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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

So many of 2018’s best albums capture the feeling of trying to keep our heads above water.

The 25 Best Albums of 2018
Photo: Interscope Records

If there’s one thing on which we should all be able to agree, it’s that 2018 was not a great year for humans. The Trump administration continued to enact policies of undisguised animus toward women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community; the cancerous growth of antisemitism came to a head in Pittsburgh with the deadliest attack on Jews in American history; and even the seemingly unstoppable force of the #MeToo movement, one of the few silver linings of an equally grim 2017, met the immovable object of right-wing backlash during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation. So it’s little wonder that so many of 2018’s best albums, while in many ways equally political to those of 2017, often capture the feeling of trying to keep our heads above water: more the quiet resistance of everyday life than the loud but largely ineffectual #Resistance of the early Trump era.

Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer set the tone early in the year, staking an explicit claim for a queer, black woman’s right to a “Crazy, Classic Life,” which found echoes in other unapologetically queer statements on the Internet’s Hive Mind, Troye Sivan’s Bloom, and Christine and the Queens’s Chris. A host of albums by female artists, from Mitski’s Be the Cowboy to Ariana Grande’s Sweetener, elevated women’s subjectivities in a year when—as the Kavanaugh confirmation grimly demonstrated—they continue to be ignored and undervalued.

This was also a year when mental health, particularly in marginalized communities, was at the forefront of popular culture. One of the biggest pop stars of the past decade, Kanye West, had a very public breakdown, which he addressed on two of the year’s best albums—Pusha T’s Daytona and his and Kid Cudi’s Kids See Ghosts—as well as the worst album of his own career, Ye. While West did his best to make himself unsympathetic in this process, the need for radical empathy, particularly for those on the receiving end of white supremacy, came across loud and clear on Blood Orange’s Negro Swan, an album about the strain and depression endemic to living in an environment of existential hostility.

It’s fitting, then, that 2018’s most uplifting albums, like Robyn’s Honey and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, were about finding happiness and living your best life in the face of adversity both personal and systemic. Zachary Hoskins

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

25. Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour

The effortless serenity with which Kacey Musgraves presents her fourth album, Golden Hour, mirrors the country artist’s current romantic contentment. The singer-songwriter offers outright love songs to her new husband in the album’s title track and “Slow Burn,” on which she rejoices in settling down into a quieter, more peaceful life. While the album primarily relies on gentle acoustic guitar and Musgraves’s tender vocal, “Oh What a World” unexpectedly pairs Vocoder with pedal steel and Musgraves deviates from country-tinged folk entirely on “High Horse,” which is infused with a breezy disco pulse. What the album lacks in edginess it makes up for with a dizzying sense of sweetness that’s never cloying. Musgraves wields her voice subtly and precisely, never belting it out like so many of her country contemporaries. A refreshing embrace of simplicity and mindfulness in response to a world that keeps moving faster, Golden Hour hinges on the imperative of allowing ourselves the space to feel happiness. Josh Goller

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

24. Car Seat Headrest, Twin Fantasy

Thanks to its preternaturally complex song structures and close-to-the-bone recounting of Will Toledo’s sexual awakening, Twin Fantasy has built up a rabid cult following since the singer posted it on Bandcamp in 2011 at the age of 19. Three years after signing with Matador Records, Toledo has re-recorded the entire album with the aid of his seven-piece band, in effect rectifying the ramshackle musicianship and GarageBand fidelity of his self-recorded version. As well-realized as the original Twin Fantasy was, and as much as it’s defined by a specific period in its creator’s life, it’s obvious that Toledo sees the project as a fluid work. On “Nervous Young Inhumans,” for example,” he replaces the original version’s pedantic monologue about the word “galvanistic” with a new, cleverer one, a stoned-sounding stream-of-consciousness rant about the nature of evil and shopping at IKEA. Toledo’s evolution as a musician and as a person is even clearer on “Cute Thing,” on which he changes the crucial line “Give me Dan Bejar’s voice/And John Entwistle’s stage presence” to “Give me Frank Ocean’s voice/And James Brown’s stage presence.” Even as he looks back, Toledo is moving forward. Jeremy Winograd

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

23. Nine Inch Nails, Bad Witch

What it lacks in length, the six-song Bad Witch more than makes up for in power and concision. The title and art suggest a return to Trent Reznor’s pitch-black early work. While there’s plenty of shouting and wall-to-wall guitars, the music both plays to and cleverly subverts that expectation. This is NIN’s most dynamic work in years, relying less on Reznor’s sometimes creepily juvenile lyrical obsessions and more on opening up new spaces in the band’s meticulously crafted sonic landscape. It moves from the chugging industrial beats and turned-all-the-way-up sound blasts of “Shit Mirror” and “Ahead of Ourselves” to the jazz-inflected, deliciously named instrumentals “Play the Goddamned Part” and “God Break Down the Door.” In a year that didn’t offer much of what we in the Obama era used to call hope, his steadfast commitment to nihilism is weirdly refreshing. “You won’t find the answers here,” he says in a seemingly tranquilizer-induced moan on “God Break Down the Door.” Some things really don’t change. Paul Schrodt

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

22. Pusha T, Daytona

The first in a series of hyper-condensed albums produced by Kanye West at a remote Wyoming ranch and released in a five-week promotional blitz, Daytona is in many ways the most immediate in its appeal: just seven sinewy tracks of Pusha T’s patented coke-rap, over samples so jagged it sounds like West chopped them up with a rusty razor blade. As Pusha has been doing this for almost 30 years, he inevitably brings an elder-statesman gravitas to his rhymes. He warns aspiring rappers without the requisite street knowledge that their “numbers don’t add up on the blow” on opening track “If You Know You Know,” and so rankled the usually unflappable Drake with the shots fired on closer “Infrared” that he provoked the younger star’s first dedicated diss track since 2015. But Daytona’s legacy should extend beyond the breathless blow-by-blow of rap beef as a model of economy and concision in an era of overstuffed playlist albums. Whether or not he really is slinging as many keys as he claims, Pusha’s musical product is as potent and uncut as the stuff he’s built his career rapping about. Hoskins

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

21. Superchunk, What a Time to Be Alive

What a Time to Be Alive is to Superchunk what Accelerate was to R.E.M. in 2008: a long-awaited return to youthful aggression by a legendary alt-rock band, inspired by a challenging moment in American political history. Excepting the acoustic intro to closer “Black Thread,” the album is certainly Superchunk’s noisiest, most uniformly uptempo effort since the early ’90s. But whereas Accelerate’s vivaciousness was hindered by Michael Stipe’s thunderingly obvious anti-Bush griping, Mac McCaughan grapples with the Trump era through pure catharsis—with a trove of fist-pumping, heavy guitar-pop choruses to match. By merging feel-good riffs with feel-bad lyrics (“Our empathy weaponized/Our history bleaching out during the day”), McCaughan suggests that while we may live in dark times, we can always fight back—with guitars. This culminates on the penultimate anthem, “All for You,” on which McCaughan invigoratingly succumbs to his baser instincts: “Fight me/Can’t really get any worse so/Fight me/Oh if you disagree just/Fight me.” It’s passages like this that make What a Time to Be Alive not just a great Superchunk album, but an essential document of the resistance. Winograd

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

20. Ariana Grande, Sweetener

There’s no disputing that Ariana Grande has been through a hell of a lot. Having publicly spoken about suffering with severe anxiety as a result of the tragic bombing at her concert in Manchester, England, last year, she didn’t run away from but rather embraced the full range of her headspace on Sweetener. The stunning a cappella opener “Raindrops (An Angel Cried”), “Breathin,” and “Get Well Soon” leave no doubts about her pipes or distress. Likewise, bangers like the Pharrell-produced “The Light Is Coming” and lead single “No Tears Left to Cry” are evidence of her talent in willing of-the-moment pop forms to her own desires, using them to access deep wells of feeling about her personal life and fraught public reception. While she may not be able to save every track on her own (that Missy Elliott verse on “Borderline” is a travesty), Sweetener is a revelation for a 25-year-old artist who has in the past seemed hemmed in by recording via committee. Those days, as she not so subtly suggests, are over. Schrodt

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

19. Sofi Tukker, Treehouse

Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern’s brand of jungle pop—quotable pop hooks and snatches of Portuguese poetry set to club-friendly beats—might have emerged from the dying embers of the EDM movement, but the New York City-based duo’s multi-culti dance tunes owe more to early-1990s house acts like Deee-Lite than David Guetta. The songs on Sofi Tukker’s Treehouse are alternately playful and sincere, intimate and global: “Fuck They” challenges the status quo, while “Baby I’m a Queen” embraces the contradictions and ambiguities of third-wave feminism. Though Sofi Tukker’s mélange of disparate sounds and influences—bossa-nova rhythms, cowbells, castanets, and spaghetti-western guitars—lends Treehouse an air of worldly sophistication, Hawley-Weld and Halpern never take themselves or their music too seriously. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Sal Cinquemani

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

18. Parquet Courts, Wide Awake!

Described by Austin Brown as a response to the nihilism born out of our current “hateful era of culture,” Parquet Courts’s sixth album, Wide Awake!, tackles such heavy subject matter as climate change, political corruption, government propaganda, gun violence, and police brutality. With producer Danger Mouse’s help, the band has crafted a diverse and intrepid album, stepping out of their comfort zone musically while also exuding a trenchant political posture. But while Savage rattles off a sprawling, rapid-fire litany of socio-political ills throughout the album, the musician delivers his proclamations with occasional dashes of absurdist levity, avoiding outright pontification. Though Savage decries the innumerable times he’s been “outdone by nihilism” on “Tenderness,” it’s clear that the band believes in the transformative power of resistance in the face of a corrosive culture that often mistakes vitriol for virtue and gives credence to the loudest voices. Goller

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

17. Titus Andronicus, A Productive Cough

Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles may have all the makings of a true-bred DIY punk, but he’s always been a classic rocker at heart. On the band’s fifth album, A Productive Cough, Stickles has done away with all the stylistic trappings that buoyed the group’s grassroots rise out of New York dive bars: the mangy guitars, the screaming, the pummeling tempos, and the Seinfeld references. What’s left is a clear and potent distillation of Stickles’s classic-rock influences filtered through the iconoclastic lens of a guy who hasn’t forgotten where he came from. Despite the clean production and largely decreased noise level, A Productive Cough is Titus Andronicus’s freshest, wildest, most unexpected work to date. Anyone can play rote Dylan covers or write facsimiles of Richards-esque guitar riffs, but it takes a songwriter and interpreter of a higher caliber to turn them into something truly surprising. Winograd

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

16. Christine and the Queens, Chris

Though French singer-songwriter Héloïse Letissier has been experimenting with androgyny for years—her band Christine and the Queens was inspired by the uninhibited exuberance of a London club’s drag queens—the cover art of her sophomore effort, Chris, is an expression of flamboyant hyper-masculinity. With hair slicked to one side like a 1950s greaser, Letissier cuts a dashing figure as the eponymous character. Unconcerned with the shackles of a binary gender system, she’s both macho and feminine throughout the album, embodying a disregard for definitions in favor of just existing as she is. She’s smooth, seductive, and virile on lead single “Girlfriend,” commanding producer Dâm-Funk’s luxuriant G-funk soundscape like she might a lover. She unabashedly craves sexual fulfillment on “Damn (What Must a Woman Do),” letting out moans that are as melodious as they are carnal. Unlike most ephemeral pop music today, Chris—like the gender-fluid character at its center—feels consequential and everlasting. Sophia Ordaz


The 25 Best Albums of 2018

15. Blood Orange, Negro Swan

Negro Swan, Dev Hynes’s fourth album as Blood Orange, speaks even more eloquently than 2016’s Freetown Sound to both the richness and precariousness of black experience, and especially queer black experience, in the 21st century. The album’s arc, from justifiable despondency to self-determined optimism, feels both timeless and remarkably of the times—a natural outgrowth of the blues tradition and a part of the contemporary explosion of black consciousness into the mainstream. It’s not always a smooth one: The ecstatic climax of “Charcoal Baby” is followed immediately by the sound of a gunshot, as if to emphasize the fragility of joy in a society that’s systemically hostile to black and queer people. But it’s this ability to capture both sides with equal commitment—the struggle and the resistance through self-love—that makes Negro Swan Hynes’s most assured, accomplished, and significant album to date. Hoskins

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

14. Vince Staples, FM!

The harsh realities of growing up among gang violence have provided fertile creative ground for Vince Staples during his meteoric rise over the past several years, and the Long Beach rapper again returns to the neighborhoods of his youth on his punchy third album, FM! Staples raps about the deceiving nature of the perpetual warm weather in Southern California, articulating in “Feels Like Summer” how rising temperatures can also heat up tempers and send bullets flying. Stylized in the format of a throwback radio broadcast, the album also structurally embodies the overarching theme of lives cut short, 11 tracks zipping by in a scant 22 minutes. With a bevy of West Coast rappers making guest appearances, and even dropping a reference to 2Pac’s death, Staples revels in a locale he both loves and fears. Goller

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

13. Courtney Barnett, Tell Me How You Really Feel

“Sometimes I get sad/It’s not all that bad,” Courtney Barnett sings on “City Looks Pretty,” a track from her sophomore effort, Tell Me How You Really Feel. It’s a simplistic summation of both her current state of mind and her uncanny ability to pair close-to-the-bone lyrics with joyously infectious power-pop melodies. The album is nowhere near as flippant as that couplet might suggest though. It’s a striking manifestation of gnawing anxieties, both internal and external; it may lack some of the instant affability of 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, but that’s by design. On a purely compositional level, the tonal shift between Tell Me How You Really Feel and Barnett’s debut isn’t all that severe, and the singer-songwriter’s impossibly effortless tunesmithing remains a preternatural force. But this time, it’s accompanied by heavier subjects, more personal confessionals, and a sense that Barnett’s cheery melodies exist solely to keep her from being crushed by the weight of the world. Winograd

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

12. Mariah Carey, Caution

“Caution” is an apt warning for those about to consume Mariah Carey’s first album in over four years. While the consummate diva may have botched the rollout of her last handful of singles, and her voice is a reedy version of what it once was, she makes it abundantly clear on Caution that she isn’t to be fucked with in this or any other decade. She wisely relies on the rap-inflected R&B sounds that have been her bread and butter since Butterfly, while bringing in unexpected collaborators like Skrillex and Blood Orange. She also switches up the message: In the aftermath of a highly public breakup, a sense of inevitable heartache hangs over the whole thing, from the delightfully salty lead single “GTFO” (“I ain’t tryna be rude, but you’re lucky I ain’t kick your ass out last weekend,” she quips) to the even more savage “A No No,” in which she summons her verbally gymnastic falsetto for a Gilligan’s Island-related diss. The adoption of patois and clearly intentional use of “irregardless” suggest Mimi (still) has no time for notions of cultural appropriation or grammar, and appearances by Slick Rick and Biggie (via sample) let us know that her heart will always lie in hip-hop. Where it belongs. Schrodt

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

11. Brockhampton, Iridescence

Calling Brockhampton’s Iridescence a work of hip-hop is a bit like calling Jackson Pollock a painter. While technically true, it doesn’t capture the profound statement of a major-label debut from the self-proclaimed “best boy band since One Direction” that has no use for borders of genre or form. The album controls the chaos of contributions from its 13 members in fascinating ways. Messy by design, it incorporates the drilling synth line of opener “New Orleans,” Motown-esque vocal melodies on “Thug Life” and “Something About Him,” and U.K. garage in a nod to London, where it was recorded. None of the members are natural superstars; instead, they support each other and blend together, and much more so than on previous self-released albums, they transcend the sum of their individual parts. On the heart-on-its-sleeve “The Weight,” de-facto leader Kevin Abstract disarmingly raps about growing up closeted (“And every time she took her bra off, my dick would get soft”) before a divine chorus intones, “I don’t want to waste no more time.” The young fans who treat Brockhampton like the Beatles aren’t wrong: They’re experiencing a low-key revolution. Schrodt


The 25 Best Albums of 2018

10. DJ Koze, Knock Knock

DJ Koze’s eclectic third effort, Knock Knock, tones down the psychedelic flourishes of 2013’s Amygdala for a more accessible album that’s inviting and soothing while also, at times, preserving a plaintive sense of yearning. “Music on My Teeth” opens with a sample of Zen Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts intoning that “time is a social institution and not a physical reality.” Whether it’s a Gladys Knight & the Pips sample on “Pick Up” or a guest spot by an Auto-Tune-drenched Kurt Wagner from Lambchop on “Muddy Funster,” Koze seamlessly melds eras and genres to fashion shape-shifting sonic textures. He plays to his guests’ strengths, giving the music the semblance of a mixtape at times, but overall the sound nevertheless remains cohesive. Seamless shifts from trip-hop to R&B to deep house create a multidimensional aesthetic that runs the gamut from retro to futuristic, from analog to digital, all while exuding Koze’s mastery of making the uncanny feel oddly familiar. Goller

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

9. Belly, Dove

Following the 20-plus-year gap since the cultishly beloved Belly’s last release, 1995’s King, the Rhode Island-based band might have been forgiven for turning in a ho-hum retread or an experimental diversion of their sound that no one asked for. But Dove relies on the core strengths of every member, who are as beautifully in sync as ever, while also feeling refreshingly modern. Tanya Donelly’s vocals are layered into bewitching, cooing harmonies on “Mine” and reach a powerful release on the poignant “Human Child,” in which she pulls a loved one out of festering woes (“It’s a beautiful night, I’m here to drag you outside/Pull your ass out of the shade, my sun-blessed babe,” she sings from the bottom of her chest, an earned feeling of liberation). Her ethereal style is anchored by tight guitar, bass, and drum work, while the decidedly less compressed and murky, more expansive post-’90s production lets every instrument ring out clearly. It’s a reminder that the simplest element of guitar rock can still take us to transcendent places. Schrodt

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

8. Against All Logic, 2012 – 2017

Against All Logic is an apt moniker for Chilean-American artist Nicolas Jaar, since this buoyant collection of tracks is deceptively straightforward. Jaar appropriates the traditional structure of house, but this is no standard-issue revivalism. The title of “This Old House Is All I Have” is something of a misnomer since the track has more in common with the chilled-out sci-fi pop of Air’s Moon Safari). Jaar uses bright piano lines on “Some Kind of Game” and “Cityfade” as building blocks in elaborate, pointillistic sonic collages with unlikely analogue and synthetic background noises. He has a knack for creating tension, at points tweaking the melody of the rousing “Some Kind of Game” to introduce ominous bass notes and cutting vocal samples sourced from funk and soul mid-phrase or even mid-word. “Such a Bad Way” interrupts the song’s action with a panting shriek, unsettling, complicating, and deepening the more obvious hooks. The penultimate “You Are Going to Love Me and Scream” isn’t a bad description for the contradictory 2012 – 2017, which works as well for getting down on the dance floor as it does getting stoned and contemplating the void. Schrodt

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

7. Mitski, Be the Cowboy

Only three of the 14 tracks on Mitski’s Be the Cowboy exceed two-and-a-half minutes, but the Japanese-American singer-songwriter manages to pack so much into those scant running times that they play more like miniature suites. It’s this laser-like focus that makes the album so likeable and engaging in spite of its dark lyricism. Producer Patrick Hyland almost completely avoids adding any effects to Mitski’s voice beyond basic reverb, shining a spotlight on the singer that plays up her vulnerability. This is an effective strategy for the album’s close-to-the bone subject matter, which is often overtly sexual—but not necessarily sexy. Even as she continues to explore the dark parts of her soul lyrically, Mitski sounds more confident than ever. Winograd

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

6. Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy

Cardi B’s debut album, Invasion of Privacy, is drenched in autobiographical detail, repeatedly drawing a line from her humble beginnings to her current role as an in-demand rapper. But the album makes a seemingly recognizable arc feel fresh, in part because of her uniquely female perspective and experience. Hip-hop’s rags-to-riches stories resonate because they allow listeners to imagine themselves as scrappers, fighters, and winners. Cardi knows this, and for as much as this album is about her own celebrity, it also seeks to empower her audience, especially women. “‘Fore I fixed my teeth, man, those comments used to kill me/But never did I change, never been ashamed,” she raps. In a single line, she expresses a particularly feminine vulnerability, acknowledges her own insecurities, and doubles down on her uncompromising tenacity. Cardi climbed her way up from the bottom, and Invasion of Privacy is a soundtrack for anyone who dreams of doing the same. Josh Hurst


The 25 Best Albums of 2018

5. The Internet, Hive Mind

At first listen, the jazz-inflected bedroom R&B of the Internet’s fourth album, Hive Mind, isn’t far removed from that of the Los Angeles band’s prior work. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Matt Martians still specializes in sun-kissed, slightly offbeat neo-neo-soul, laying down lush blankets of sound for singer Sydney Bennett, a.k.a. Syd, to luxuriate in. But the subtle differences this time around are worth noting: Seven years after their debut as an offshoot of alt-hip-hop collective Odd Future, the Internet now sounds more than ever like a musical unit unto themselves. The songs themselves are crucially the work of all five members, not just a vehicle for a charismatic singer. The result is the Internet’s most musically diverse and synergetic album to date. Hoskins

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The 25 Best Albums of 2018

4. Troye Sivan, Bloom

A Twitter philosopher once astutely observed that “Gay culture is your life being delayed by 10 years because you didn’t start being yourself until your mid-20s.” For an increasing number of LGBTQ youth, however, that maxim is mercifully becoming as obsolete as compact discs and paying for porn. And you can count 23-year-old Troye Sivan among a new generation of queer people who have come of age in an era where increased visibility has, perhaps, saved them countless years. If the Australian singer-songwriter’s sophomore effort, Bloom, feels less sonically innovative than 2015’s Blue Neighbourhood, its lyrics offer an unapologetic, if not entirely revolutionary, depiction of queer desire. Bloom might eschew the glitchy production style of his debut in favor of a more accessible dance-pop sound, but the album’s subversion of heteronormativity in a purely pop context is in itself a radical development. Cinquemani

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

3. Kids See Ghosts, Kids See Ghosts

Kid Cudi and Kanye West alternate between haunted-house trappings and candidly confronting their respective demons on the hip-hop duo’s eponymous debut Kids See Ghosts. The seven-track effort is steeped in supernatural imagery that ranges from the cartoonish to the deeply religious. The Louis Prima-sampling “4th Dimension” incorporates both Santa Claus references and a ghoulish, cackling laugh. Amid the driving, militaristic beat of “Fire,” Kanye and Cudi rap about making peace with personal failures and thriving off haters. Kanye’s erratic behavior may persist, but he’s frank about his tendency to make bad choices, rapping on the title track that his Christianity is a necessity due to the fact he’s “constantly repenting, ‘cause, yes, I never listen.” “Reborn” leans heavily into Cudi’s melodic strengths as he sings about past drug abuse and acknowledges that “peace is something that starts with me,” while Kanye’s lone verse on this track finds him opening up about social anxiety and mental illness. Both artists frequently call out to heaven to lift them up, but this seeming reliance on divine intervention belies an overarching approach to self-betterment that speaks of rebirth not as a final destination, but as a constant state of perseverance. Goller

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

2. Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer

Janelle Monáe asserts that sex can save the world on Dirty Computer, and throughout the album’s 14 lusty, hyper-intelligent tracks, she makes a compelling case. “You fucked the world up now, we’ll fuck it all back down,” she sings on “Screwed,” a track ripe with sexual innuendo and a blunt summation of global affairs. Sex is power, Monáe argues, and the expression of sexuality is freedom. Prince obviously serves as an influence (he also reportedly worked with Monáe on the album before his death), and she taps guests like Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder, and Grimes, who adds her synth-pop dynamism and high-pitched vocal to “PYNK,” Monáe’s sublime ode to the vagina. Monáe publicly began identifying as pansexual in conjunction with this album, but Dirty Computer is less about her personal identity than it is a call to arms against puritanical oppressors who would lay siege to the bedroom, and a sensuous rallying cry for universal sexual empowerment. Goller

The 25 Best Albums of 2018

1. Robyn, Honey

Part of Robyn’s cult appeal resides in her ability to package candid, relatable, and often fragile emotions in beats that are the equivalent of Styrofoam peanuts; you might be dancing on your own, but the rush of epinephrine is both the reward and the remedy. In the past, she juxtaposed love songs like “Call Your Girlfriend” and “Be Mine!” with feminist-warrior anthems like “Fembot” and “Handle Me.” But the fembot persona has been scaled back on Honey, as Robyn more fully embraces the flesh-and-blood woman behind it. Or at least a facsimile of one: The way she sings “I’m a human being and so are you” on the tech-pop “Human Being” makes her sound like a cyborg marveling at its newfound consciousness. At nine lean but often seemingly formless tracks, Honey feels raw and incomplete, like a work in progress—and maybe that’s the point. For Robyn, making music is an ongoing exercise in expression, and when heartbreak threatened to silence her, she apparently let the songs do the talking. And the healing. Cinquemani

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