2021 was not great. It is absolutely cliche — and I’m certain this will be the first of many cliches written on this thing — but discovering new music was a fairly nice distraction to an otherwise pretty rough year. And so, like I do every year, here’s my favorite music of the year listed out for no particularly good reason other than I still enjoy doing it!
Below are my thirty favorite albums of the year followed by my thirty favorite songs of the year (along with some honorable mentions for each because I can’t help myself).
HONORABLE MENTIONS!
Arca – kiCK iiiii
Brockhampton – Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine
Dean Blunt – Black Metal 2
Illuminati Hotties – Let Me Do One More
Ishmael Ensemble – Visions Of Light
Poppy – Flux
Spread Joy – Spread Joy
Tinashe – 333
Tyler, The Creator – CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST
WILLOW – lately I feel EVERYTHING
30
QRTR
infina ad nausea
“Blame Me” (ft. Daniel de Lara)
“With You” (ft. Artemis Orion)
“Running From It”
29
Pupil Slicer
Mirrors
“Vilified”
“L’Appel Du Vide” (ft. Carson Pace)
“Collective Unconscious”
28
Pink Siifu
GUMBO’!
“Bussin’ (Cold)” (ft. Turich Benjy)
“lng hair dnt care”
“Wayans Bros.” (ft. Peso Gordon)
27
Nala Sinephro
Space 1.8
26
Makthaverskan
För Allting
“This Time”
“Ten Days”
“Tomorrow”
25
Danny L Harle
Harlecore
MC Boing was a revelation.
MC Boing is bouncing all night
from “Boing Beat”
Everyone here is safe and nice
Makes me wanna have a great life
Angels singing, bass is tight
DJ Danny: “Take My Heart Away”
MC Boing: “Boing Beat”
DJ Danny: “On a Mountain”
24
Backxwash
I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES
“IN MY HOLY NAME” (ft. Lauren Bousfield)
“I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES” (ft. Ada Rock)
“WAIL OF THE BANSHEE” (ft. SugeryHead)
23
Jaubi
Nafs at Peace
22
The Armed
ULTRAPOP
“ALL FUTURES”
“AN ITERATION”
“MASUNAGA VAPORS”
21
Yola
Stand For Myself
“Dancing Away In Tears”
“Barely Alive”
“Stand For Myself”
20
Magdalena Bay
Mercurial World
“You Lose!”
“Hysterical Us”
“Chaeri”
19
Arooj Aftab
Vulture Prince
“Mohabbat”
“Baghon Main” (ft. Darian Donovan Thomas)
“Saans Lo”
18
Grouper
Shade
“Pale Interior”
“The way her hair falls”
“Kelso (Blue sky)”
17
Turnstile
GLOW ON
“DON’T PLAY”
“HOLIDAY”
“T.L.C. (TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION)”
16
Tkay Maidza
Last Year Was Weird, Vol. III
“Onto Me” (ft. Umi)
“High Beams”
“Eden”
15
death’s dynamic shroud.wmv
Faith in Persona
“Tear in Abyss”
“Pop Chin”
“Someone in the Room”
14
Black Dresses
Forever In Your Heart
“PEACESIGN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Bulldozer”
“Perfect Teeth”
13
Little Simz
Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
“Introvert”
“Rollin Stone”
“Point and Kill” (ft. Obongjayar)
12
DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ
The Makin’ Magick II Album
“Being Alone”
“Each Time”
“I’m Still High”
11
Every Time I Die
Radical
“A Colossal Wreck”
“Planet Shit”
“Dark Distance”
10
Low
HEY WHAT
“Days Like These”
“Disappearing”
“The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)”
09
Genesis Owusu
Smiling with No Teeth
“Don’t Need You”
“Whip Cracker”
“Gold Chains”
08
Erika de Casier
Sensational
The title says it all. She hasn’t made a song I don’t love.
“Someone to Chill With”
“Better Than That”
“Call Me Anytime”
07
Violet Cold
Empire Of Love
“We Met During The Revolution”
“Be Like Magic”
“Pride”
I will never claim to be any sort of expert on the intricacies of metal, but as an outsider, Empire Of Love feels like one of the freshest and most progressive takes on black metal I’ve ever heard. There’s something incredibly bold about taking the flag of your country, Azerbaijan — a country notable for having next to zero protections for its LGBT community and a history of homophobic and transphobic intolerance — and merging it with the rainbow flag. But beyond that, this album stands on its own. It oozes positivity and does so with such a unique, fresh sound and genuine experimentation. “Be Like Magic” manages to combine incredibly beautiful post-rock-infused black metal with trap beats and it works so much better than imaginable. “Working Class” manages to be a banjo-driven black metal song in an incredibly fun way. “Pride” is among the most uplifting songs I’ve heard this year, and don’t even get me started on “We Met During The Revolution”. I’ll be writing about that song in the next section. Easily the most feel-good album on this list. It’s phenomenal.
06
Olivia Rodrigo
SOUR
“good 4 u”
“drivers license”
“deja vu”
Red lights, stop signs
from “drivers license”
I still see your face in the white cars, front yards
Can’t drive past the places we used to go to
SOUR is one of those albums where every song makes me feel something which is ultimately what I look for in music when it comes down to it. It’s angry, it’s imperfect in a way that adds to its authenticity, it’s heartfelt. She has such strong vocal command and manages to take on universal, timeless themes of heartbreak and betrayal with such sincerity that it never feels overdone or fake. I would argue this is the strongest major pop debut since Lorde’s Pure Heroine, and in a lot of ways feels like its spiritual successor. I absolutely love this album and genuinely can’t wait to see what she does next.
05
Sega Bodega
Romeo
“Cicada” (ft. Arca)
“I Need Nothing From You”
“Effeminacy”
A relatively late and surprising addition to this list, and one I’ve seen very few people mention or write about. This album exemplifies some of my favorite production and vocal aspects of “hyperpop” stuff but frames them in a heartfelt, ethereal way. Every time a song feels like it’s going to turn abrasive, it goes down a much different path. Some of the most uniquely pretty songs all year. There’s seriously a lot to love here. I had a ton of trouble picking my three highlights as nearly every song here is excellent and very different from the others (but it feels worth also highlighting “Um Um” which is a wonderful song about dealing with loss and was written with SOPHIE in mind. RIP). I’ve been kind of blown away by this thing.
04
Injury Reserve
By the Time I Get to Phoenix
“Knees”
“Top Picks for You”
“Bye Storm”
When deciding to write something about some of these albums, this is the one that gave me pause. I don’t know how to write about grief, and I certainly don’t know how to write about someone else’s grief — in this case, the sudden loss of Injury Reserve’s Stepa J. Groggs.
This is probably the hardest album on this list to listen to. I’ve heard it described as “sonically embodied grief” and I think that’s the most accurate way to describe it. It’s uncomfortable, but also wildly ambitious, experimental and so completely unique. There has never been a hip-hop album, if you want to call it that, that has ever sounded like this one. There is such a frantic and intensely unsettling energy to songs like “Superman That”, “Footwork in a Forest Fire” and “Ground Zero”. “Top Picks For You” is a song based around the algorithms created and used by companies and advertisers to recommend things (Netflix recommendations, ads from shopping, etc.) and how those algorithms live on even after we die, and how similar patterns live on through genetics we pass on to our children. It’s one of the most powerful and personal moments of any album this year.
Look across the table, I see a lot more than what appears to be a shadow
from “Top Picks For You”
He walks across the room, I see a lot more than seem to be patterns
I scan the room, I see bits and pieces of you scattered
It’s those same patterns that gon’ get us through the next chapter
Your blood runs through this home
And your habits through much after
Grab the remote, pops up something you would’ve watched, I’m like “Classic”
This some shit I would’a seen you watch and then just laughed at
Your patterns are still in place and your algorithm is still in action
Just workin’ so that you can just, jump right back in
But you ain’t jumpin’ back
Here just run it back
03
Arca
KicK iii
“Bruja”
“Ripples”
“Intimate Flesh”
This says nothing against everything listed and written about up to this point, but there is a pretty substantial gap between my top three and everything else on this list. Be prepared for some hyperbole. I really love these albums.
Oh shit
from “Bruja”
Arca, ay
December has been the month of Arca for me. She released the follow-ups to last year’s KiCk i by releasing KICK ii, KicK iii, kick iiii, and the surprise kiCK iiiii over a period of five days. Each has its own theme and sound, from reggaeton to synthy ambient music. KicK iii, to me, is the absolute standout of the group. It’s intensely creative, bombastic and unlike anything I’ve ever heard before and it radiates so much confidence it’s unreal. It has some of the most insane, hard beats I’ve ever heard and so many sounds that made me question how she was managing to make them. I genuinely don’t know how to write about it other than to say it’s absolutely phenomenal.
02
Lingua Ignota
SINNER GET READY
“MAN IS LIKE A SPRING FLOWER”
“PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE”
“I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES”
Lingua Ignota is among the most unique, groundbreaking voices in modern music, and this year’s SINNER GET READY is her masterpiece. Honestly, every attempt I’ve made at writing about this album has felt terribly inadequate.
The album provides a powerful analysis of mankind’s connection to religion through various lenses: someone seeking god but ultimately not finding him; the feeling of god’s judgment being inevitable and seeking out absolution; it also continues her previous albums’ themes of abusers and the abused. Three minutes into the first song, as the wall of synth, used to bridge 2019’s Caligula to this album, dissipates, never to return for the rest of the album, she begins her subversion of any expectations I had going into hearing this album for the first time. It’s an incredibly detailed, masterful album that makes use of the significant amount of research about Appalachian folk music, sacred harp music, and rural Pennsylvania (from the folk tale that influenced “PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE” about an ironmaster who throws his dogs into the furnace and they return to drag him to hell she put into making the album; or the coal mine fire that has been actively burning beneath the near-ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania since 1962). She uses a variety of unique instruments, production, and compositional techniques, sometimes deliberately having instruments played messily or out of tune to provide a certain tone or to create an illusion of untrained people worshiping together, and, in the case of my favorite song on the album, “MAN IS LIKE A SPRING FLOWER,” she intentionally uses “the most miserable vocal” she could muster. Alongside these moments, however, the album features some of the most beautiful, haunting musicianship I’ve heard in a while.
The album ends on an especially somber note. “THE SOLITARY BRETHREN OF EPHRATA” takes the form of a beautiful traditional congregational hymn in which the only twist is the ending lyrics, in which Hayter acknowledges not being able to find god and instead accepts loneliness:
“No longer shall I wander
from “THE SOLITARY BRETHREN OF EPHRATA”
Ugliness my home
Loneliness my master
I bow to him alone
I bow to him alone”
This little write-up is a mess and in no way does the album any justice. It won’t be for everyone, but to me, I think it’s among the most fascinating, well-constructed, and powerful records I’ve heard in a very long time.
01
JPEGMAFIA
LP!
“REBOUND!” (ft. DATPIFFMAFIA)
“HAZARD DUTY PAY!”
“DIRTY!”
JPEGMAFIA’s LP! is just a barrage of bangers. It solidifies Peggy’s place as both my favorite producer and one of the most interesting, varied, and unique rappers around right now. The album shows nearly every side of JPEGMAFIA in a way that makes it one of the most varied albums on this list but does so without ever feeling unpalatable or inconsistent. This album has an unmatched energy that has made me unable to stop listening to it since it was released, and will no doubt be one I listen to for years to come. JPEGMAFIA is so one-of-a-kind, and LP! is so intensely my-kind-of-thing that there is no question it is my favorite album of 2021. Check it out if you haven’t already.
(This is specifically referring to the offline version of the album. The online version (Spotify/Apple Music/etc) is also great, but is missing a few of the best tracks on the album — notably “HAZARD DUTY PAY!”, “UNTITLED”, and “DIKEMBE”)