The year of the "surprise release" has given us monster showings from Beyoncé, Radiohead, Drake, Rihanna, Kanye West and Chance the Rapper. But traditional release schedules have brought a wealth of music from hard-rhyming hip-hoppers, buzzy indie-punks, up-and-coming country songwriters, veteran Hall of Famers and more. Here's the best from New Year's Day to now.
1. Beyoncé, 'Lemonade'
We Say: Lemonade is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world's most famous celebrity; it's also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game. All over these songs, she rolls through heartbreak and betrayal and infidelity and the hangover that follows "Drunk In Love." Yet despite all the rage and pain in the music, she makes it all seem affirming.... Like the professional heartbreaker she sings about in "6 Inch," she murdered everybody and the world was her witness.
We Say: This is a messy album that feels like it was made that way on purpose.... It's a labored-over opus that wishes it were a mixtape, trying hard to curate the vibe of a sprawling mess, and that's because it's made by an artist who feels like a mess and doesn't care to hide it. "My psychiatrist got kids that I inspired" is the most brilliant line on the album: Ye can't even go to the shrink without getting his ass kissed about what a big shot he is, so he has to go to the studio instead. And dude knows he's got some issues to work on.... Pablo doesn't go for any grand musical and emotional statements on the level of "Bound 2" or "Runaway" or "Hey Mama." West just drops broken pieces of his psyche all over the album and challenges you to fit them together.
3. Radiohead, 'A Moon-Shaped Pool'
We Say: If Radiohead have made the dehumanizing effects of technology their great theme, A Moon Shaped Pool is the first record in which, musically, they kick their way out of the machine, or at least make their cyborg soul more vestigial. Where Kid A and Amnesiac were defined by electronic music vernacular, this record is defined by its orchestral arrangements.... Electronics haven't been abandoned, and the orchestrations, like the band's "rock," often seem shaped by techno and its kin. But the magic is in the blending.... As always, it's Yorke's voice that holds the emotional center, and it's never been more affecting. Credit both his delivery and the production clarity, a statement in and of itself.
We Say: Produced with longtime collaborator Tony Visconti and cut with a small combo of New York-based jazz musicians whose sound is wreathed in arctic electronics, Blackstar is a ricochet of textural eccentricity and pictorial-shrapnel writing. It's confounding on first impact: the firm swing and giddy vulgarity of " 'Tis a Pity She Was a Whore"; Bowie's croons and groans, like a doo-wop Kraftwerk, in the sexual dystopia of "Girl Loves Me"; the spare beaten-spirit soul of "Dollar Days." But the mounting effect is wickedly compelling. This album represents Bowie's most fulfilling spin away from glam-legend pop charm since 1977's Low. Blackstar is that strange, and that good.
We Say: [A] sprawling masterpiece of psychedelic soul that's far more straightforward than its tangled rollout.... After more than a decade as a superstar of the singles chart, Rihanna has become an album artist.... This is an album that forces us to question the boxes we've placed Rihanna in all along. Is she queen of the clubs or a break-up balladeer? Are her pop instincts sharper than her hip-hop ones? The answer, as provided here, is all of the above and more.
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