Speaking of intricate instrumental work, few records were as dazzling and dense as Mdou Moctar’s latest six-string opus, Afrique Victime, or Theon Cross’ stunning Intra-I, an album that explored a whole swath of Afro-Diaspora music with just a single instrument: the tuba.

Even ostensible exceptions like Chubby and the Gang’s The Mutt’s Nuts, Illuminati Hotties’ Let Me Do One More, and Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg, all punk records to their core, are lyrically rich and packed with intricate instrumental work. I’ve always had an outsized soft spot for maximalism - or dare I say, excess - in music, and looking at my list this year I see records that overwhelmed me.

Tyler, the Creator, Call Me If You Get Lost.

Many of these records, it turns out, end with a message of cautious hope - whether it’s Margo Cilker coming to terms with her own mortality (“Wine in the World”), Allison Russell bursting through the clouds of her own trauma (“Joyful Motherfuckers”), or the Felice Brothers, in their best album in a decade-plus, offering up a simple four-word prayer: “We shall live again.” Other albums, meanwhile, were unexpected reservoirs of joy: See Melissa Carper’s playful Patsy Cline re-staging in Daddy’s Country Gold, or the thrill of the lost 50-year old recording from the Meters’ Leo Nocentelli. Still, so many of these collections are centered, in some large part, around grief: Toronto singer-songwriter Mustafa’s arresting album-length meditation on mourning, Strand of Oaks’ touching tribute to the late John Prine (“Somewhere in Chicago”), and Cedric Burnside’s reckoning with a world that no longer included his mother (“The World Can Be So Cold”). offers on her second LP, “could barely notice the beauty in things.” Not only did these albums provide comfort and commiseration, they also taught me new ways to listen, to notice the plentiful beauty in a fraction of the countless under-appreciated records from the past 12 months.

Charlotte Cornfield, High in the Minuses.

This was a year when music stepped out into the sun, boisterous, joyful, with jams meant to be belted whenever you’re ready to grab the karaoke mic again. Official HIGE DANdism, meanwhile, crafted an entire record that sounds made up of album-openers and closers, in the best way possible.

They recently went on hiatus after 20 years, but I implore, no, demand you retrospectively check out their work so that high school me can feel vindication about preferring J-pop to K-pop. Who says synth operas are dead? Across the ocean, I rejoiced at the release of an entire collection of B-sides from the world’s most famous pop group you’ve never heard of, Arashi (who beat out Taylor Swift and BTS in international album sales in 2019 - really, look it up). It’s a little vague and Fifth Element-y on world-building specifics, but damn if the scope of this album isn’t ambitious. Electronic music saw some of its boldest and most creative releases in recent years, from Porter Robinson’s Nurture to Starcadian’s epic Radio Galaxy, which paints a picture of a cyberpunk society on the brink of…something. Certified funklordz Chromeo, who themselves wrote a Covid banger EP for the ages in 2020, Quarantine Casanova,” returned to give us a life-of-the-party live album with rhythm guitar solos galore and ample amounts of talk-box vocals. It was a great year for funk and nu-disco, as Silk Sonic’s “An Evening With Silk Sonic” continued to keep things light and breezy through the ups and downs of a “post-pandemic” summer (heavy on the air quotes). Much to the chagrin of my asshole friends who claim I should just set my location to “Margaritaville” on Twitter, I did, in fact, listen to new music this year. Sage Anderson, Staff WriterĮven though my Spotify Wrapped was practically taunting me with “Are ya reelin’ in the years?” (Yacht Rock was my fifth most-listened genre), 2021 was more than just a time for me to look back on the sea-salt-tinged, sultry sounds of Seventies soft rock that have gotten me through so many summers. Read on for a glimpse of the many sounds that filled the headphones of more than 25 Rolling Stone staffers in 2021. The choices on these personal Top 10s range from commercial blockbusters and critical favorites like Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, Doja Cat’s Planet Her, Lil Nas X’s Montero, and Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales to individual highlights from a delightfully wide spectrum of genres, continents, and scenes. Here at Rolling Stone, we listen to a lot of new music every year - and we all have our own distinct perspectives and interests when we listen.

Deacon blues isaiah rashad twitter