written about by people much more capable was the year of Black excellence in music – not that ever year doesn’t see phenomenal work by Black musical artists but this year was a cornucopia of insistent, urgent, important Black music. Intersecting with this was also a year of the album – the surprise album, the album as multimedia project, the album as exclusive to one streaming platform, the album that requested to be listened to in its entirety, the album that was released unfinished and tinkered with. Of course there was Beyoncè’s Lemonade, but also Solange’s A Seat at the Table, the “finally” of Frank Ocean’s Blond(e), the magic of Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book, the black queer bravura of Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound, the grimey sexy interior space of Rihanna’s Anti and more beyond. Below in no particular order are 24 tracks that really got under my skin and into my head this year – there were others that were also there from the recent past and the far past (a lot of Nina Simone and Emmylou Harris this year) and some that I adored but they didn’t linger (I’m still working through my Lady Gaga feelings). Lemonade isn’t here since it’s not on Spotify (and I wanted to make a playlist) and I am not even sure if you entirely do justice to the music without the video (or maybe that’s just a pretension on my part). But know this, I had “Hold Up” stuck in my head for weeks and “All Night” is my favorite track and I want it played at my wedding (if I ever get married).
And here we go:
1.
“Calling
All” – Phantogram – I’ve always been into Sarah Barthel’s voice and the sound
of this group, but Three was their
first album I found necessary listening front to back. The songs are layered
with samples, ghostly voices, glitch sounds, and thicker emotions than past
albums. Barthel’s sister death by suicide lingers over this album, but this
closing track is an all-out embrace of sexual desire and exploration with a
mocking chorus that opines “We all got a little bit of ho in us.” One of those tastemaking
blogs suggested that this song was ruined by its chorus but I glory in Barthel’s
distorted voice tempting the listener and speaking to our baser instincts. A
downbeat electronic stomper. “You know you wanna shake.”
2.
“Wolves”
– Kanye West with Sia and Vic Mensa – I know people have a lot of feelings
about ‘Ye but he remains to my mind a true artistic genius – by which I mean
what he does creatively doesn’t always make sense and he doesn’t really care
when he’s in the grips of inspiration. The
Life of Pablo was an album where he let us see him tinker and retool as the
album was sort of released and then re-made and reconsidered. I love Frank Ocean
but I prefer this version of the song with Sia and Vic Mensa since I love the
richness and texture of Sia’s voice alongside the haunting backing vocals. On “Wolves”
as on some of his best tracks Kanye perfectly marries his darkest fears and
discontent with his lyrical playfulness and sexual frankness. The song sprawls
and ever second is thick with eerie sounds and despair.
3.
“Fuck
Apologies” – JoJo with Wiz Khalifa – Armed with a voice beyond her years, JoJo finally
returned with a new album and a take no prisoners attitude. This track is built
on a neverending forward motion as JoJo owns her actions and refuses to demure.
A perfect R&B track with a looping guitar and JoJo’s forceful vocals this
song was on repeat for me for weeks and remains my go-to track for blasting
away unwanted criticism.
4.
“iT”
– Christine and the Queens – My current obsession is the debut album by
Christine and the Queens aka the alternate persona of French singer Héloïse Letissier. Moving between
genres and languages, Christine toys with gender and sexuality in provocative
ways. Watch the amazing video for “Tilted” IMMEDIATELY. Okay, did you? Good. Okay, that song is
awesome but my favorite is the album’s opening track “iT” staged as a dialogue
between Christine and “the Queens” which are Greek chorus also voiced by
Letisser. Despite the protestations of the Queens, Christine becomes a man
(elsewhere in the album she calls herself a HalfLady). The song accumulates
instruments as it builds before ending simply with the chorus accepting
Christine as a man. Divine.
5.
“Crisis”
– ANOHNI – Jesus Christ, ANOHNI’s Hopelessness
was devastating when it was released and 2016 only further got gripped with a
kind of fatalism that makes returning to this album difficult and necessary. In
spite of the album’s title, ANOHNI (formerly Antony and the Johnsons) is not
simply giving up even as she sings about drone bombings, the false
progressiveness of Obama, and mass graves. This is a delicate album of
electronic music lovingly produced and showcasing ANOHNI’s nuanced voice which
can rise and fall like a blues singer. As with many of the album’s tracks, “Crisis”
speaks from the place of power and privilege, from the person who caused the
deaths of the vulnerable. The despair, the apologia, is uncomfortable and
beautiful and never allows for easy escape for the listener. But there is
empathy here and that is what makes me tentatively hopeful when I listen.
6.
“Unnatural”
– the Jezabels – The Australian indie rock group’s album Synthia is appropriately draped in 80s synths cascading over
ethereal yet urgent vocals. The singer claims her unnatural status in rich
evocative lyrics which jive with the album’s overall feminist bent (on the
track “Smile” the chorus calls out men for asking the speaker to smile in
public). Standing apart has always been the speaker’s “surplus” and it may mean
she consorts with the darkness but it also makes her sparkle.
7.
“Blended
Family (What You Do For Love) – Alicia Keys with A$AP Rocky – Okay, I know that
public sentiment has kind of turned against Alicia and her slightly eccentric public
persona but I’ve always loved her. Her album this year Here marked a return to a grittier older R&B vibe when her last
two albums seemed to be coasting into the colder realm of smooth R&B and
Coldplay style dreamscapes. Like many tracks on Here, “Blended Family” is a song that makes me always sing along.
Alicia is in fine voice singing about her own family situation (her very public
taking up with producer Swizz Beatz while he was still married with children)
and the old school vibe with that guitar riff is warm and inviting. A$AP’s
feature works organically and seamlessly.
8.
“Ivy”
– Frank Ocean – What can even be said about Blonde?
Picking a single track is difficult partially since the album is mixed so the
tracks flow together in a kind of acoustic poem or fever dream. The triple
punch of the first three songs is invigorating but this one stands out to me
for that haunting guitar and the amazing control Frank has over his voice. He
glides between a nearly conversational sing-song to the crooning R&B voice
to the cast off pleas to the lost love. The intentionally jarring distortion of
his voice at the end serves to keep the song slightly off kilter and functions
like the divot in a perfectly cast pot, reminding us of the human creator.
9.
“Cranes
in the Sky” – Solange – A Seat at the
Table is so fully formed, so perfectly formed and yet the individual songs
function like linked short stories in a longer novel. “Cranes in the Sky” has a
deceptive lightness acoustically and yet Solange’s honeyed voice sings about
the endless search for a way to kill the pain. Solange’s central metaphor of
the title cranes flying away mirror the song in its uncompromising beauty in
the face of a difficult world.
10. “The Valley” – Claire Maguire – Where her
first album was full of pop music bombast on the level of Kate Bush, Maguire’s
second album Stranger Things Have Happened
is tight and intimate with the scratchy closeness of a 1960s folk album. “The
Valley” aspires for the Laurel Canyon bitter sweetness of a Joni Mitchell or
Linda Ronstadt. One imagines Maguire singing this song alone in her mirror in a
black and white film and as magically as the music arrives it fades away.
11. “rEaR vIeW” – ZAYN – Zayn Malik aka the
hottest One Directioner went out on his own this year with a moody alt-R&B
debut album that shoots for the murkier and darker end of R&B. This track
showcases Zayn’s falsetto as he pines for a woman and recounts what he’s heard
secondhand. Malay – the producer for Frank Ocean’s channel Orange – tricks out the song in lush instrumentation and
helps push the sense of desperate yearning. Poor Zayn.
12. “But You” – Blood Orange – Dev Hynes’s Freetown Sound is a love letter to, in
his words, those told they were “not black enough, too black, too queer, not
queer the right way.” Hynes is a dynamic producer (see Carly Rae Jepsen’s last
album, Solange’s True EP) but he’s
also a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist. Freetown
Sound includes his voice alongside appearances from Carly Rae, Debbie
Harry, Nelly Furtado, and others. “But You” is a song of love and an acknowledgement
of unseen importance in those unseen by society. Hynes’s R&B vocals are tentative,
whispered, yet also intimate and real. He’s not in full voice always and at
times allows his voice to break slightly. This song works its way into the
feels like the boy at the back of the class with a note he leaves for you to
read at home alone in your room.
13. “Ain’t Your Mama” – Jennifer Lopez – My
life goal is to age like JLo – if I can look that good in my 40s than I will be
blessed. This empowerment anthem uses the mothering metaphor – the woman
refusing to baby her partner – to acknowledge Lopez’s age while also reminding
us that she is the sexiest triple threat mother you’ve ever met. The song’s
stuttering drum beat and her nasal cools pair with a chorus you are meant to
belt along with in a bar.
14. “Desperado” and “This Is What You Came For”
– Rihanna – When Rihanna FINALLY released Anti
it was a dark grimey album, a journey into the imagined fantasies of our
cold ice queen sex goddess who wants to smoke up, dance alone in front of the
mirror, and have sex on her schedule at her whim. If Lemonade is a public display of complex Black female community, Anti is a private interior world of
Black female sexual agency. On “Desperado,” Rihanna crooks her finger at a boy
and draws him into her Western fantasy of sex, tells him she doesn’t really
want him, but says she’d rather not be alone. AND YOU BETTER GO WHEN SHE SAYS
GO. This is the song that makes me dance in coffeeshops. “This is What You Came
For” isn’t from Anti; it’s a Calvin
Harris summer trifle that shouldn’t linger and yet it burrows deep inside.
Rihanna isn’t always the strongest singer (although she’s vastly improved as on
tracks like “Love on the Brain”) but her voice is one of the most distinct and
it carries an icy vulnerability. She can play her voice like an instrument and
Harris harnesses this and chops it up and in other places lets her coo and
whisper and telegraph so much need on the dance floor. Her world, we just live
in it.
15. “Almost Makes Me Wish For Rain” – Lucius –
This track has the synthy drum and bass sound of 80s pop but also the bright
sparkle and blended vocals of a 1960s pop song. The two lead singers weave
their voices in and out moving between rich multitracked choruses and softer
solo parts. The song feels cheesy at first listen but there’s a sorrowfulness
in the lyrics about the wishes for rain to wash away potential happiness; the
closing rain noises feel less trite and more like a bit of defeat.
16. “U-turn” – Tegan and Sara – I know not
everyone has welcomed the full on embrace of melancholy pop by the pop punk
lesbian twins from Canada, but I for one am all as long as their songs come
tinged with a nostalgia and regret. Initially a teaser for the new album, I was
immediately taken with the ear-wormy wonder of “U-turn” in all its snarky
obviousness (“Shape up for I’ll drop you like a call”) and the delightful
meta-narrative of a song about writing a love song. The doubleness at the
center of the song makes it a kiss off masquerading as a paean to love. Sold.
17. “Phenomenal Woman” – Laura Mvula – Mvula’s
first album was beautiful but at times overly mannered and cerebral. Her second
album The Dreaming Room opens out
with more intentional bangers, moving between jazz, R&B, disco, and world
music. “Phenomenal Woman” is brief and direct with a martial rhythm that drives
forward a simple yet urgent message, echoing Maya Angelou’s classic poem of the
same name.
18. “Running Man/Gospel OP1” and “See Her Out
(That’s Just Life)” – Francis and the Lights – Francis Farewell Starlite is the
voice behind Francis and the Lights, featured on songs by Drake, Chance the Rapper,
and others but just this year releasing his first full-length album. Francis
blends an old-school crooner approach with the glitchy experimental sounds of
alt-folk artists like Bon Iver (featured on the album) and more avant-garde rap.
“Running Man” glitches and pops as Francis multi-tracks himself into a falsetto
chorus like a more electronic Bon Iver with poppier aspirations AND AMAZING ELECTRONIC STRINGS. “See Her Out”
has an older feel with epic sad synths and vocal stylings which suggest 1980s
Peter Gabriel dealing with the heartbreak of the girl who got away. The track
is laden with need and recognizable pain.
19. “House on Fire” and “The Greatest” (with
Kendrick Lamar) – Sia – Okay, so last year I was singing Sia’s praises and then
she released her album This is Acting
and my love affair never ended. People criticized her songs for at times
turning on obvious metaphors – “House on Fire” doesn’t hide its point and
instead places the metaphor front and center and for me this is the song’s
strength. The song opens quietly and elegantly suggesting a waltz before
layering in instrumentation and Sia’s raspy throaty ever distinct voice. “The
Greatest” is a more straightforward empowerment anthem placed on top of
tinkling music box sounds and a tropical lightness. Another track that I found
myself singing for weeks, especially that promise that “I’ve got stamina.”
20. “What You Do To Me” – John Legend – The
beauty of John Legend’s voice cannot be understated. His entire album Darkness and Light is evocative and
gives me chills. This track with its deep felt desperation, cooing yet ominous
backing singers, and dramatic strings lingers with me. There’s a classic feel
to the track’s presentation especially the interplay with the female singers
and Legend’s falsetto falling apart in the final minute.
21. “Hold the Line” – Broods – Georgia Nott’s
smoky voice implores, cajoles, and insists with the listener. She describes the
intoxicating give and take of a relationship over a dense blend of guitar and
electronica. An immensely satisfying pop song.
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