What defines a year's best albums? It's one thing to run through 2019's best songs (which, yes, we sure did); it's another in the Era of the Stream—where any track can be queued up anytime—to hone in on full-length albums that actually compel you to stick around for an hour-plus. The GQ staff's best albums of 2019 list features musicians who exhibit that rare lasting power. It's a trait you can't necessarily define or articulate, but when you hear it, you know it. Here are our 21 favorites.
Alex G, House of Sugar
The latest album from the weird, wild world of (Sandy) Alex G is a 2019 essential. Earlier this year, the indie rockstar and Frank Ocean collaborator told GQ that he wanted House of Sugar to be a “sex, drugs, and rock and roll album from hell.” The record is all that and more, complete with twisted, genre-pushing melodies and singalong choruses. He may be only 26, but House of Sugar further establishes Alex G as one of the most exciting and innovative songwriters working today.—Colin Groundwater, assistant to the editor in chief
Beyoncé, Homecoming: The Live Album
The smart people among us did not miss Homecoming, Beyoncé's headline performance at 2018's Coachella. We stayed up late to stream it live, or even later to see the rebroadcast, or waited a week to see the second performance, because they knew it was important. For those still unconvinced (gross), the most important musician of the decade released the audio as an album (mercifully not as a Tidal-exclusive). Even without its jubilant, arresting, resonant visuals, the performance offers the most thrilling start-to-finish listening experience of any album released this year. Each arrangement—imbued with a drum line and horns that feel bigger than God and Beyoncé singing in harmony at 130%—brings something novel to songs that already felt as essential as air.—Daniel Varghese, commerce writer
Ariana Grande, thank u next
This album was only supposed to be a victory lap—a package for Ariana’s first number one single in the U.S., and a fun follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 record Sweetener. Instead, she topped herself. From the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-cribbing “7 Rings” to the jaw-dropping swagger of “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored,” Grande oozes confidence and flexes her vocal chops at every turn. thank u, next may be her best album to date. It’s certainly the pop album of the year.—C.G.
Bon Iver, i,i
For a second there, Bon Iver felt destined to become a late-aughts punchline for the Urban Outfitter set: the man who nurtured a stunning, creaky album during a winter in the woods, used up his one stroke of genius, then retreated back into the proverbial forest of obscurity. Only: something strange happened. Over the past decade, Justin Vernon revealed himself to be a skilled songwriter who doesn’t need a cabin-in-the-woods stunt to make a good and adored album. He and his collaborators have developed Bon Iver’s sensibility at this point, centered much more around electronic bleeps and bloops and a fascination with song names written AIM-style than any of us could have predicted. Vernon hid behind those tricks earlier in his discography. But where past Bon Iver albums whispered or serenaded, i,i often roars. And even where Bon Iver’s lyrics remain (mostly) inscrutable at best, Vernon uses his voice as just another brush strok within larger impressionistic paintings. i,i, just might be his “Water Lilies.”—Cam Wolf, style writer
100 gecs, 1000 gecs
How do you end up with a viral hit that opens with the line, “Hey you lil’ pissbaby, you think you’re so fucking cool?” Imagine you performed an arcane ritual to summon the ghost of Warped Tour, tried to explain PC Music to it without actually playing any, then told it to make you an album. The result might sound something like the brain-melting debut from 100 gecs, titled 1000 gecs, because 100 gecs simply weren’t enough. This album is all over the place—sludge rock at one turn, then pop punk at the next, all filtered through a laptop. It’s utterly unhinged in the best way possible. Gecgecgecgecgecgecgec.—C.G.
Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell!
The first verse of “Norman fucking Rockwell" does more to define the psyche of American men than John Updike's entire body of work. “Goddamn, man child / You're fun and you're wild but you don't know the half of the shit that you put me through / Your poetry's bad and you blame the news.” As an album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! is about falling in and out of love—with undeserving men, America, and, like, the way we imagine Los Angeles (the way it’s supposed to be, dammit). Despite it all, Del Rey—a self-proclaimed “big-time believer that people can change”—ends on a cautiously optimistic note that sums up the national mood: “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it.”—C.W.
Caroline Polachek, Pang
Caroline Polachek has one of the most striking voices in pop. It’s smooth, and precise, and carries with it a remarkable range. Her debut album Pang is as strong as it is because of how well she understands that instrument—and how, lyrically, Polachek pulls at the heartstrings Cher once commanded. Sometimes she’ll take off on a vocal run that is, for lack of a better term, fucking mind-blowing (especially on the standout track “Ocean Of Tears”). But she’s also capable of flipping that switch and producing pop bangers that sound better than anything topping the charts right now. Name anyone else that can pull that off as well.—Gabe Conte, web producer
Solange, When I Get Home
When I Get Home drops you smack in the middle of a Houston fever dream. The album draws heavily on Solange's H-Town roots, both thematically and sonically, but instead of looking backward for self-empowerment—like she did on 2016's A Seat at the Table—here, the artist uses memory to look forward. She blurs the lines between memories of home and dreams of home to the point where it doesn't really matter which is which. The pace of the album as a whole, of each song individually, and the transitions and interludes between them vividly conjures this dreamlike past-future version of the city, and leaves the listener to meditate on their own imagined version of home.—Ben Pardee, lead web producer
Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated
Carly Rae Jepsen’s music has always been intoxicating. Each of the maximalist anthems that have defined her career to date have found a way to make potentially sickly sweet sentiment (“I really really really really really really like you”) feel earnest and essential. On Dedicated, sentiment still reigns supreme (“He needs me, he needs me / He needs me, he needs me / He needs me, he needs me”). But the sonic profile has shifted and become more intimate. Jepsen gives the album's soaring thematic undercurrent—that loving and being loved are the hardest and best things we as humans can do—a soothing refinement. You might still want to scream the choruses at the top of your lungs, but you’ll do so under the comfort of a comfortable, knowing weighted blanket.—D.V.
DaBaby, Baby on Baby
DaBaby called his shot on the first day of 2019: “What you gon' say at the Grammys? Shout out to God and my daughter and shout out my mom” he brags on “Walker Texas Ranger,” the first single from Baby on Baby. Fast forward almost a year, and he’s been nominated for three Grammys himself, and seems likely to take at least one home. Baby on Baby felt like it was everywhere this year. The stompy beat from “Suge” blew out the speakers of at least a thousand of cars. DaBaby’s rapping cuts cleanly through the haze that was the over-saturation of Atlanta's croon-y trap. It’s hard, loud, funny, and above all else, an incredibly good time.—G.C.
Sturgill Simpson, Sound & Fury
Though I won’t go backstage on his bus pretending to be his friend, I will follow Sturgill wherever he’s going. On Sound & Fury, his fourth album, the journey is by turns eerie, funky, psychedelic, and combustible. He’s not just our best country star; he’s our best rock star. Seriously, who’s better at sound? Who’s better at fury?—Max Cea, contributing writer
FKA twigs, Magdalene
Sometimes with an artist, there's a moment when they release something and everything just clicks into place. Magdalene is that for me, an album that feels operatic in scale and execution. From beginning to end, Magdalene is an album that's committed to exploring its thesis, no matter how painful. Twigs sings deeply personal songs about racism, misogyny, pain, and some of the most gut-twisting heartbreak I’ve ever heard. Magdalene also serves as a testament to what a big budget pop album can sound like when it drops the facade and commits to being genuine. Here, twigs brings in some of the best ambient and electronic producers of the decade, like Arca and Skrillex, to assist—and it shows. Everybody who touched this album deserves a Grammy. It’s an unbelievable achievement, and a stunning work of art that will surely guide music for years to come.—G.C.
King Princess, Cheap Queen
In her first full-length album, queer pop hero Mikaela Straus invites us into the melancholy aftermath of her past love affairs. Despite the 20-year-old’s confident and developed sound, Cheap Queen is an honest and earnest reminder of what it's like to be young, crush hard, love, lose, and try to figure out who you are. Lyrics like “Since everyone wants me it’s harder to be myself” are juxtaposed with King Princess's more vulnerable moments. The tracks effortlessly blend pop beats with disco flair and even some folk-rock influence—her eclectic sound placing her alongside other genre-bending artists like Billie Eilish and Maggie Rogers. Cheap Queen is a soulful, well-rounded, relatable debut, signaling that, for King Princess, this is just the beginning.—Corinne Ferman, social media/marketing designer
Rico Nasty, Anger Management
The first two and a half minutes of Anger Management might be the closest a musician comes to actual perfection. A voice begins to speak over a dial tone and a keyboard clacking: “Hey, you there? Aren't you tired of the same old thing? / At every day, every minute, every second / Everybody, everything?” The droning continues, the keyboard gets louder, the voice grows more distorted—until Rico Nasty finally breaks the tension with a trilling “KEENNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.” From that moment on, nothing ever never slows or eases.—G.C.
Maggie Rogers, Heard It In A Past Life
Maggie Rogers made an album so profound and fresh that it's almost as if she conjured a new genre from nothing. It's a body of work that rises above any possible comparison. Songs like "Overnight" (heart-shattering and defiant) and "Fallingwater" (proudly willing to let silence and stripped-down production speak for themselves) are some of the only things I've heard this side of 2010 that have stopped me dead in my tracks. Listen to this album before 2020 hits, so you can tell your kids you were there then. You'll want to be on the right side of history with Maggie.—Brennan Carley, associate editor
EarthGang, Mirrorland
“Atlanta rap fantasia” is how Pitchfork categorized EarthGang’s Mirrorland, a descriptor so apt that I’m not going to attempt to one-up it. The hip-hop duo of Olu and WowGr8 have come a long way in recent years: their first hit, “Missed Calls,” best encapsulates the grittier vibe that was their 2015 effort, Strays with Rabies. But Mirrorland marks their major label debut, and takes on a more celebratory tone—the album’s most-streamed track features Young Thug and is literally called “Proud of U.” EarthGang’s trademark eccentricities, lyrically and otherwise, still pervade, and the end result is a tightly curated 14-song experience pushed forward with well-placed appearances by T-Pain, Arin Ray, and Kehlani.—Alex Shultz, editorial assistant
Maren Morris, GIRL
For some artists, comparing their work to others’ is a sort of backhanded compliment: It’s good, sure, but we’ve also heard this before. For Maren Morris, though, the intra-industry parallels are a tribute to the impressive breadth of sounds and genres she ably weaves into the fabric of her country roots. At various points on GIRL, the follow-up to her 2016 Grammy-nominated debut, Hero, you can hear smatterings of Alicia Keys, Katy Perry, Jessie J, Sheryl Crow, and even the legendary Stevie Nicks—with whom, incidentally, Morris shares the mic on a song off Crow’s latest album. When the bridge to GIRL’s title track turns into a belated Beyoncé tribute—“Girl, don’t hang your head low, don’t lose your halo, don’t lose your halo,” Morris riffs over a thumping electric guitar—it doesn’t feel forced. It feels earned.—Jay Willis, staff writer
Octo Octa, Resonant Body
The New Hampshire based DJ Octo Octa made the year’s most euphoric and empowering dance record. Resonant Body is a modern update on the many manifestations of '90s rave music. Every song is lush and overwhelmingly fun, and tracks like “My Body is Powerful” and “Power to the People” are moving examples of the ways dance can blend the personal and the political. It’s a lasting testament to finding community out on the floor.—C.G.
Tyler, the Creator, Igor
How can something so jagged be so groovy? How can something so deformed be so sexy? How can something so digital have so much heart? Tyler’s latest album confounds logic—and also anything resembling musical rules and norms. Every misspelling, every off note, every syncopated beat adds up to a truly special concoction. There were a lot of people dressed up as Tyler’s mop-topped alter ego, Igor, this Halloween, but Tyler remains inimitable.—M.C.
Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride
Vampire Weekend was the soundtrack of my adolescence, so it only seems right that the band’s first album in six years rings as a more mature departure from the Afro-pop triptych of records that would define them. Perhaps the result of frontman Ezra Koenig’s move from his native New York to Los Angeles, the band embraces the sounds of California and Americana for a loose but sprawling double album that masquerades angsty lyrics under upbeat guitars and electronically-enhanced vocals. The band has grown up, but that isn’t to say Father of the Bride isn’t fun—after all, the title is a nod to the 1991 Steve Martin comedy, and “Unbearably White,” intentionally or not, feels like a knowing wink to the group's image as J. Crew hipster poster boys. But the days of boat shoes and prep school sweaters are long gone, and Vampire Weekend is all the better for it.—Iana Murray, contributing writer
Miranda Lambert, Wildcard
Miranda Lambert has yet to make an album that clocks in any less than good, but damn if Wildcard isn't as bulletproof a body of work the country superstar's released to date. Half swaggering bangers (the pop by way of pedal guitar stomper "White Trash" might be 2019's best album opener), and half ruminating slow songs ("Bluebird" will never not make you have to hold back tears; "Dark Bars" beautifully captures the virtues of solitude and living in the darkness for a while), the 14-track record doesn't have a weak link in the bunch. Lambert's at her absolute finest here, showing you her whole heart before snatching it away with a wink. What a woman.—B.C.
As the decade comes to a close, we celebrate our favorite tunes to hit our airwaves this year.
