I Listened to 200 New Albums in 2019
My personal project in 2019 was to listen to 200 new album releases. That is, 200 full LPs released in the year 2019. In order to qualify for my project, I needed to listen to the album at least three times, front to back, and needed to evaluate it at least somewhat by giving it a personal review score because my brain has a hard time holding onto things if I don’t think about it critically, at least a little.
The experience has been wonderful. Music, taste, politics, and the intersections of all three are things I’ve wanted to dedicate more serious time to as a post-grad school grown-up, and this project has afforded me such an opportunity. It’s been a wonderful journey of discovery that I’m going to try to incorporate into my life moving forward.
And I want to share. I am not a music historian or a music journalist. Neither am I a hip hop head, a metalhead, or a pophead — which is to say that I lack the cultural moorings and the communal investments, to be anything like an insider guide, a sherpa through any particular genre. What I am is a dilettante, a dabbler. Which means, I hope, that I can offer a little something for everyone, just as I have sought out a little something of everything for me.
Over the next week I’ll be writing up a few different lists. Of course, I’ve put together my favorites — 25 albums that I think are the essential listening experiences of 2019. But I’ve also got a few smaller lists to share, lists that will let me spotlight some standouts that cohere to vague genre boundaries and that might otherwise fail to secure the attention I think they deserve. The lists will look like this:
Top 5: The Flows
This is where I’ll be tucking my five favorite hip-hop/hip-hop adjacent records from the year. These records represent a broad sampler of the genre — they’re just a few of the records that I think ought to surface on everyone’s review of 2019’s music. I especially encourage you to listen to these five records if you don’t think of yourself as a hip-hop fan. Some of the most important, most vibrant, most politically important music being released is here — don’t deprive yourself.
Top 5: The Bops
This list is for the popheads, although to be honest, the only thing the five records on this list share is when I hear them, I say to myself, “that’s a goddamn bop.” It’s what makes you move, makes you feel good, gets stuck in your head for days.
Top 5: The Stories
Basically, this is my singer/songwriter list, which means it’s a smattering of folk, country, shoegaze, and other quiet (though not always), personal (though not to the same degrees) albums that pair poetic lyricism with tuneful melodies. It’s what I would put on the sound system of my coffee shop.
Top 5: The Heavies
One of the things I did this year was push way farther into harder, heavier subgenres of rock and electronic music. Turns out, 2019 was a great year to do that. This is where I’ve put the albums that you would describe with adjectives like crushing, massive, dark, brutal, or metal af. Some of the very best, most challenging records I listened to all year fall on this list. Even if it’s not somewhere you’d usually venture, give these a fair shake.
Top 5: The Vibes
Honestly, I’m not happy with this category, but I still wanted to shout out some records that just had a good groove to them. I’m not saying these records are sex music, because not all of them are, but that’s the second closest title I could come up with for this list. Some of this music chills you right out, some of it moves your feet, some of it feels like bubble bath music, and some of it feels like a leopard print bathrobe. It’s all good. It’s all good vibes.
Top 5: The Discoveries
This list is for the records from artists I had never heard of before. They’re all at or near the start of their careers (or at least, of this particular project’s career), and every single one of these releases is unmissable. Besides being new, the other qualifier for this list was they didn’t make it on one of the preceding lists. Otherwise, there’s all different genres represented, different intensities, etc. Go here to find some truly original shit.
Top 25
This is pretty self-explanatory. It’s my favorites, in order, across everything I listened to. I’m stoked to say that of my top 5, I had only heard of four of them before this year. I hope as these roll out you get to find some new favorites too.
