Top-Ten Albums of 2016: Complete List
There are three albums that fell just outside of this list. They weren’t far off, but ultimately got edged out by even better music.
Ariana Grande — Dangerous Woman
I very rarely listen to pop music, but I (like almost everyone else) have always been familiar with Ariana Grande’s work. I turned on this album one day while studying, and was impressed by the strength of the songwriting within it. Some of the songs here (“Into You,” “Touch It”) are fantastic, but the album falls outside of the top-10 because there are too many filler songs that don’t add much.
The Hotelier — Goodness
I first listened to this band in 2014 when they released their sophomore album, Home, Like Noplace is There, and I waited eagerly to hear the follow-up. Despite lacking a little of the emotional punch and passion of its predecessor, Goodness is still a worthy successor. It misses the top-10 by being just a little too similar to what came before it.
Run the Jewels — Run the Jewels 3
I don’t listen to rap much (if at all). That’s started to change over the last year or so, but this is one of the first albums in this genre that I have truly enjoyed from start to finish. I also welcome the opportunity to engage with some of the best musicians out of my hometown (Atlanta). Maybe next year I’ll have more rap albums to choose from to make this list.
10. Jimmy Eat World — Integrity Blues
Jimmy Eat World seem like they’ve been around forever. Their most popular song, “The Middle,” was released in 2001, and the band has maintained a steady level of popularity since then. The immediate predecessor to this album, Damage, fell below the band’s normal levels of quality or consistency, and (largely because of that) I wasn’t aware of Integrity Blues until well after its release.
All of the normal hallmarks of a Jimmy Eat World album are here. There are smooth vocals, emotional lyrics, and an overall radio-friendly sound. Most surprisingly, though, this band performs the odd and difficult feat of singing about the same subjects for year after year, and still sounding fresh each time. Through 11 songs about both love and loss, Jimmy Eat World has created yet another solid album to fit in their catalog.
9. Taking Back Sunday — Tidal Wave
Taking Back Sunday is a band that I’ve never really listened to or fully appreciated. Their music is fine, if not fantastic, but the only reason I even gave Tidal Wave a listen is because I read several favorable reviews for it. I’m glad I did, because this is one of the best rock albums of the year. Partially because TBS is another band with a great deal of experience, every song exudes confidence and poise.
The title track is one of the best examples of the album’s strengths: it’s fast, loud, and carried from start to finish by a solid vocal delivery. There are more than rock anthems too, though. The closer, “I’ll Find A Way To Make It What You Want” is heartfelt, poignant, and a welcome change of pace after the rest of the music. There are no visible flaws here, just a good album.
8. Brian Fallon — Painkillers
As a loyal fan of Fallon’s band — The Gaslight Anthem — there was no chance that I’d miss this album. The influence from Fallon’s other musical endeavors is here, but Painkillers also has a distinctive taste of its own. Reportedly written after some personal heartbreaks, this project is full of beautifully poignant songs, many of which are nearly heartbreaking. However, the emotional power of these songs go beyond just the words inside them:
And we want love like it was a drug
Yeah all we wanted was a little relief
And every heart I held in between
They were painkillers to me
These words could come across as either powerful or cheesy, depending purely on the delivery, and Fallon absolutely nails it here. He sounds tired, sad, angry, and world-weary at differing times throughout the album, giving it an emotional resonance that would be lacking with almost any other singer. While I hope that The Gaslight Anthem returns soon, Fallon is more than capable of producing fantastic music on his own.
7. Thrice — To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere
Like many other bands on this list, Thrice is a group that I’ve listened to for over 10 years. This is their first album after returning from a hiatus, and (fortunately) it’s very good. Thrice have often experimented wildly from album to album, using a variety of styles within their genre (which I would classify as “rock”). On To Be Everywhere the band opts for an organic, earthy sound.
One of Thrice’s best attributes as a band is a near-legendary streak of consistency. I have never heard an album of theirs that I didn’t like, and the critical reception around most of their releases has been similarly positive. Partially because of their consistency, there isn’t much I can say about this album that doesn’t also apply to their others. The instrumentals are good, the lyrics are often fantastic, and the overall product is well worth any listener’s time.
6. Yellowcard — Yellowcard
Yellowcard returns for their final project: a self-titled album. Although the band’s greatest popularity undeniably came during the days of Ocean Avenue, the group has been quietly putting out fantastic albums for the last few years. Here, though, they say goodbye.
This album has a lot in common with the two that immediately preceded it — Southern Air, and Lift a Sail. That may be its greatest downfall, since there isn’t much instrumentally that sets it apart from the rest of the band’s catalog. However, this album is easily saved by the overall quality of the music and the heartfelt goodbye at its end. Closer “Field and Fences” is a mixture of a sad goodbye and a triumphant exit, and conveys these two emotions very well. Yellowcard may be gone, but they handled their exit very well.
5. Weezer — Weezer (While Album)
During the first round of the NBA playoffs, during a matchup between the Atlanta Hawks and the Boston Celtics, a local TV channel played the guitar line from “Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori.” I was already familiar with this song, but I marveled at how appropriate it seemed for late spring/early summer basketball. That’s when this album was released, and Weezer absolutely nails everything that a typical “summer album” should be.
The lyrics aren’t terribly deep or introspective, but they’re delivered with the band’s characteristic charm. Some of them are also pretty funny, such as the bridge of “Thank God For Girls.” Beyond that, the melodies are ridiculously catchy, and the album’s short runtime keeps it from feeling old or stale. Weezer has successfully returned after some subpar albums, and this one was one of my favorites from 2016.
4. The Jezabels — Synthia
As far as aesthetics go, this album is a huge departure from almost everything on this list. While its style can loosely be described as “synth-pop,” the song structure and lyrical content vary wildly from track to track. Most bands wouldn’t choose to begin their album with a seven-minute song, and it can be tough to get through the first few minutes of “Stand and Deliver.”
However, once the song begins to pick up pace, it’s easy to see how this album garnered glowing reviews from multiple internet publications. The vocals, lyrics, and instrumentals all combine to form a tight, focused experience that never lets up. The varied song structure helps to keep everything fresh, and the quality of the songwriting gives this project what it needs to crack the top four of this list.
3. Drive-By Truckers — American Band
At this point, we’re getting into the albums that I really loved. There’s a pretty big gap between albums 4 and 3, and American Band had a reasonable chance of being my favorite album for the entire year.
I love this album, primarily, because of the lyrics. While the instrumentation is good, and the melodies interesting, it’s the words themselves that give American Band so much power. I can’t imagine an album that is more politically relevant at the end of 2016, and the songs here explore social issues in beautiful depth.
“What It Means” is a perfect example of the issues within this album, as it dives into racial issues around America. With lines like:
I mean Barack Obama won
And you can choose where to eat
But you don’t see too many white kids
Lying bleeding on the street
And,
And that guy who killed that kid
Down in Florida standing ground
Is free to beat up on his girlfriend
And wave his brand new gun around
While some kid is dead and buried
And laying in the ground
With a pocket full of skittles
the band drives home the importance of the racial struggles and issues in America. There are multiple songs that explore issues in a great depth and detail, but “What It Means” is perhaps the most powerful. This is a fantastic album from top to bottom, and one that I highly recommend.
2. House of Heroes — Colors
Colors is a hugely ambitious project. Funded by a kickstarter campaign, it is written as a concept album that explores a story written by the band. If that sounds horribly cheesy or foolish, I completely understand. That being said, though, House of Heroes absolutely nails it. Much of this album’s success hinges on the story that each song tells a part of, and (as weird as it seems to say) the characters and plot are both interesting.
I’ve been trying to think of ways to explain how an entire album about one story can actually be worthwhile, and the reason that I keep coming back to is this: each song explores themes that everyone faces, and addresses them in ways that would fit in any other album. So while the story here is unique, the songs aren’t that far off from what you might find on a “normal” album.
Beyond the concept of this entire project, all the component pieces (lyrics, musicianship, overall sound) are all great as well. House of Heroes has been around for a while, and the independent nature of this release really allowed the group to write songs however they wanted to. I don’t know how much longer this band will be around, but I hope they create several more albums like this one.
After I listened to this album for the third or fourth time, I knew it was going to fall somewhere in the top-three of this list. This probably speaks more to my lack of connection to the music industry than to the secrecy of the release, but I had no idea that Bon Iver was recording a new album until it showed up on Spotify.
22, A Million is hauntingly beautiful. Even though the lyrics are often so vague as to be often inscrutable, Justin Vernon has created a deeply moving album that often left me feeling somewhat melancholy without really knowing why. Even though specific lines of the lyrics are often unclear, Vernon sings about the same themes of loss and longing that permeate his other works, addressing them in a new style but with the same brilliance.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, this album is simply beautiful. While I like many albums on this list, and love some of them, Bon Iver’s latest release is easily the best album I listened to in 2016.
Originally published at medium.com on January 2, 2017.
