The best and worst albums released in 2018
It’s been a year of highs and lows in music: Kylie was reborn, and Iggy Azalea spent more time on her Instagram than her music. Cameron Adams rates the best albums of the year — and the ones to avoid.
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Best and worst albums of 2018?
Iggy Azalea spent more time on her Instagram than her music and it showed, and Sting and Shaggy delivered the album no one asked for. But Kylie was reborn and one Melbourne band delivered one of the year’s most comforting and intimate albums.
Here’s some of the finest releases this year — and those you might want to avoid.
BON JOVI PROVES WHY HE’S A LEGEND
1. Robyn — Honey
With Dancing On My Own still a pop blueprint eight years after its release, it bought Robyn time to press control-alt-delete and dream it all up again. Honey is full of sorrow and joy, grief and euphoria — sometimes in the same song. From stark and intimate electronics (Human Being, Baby Forgive Me) to buoyant disco (Because It’s In the Music), Robyn literally spent years crafting the singles Honey and Missing U and it shows. They’re way too pure for this world of disposable, corporate pop. Give everyone else a year — or eight — to catch up with them.
2. Lily Allen — No Shame
Pop stars spend fortunes on publicists and media training to bury their secrets. No Shame is brutally, almost uncomfortably honest. Which is its appeal. Allen’s marriage imploded, her career flatlined as she self-medicated and she managed to pull herself out of it. And it’s all here, in forensic, squirm-inducing detail, helpfully teamed with killer tunes like Trigger Bang (drugs), Everything to Feel Something (more drugs), Come On Then (trolls) and Lost My Mind (infidelity). The Beatlesque Family Man, self-lacerating Apples and mum-self-shaming Three are Allen at her finest.
3. Tracey Thorn — Record
The voice of Everything But the Girl delivers a grown-up electronic album touching on everything from stalking on social media as an adult to trying to get kids to sleep. The stunning Sister looks at the battles women are still fighting and notes “oh what year is it? Still arguing the same shit.” Thorn is reading the room, while giving the room something to dance to and think about at the same time.
4. Rufus Du Sol — Solace
Three albums in and Sydney’s Rufus refuse to repeat themselves. Embarrassingly still ignored by commercial radio as they get more and more popular with the mainstream, Solace moves a little left of the banger-fest of Bloom — with injections of ambience, percussion and tribal house. It was also a real grower, meaning by the time they tour it next year even deep, deep cuts like Another Life and All I’ve Got will soar and roar.
5. The Paper Kites — On the Corner Where You Live
The Melbourne band mine a lush pop vein for what was their second album of 2018. Deep Burn Blue did not quote Scottish ’80s band The Blue Nile by accident — frontman Sam Bentley is all about timeless melodies and in a transient world his band are happy outsiders. Inspired by everything from Sinatra to the Sundays, this was one of the year’s most comforting and intimate albums, which they’ve just finished touring around America.
6 Gurrumul -Djarimirri (Child Of the Rainbow)
The joy of seeing or hearing Gurrumul was how you were instantly transported. Djarimirri, the album he was working on when he died, was his remarkable final gift. There’s never been anything like this — music in his native tongue, performed with classical instruments, telling his story. This could be performed by orchestras all around the world, an incredible legacy to leave behind.
7. The 1975 — A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
One minute Matt Healy is singing like a robot through a vocoder, the next he’s got Siri dictating a poem about online sex, and then he’s channelling vintage Oasis. Then there’s an ’80s power ballad complete with guitar solo, plus the INXS-style throwback funk they launched themselves with just a few years ago. Indeed for all its ambition this is only their third album — it’s a post rehab OK Computer with genre ADHD.
8. Kylie Minogue — Golden
Kylie goes to Dollywood. Golden throws a dash of country into Kylie’s usual pop glitter, but more importantly Nashville’s songwriting and storytelling has given Minogue a creative rebirth 30 years in. These sawdust-flavoured pop tunes make for a cohesive album, from controlling the narrative of her love life on A Lifetime to Repair to the bootscooting disco of Raining Glitter. The bittersweet symphony Music’s Too Sad Without You with Jack Savoretti makes her Nick Cave duet sound like her Jason Donovan duet.
9. Florence & the Machine — High as Hope
Florence Welch had artistic vision nailed from the get-go (Stevie Nicks meets Kate Bush with a touch of Sylvia Plath) and album No. 4 brings in the cinematic soundscapes of producer Emile Haynie for a wide-screen feel. In an increasingly track and single-driven world, Florence is defiantly all about the album and the tour — you can already hear how well Hunger, Grace and South London Forever will sound with 10,000 or so backing vocalists.
10. Jake Shears — Jake Shears
The Scissor Sisters frontman ended his band and his relationship, relocated to New Orleans and made this album. From honky-tonk pop to horny disco, ’70s Elton balladry to ’70s Iggy Pop debauchery, Shears also kept that knack for writing upbeat pop disguising heartbreaking miserable lyrics.
Just missed out
Christine and the Queens — Chris
Troye Sivan — Bloom
Leon Bridges — Good Thing
A Star is Born — Soundtrack
Black Panther — Soundtrack
Jon Hopkins — Singularity
Kacey Musgraves — Golden Hour
Janelle Monae — Dirty Computer
Cardi B — Invasion of Privacy
Travis Scott — Astroworld
WORST ALBUMS OF 2018
30 Seconds to Mars — America
After a five-year break, Jared Leto returns sounding like Imagine Dragons. We’ve already got one of them. America takes a very Hollywood approach to tackling the state of Trump’s America by talking loud without actually saying anything.
Sting and Shaggy — 44/876
The record person who greenlit this bizarre collaboration between Mr Grumpy and Mr Boombastic is surely now saying “It wasn’t me”. Maybe a reggae record from either of them would have worked, but together (especially the version of Love Changes Everything) it feels like a Lonely Island skit without the laughs.
Fall Out Boy — Mania
“I’m about to go Tonya Harding on the whole world’s knee,” is one of the first lyrics you hear. The US rockers can’t work out if they want to be Imagine Dragons or Marilyn Manson here on this confused mess.
Iggy Azalea — Survive the Summer
Now getting more attention for Instagram posts and promoting weight loss supplements than her music. After a string of flop singles seemingly made only to make clickbait videos, Azalea released this boring, lazy EP then promptly left the record label. Fancy is now looking like it’s set to be her Ice Ice Baby.
Kevin Bloody Wilson — Kev’s Krissmas Vol. 2
Of course the bloody inner-city latte-sippin’, Nanette-watchin’ PC brigade will have a problem with songs called Silent Wife, Away With a Stranger, Dingle Berries, Hoe Hoe Hoe for Krissmas and A Lot for Syphillis. And lots of C-words that are not ‘Christmas’. If you find songs about Catholic priests and choir boys amusing, this is the album for you.
TOP 40 SINGLES OF 2018
1. Missing U — Robyn
2. Thank U, Next — Ariana Grande
3. One Kiss — Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa
4. Never Be the Same — Camila Cabello
5. This Is America — Childish Gambino
6. Breathin’ — Ariana Grande
7. My My My — Troye Sivan
8. Sister — Tracey Thorn
9. Trigger Bang — Lily Allen ft. Giggs
10. 1950 — King Princess
11. Youngblood — 5 Seconds of Summer
12. Bloom — Troye Sivan
13. Confidence — Ocean Alley
14. Honey — Robyn
15. Shallow — Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper
16. Beyond — Leon Bridges
17. All the Stars — Kendrick Lamar & SZA
18. Dancing — Kylie Minogue
19. I’m Good — Wafia
20. 1999 — Charli XCX & Troye Sivan
21. Girlfriend — Christine & the Queens
22. Lost in Japan — Shawn Mendes
23. Need You — Flight Facilities ft Nika
24. I Like It — Cardi B and J Balvin
25. About You — G Flip
26. Molotov — Kira Puru
27. Dance to This — Troye Sivan & Ariana Grande
28. Finesse — Bruno Mars and Cardi B
29. Native Tongue — Mojo Juju
30. Saturday Sun — Vance Joy
31. Treat You Better — Rufus Du Sol
32. All the Pretty Girls — Vera Blue
33. Martini — The Presets
34. Scream Whole — Methyl Ethyl
35. Sicko Mode — Travis Scott & Drake
36. All Loved Up — Amy Shark
37. For Your Love — Montaigne
38. Promises — Calvin Harris & Sam Smith
39. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) — The 1975
40. Apeshit — The Carters
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