By The Spinning Platters’ Editorial Team
2019 was an insane musical year… If I traveled back to 2000 and told me that Trent Reznor would have writing credit on the longest running #1 single of all time, and that song was a duet between a 20 year old rapper and Billy Ray Cyrus that won a CMA award, I’d think you were insane. (BTW: I just watched the video to this song for the first time, and it’s pretty wonderfully weird) The insanity is a good thing, and our top 10 of the year ended up being our most eclectic one yet!
#10 Pony / Orville Peck
Have you ever fallen asleep while watching a David Lynch movie and started having weird, surreal nightmares where you are running from a vampire version of Elvis Presley? Orville Peck’s debut Pony will send you on that exact same journey. (Dakin Hardwick)
#9 Wasteland, Baby! / Hozier
After Hozier made a splash back in 2013 with “Take Me to Church” (and again two years later with “Someone New”), it felt like eons since we’d heard anything new from this lovely Irish singer-songwriter. Last fall he finally reemerged with “Nina Cried Power” and then “Movement,” which peaked at #12 and #4, respectively, on Billboard charts. This past spring, when Hozier released Wasteland, Baby!, it debuted at #1, remaining on the charts for a total of 10 weeks. In addition to the first two singles, the album includes other lovelies like “Shrike,” “Almost (Sweet Music),” and the delicious “To Noise Making (Sing).” This is the kind of record that’s worth waiting five years for, because it’s gloriously groovy and easy to sing along with: you can take it for a drive, you can let it play in the background while you soak in the tub. Or you could do what I like to do best: blast it through your earbuds and go for a run with it. At any rate, I trust that like me, you’ll be enjoying this album for however long it takes Hozier to give us the next one. (Stacy Scales)
#8 Heard It All In A Past Life / Maggie Rogers
No matter where I go, I can’t escape Maggie Rogers. Her song “Light On” ends up on every playlist Spotify makes for me, regardless of how frequently I listen to it. And it’s easy to hear why her songs follow me everywhere: She captures that cool, quiet, sad girl sound that matches my mood when I’d be posting on Tumblr in my early 20s, drooling over pictures of the Pacific Coast, daydreaming of the day my heart would stop hurting. Her voice, haunting yet determined, is steadfast on each track, but especially makes an emotional impact on “Past Life” where it’s just Rogers and a piano- the kind of track that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room with her. As I wind down this year and this decade, it’s easy to think that I want something more lighthearted and fun and bright to start the next chapter of my life, but revisiting this album for the 20th time this year, I realize this is the most fitting music as I shed the parts of me no longer serving me. “Maybe everything’s just turning out how it should be/Maybe there’s a past life coming out inside of me.” As many of us grapple with our identities as we age another year and push forward into a new decade, I know we all can find something from this album that makes us feel seen. (Lily Miller)
#8 Amyl & The Sniffers / Amyl & The Sniffers
Everywhere you look, you see a 70’s throwback. They look the part. They sound the part. Yet something is missing. Attitude. There are some that show it, and there are some that live it. Australia’s Amyl and the Sniffers, self-proclaimed “pub rockers” bring it full force on this debut LP. They party hard and they play hard. The have an “I do care, but I don’t give a f#*k frame of mind,” spotlights in every 3-minute track full of tight guitar riffs, and super fierce vocals of frontwoman Amy Taylor, who has been called “One of the hardest rocking people on the face of the planet.” Whether she’s reveling in love or hate, you’ll find it’s very difficult to keep from nodding along and wanting to shout it out with her. Starting out in my top 10 for the year, I think it’s moshed it’s way to my personal top 5. (Raffi Youssoufian)
#6 Western Stars / Bruce Springsteen
A medley of dusty tunes about sorrow, loss, and heartbreak, but most importantly, a hope that cascades down even the steepest of slopes. Bruce Springsteen continues to grace us with songs about a very personalized perspective on the American Dream. Nuanced vocals and a full string orchestra paint a vivid landscape of stories about regular folk with big dreams — it is afterall, his signature. (Sahar Yousefi)
#5 LEGACY! LEGACY! / Jamila Woods
I’ve been yelling online for years now that more people need to be obsessed with Jamila Woods. The sweetly singing candy shop girl from Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment’s “Sunday Candy” (featuring our beloved fave Chance the Rapper) is a lyrical and musical force in every project she works on, and Legacy! Legacy! is no exception. A funkier, heavier departure from her 2016 album HEAVN, each track pays tribute to icons like Eartha Kitt and James Baldwin while still staying focused on Jamila’s self love and her exploration of her self worth: “I don’t wanna compromise/Can we make it through the night?/I’m trying to see eye to eye, but you look right over me/Your words stuck on repeat/And I’m tired of your shit/Who’s gonna share my love for me with me?” The careful balance of being tender with myself while learning to manage my own anger is no small task, but Legacy! Legacy! is helping me find ways to do just that in every song. (Lily Miller)
#4 The Center Won’t Hold / Sleater-Kinney
What to do when everything that you’ve built is falling apart? Sing the songs of the stories to remember what was. That’s what Sleater-Kinney’s The Center Won’t Hold feels like, songs of things once relied upon pushed past their breaking point — the sound of things giving out, giving up, or giving in. It’s a sound for 2019, and an un-celebratory experience, like a conversation that can’t be avoided. The album is cramped and overstuffed and suffocating like a too-full inbox. Donald Trump’s America is here and everywhere and taking all of the oxygen out of the air. So much of these songs is simply pleading for relief. Carrie has never sounded more desperate, Corin has never sounded so disheartened, and Janet — well, the listener has to work to hear anything on this album that sounds like Janet at all. Despite all of this, the songs do shine through, the stories of what once was shine through like a streetcar’s headlight through a thick Oregon fog, and the stories of these women shine through despite it all and despite everything. Viva Christine Blasey Ford. Viva Sleater-Kinney. (Christopher Rogers)
#3 Lover / Taylor Swift
A linear coming of age story about what love is and should be. Self-written and as vulnerable and observant of her surroundings and emotions as ever before, on Lover, she’s not fighting to be heard anymore, she’s got a voice and she’s fighting for a cause. 18 incredibly detailed tracks that all charted upon release, without fillers, each one could be chosen as a single. Each one as dreamy and haunting as the last. Swimming through a multitude of sounds and moods, easily shifting from one genre to the next, as simple as going from her piano to a stadium of 20,000, Taylor Swift is a force of an artist like none other. Maybe if she was a man, then she’d be the man. (Sahar Yousefi)
#2 At The Party With My Brown Friends / Black Belt Eagle Scout
The one-woman band (Katherine Paul) tones it down yet continues to impress with her distinctive Northwest sound. Breathy bits and subdued instrumentation bring to mind Mirah and Hovvdy, respectively, and they serve to remind fans that, before they became accustomed to staring at their phones, they were gazing at their shoes. Fans of the classic Softies record Holiday in Rhode Island can see this record as an offspring. (Joel Edelman)
#1 Cuz I Love You / Lizzo
One of the oddest things about 2019? Lizzo is, arguably, the biggest break out star of the year. Yet, somehow, the album that she released that year managed to get slept on. Mostly because the world has taken a little to long to wake up to Lizzo, so we needed to catch up. Sure, 2016’s “Good As Hell” and 2017’s “Truth Hurts” are both brilliant songs. But when the world finally gets around to popping Cuz I Love You on, we are going to finally learn that EVERY SINGLE SONG ON THIS RECORD IS PERFECT. The opening number, “Cuz I Love You,” is the type of track that will somebody become a standard. “Soulmate” is both lyrically genius and sonically infectious. “Juice” is the modern disco classic we didn’t know we were aching for. “Crybaby” is a psych funk masterpiece that would make Prince jealous. I can go on about every single track… This is the rare perfect album. (Dakin Hardwick)
