A Considered Look at the Top-Rated Television Shows of 2021

So this is a first: I’m going to talk about hte most-watched television shows of the year. There are a couple of reasons for this: the first is that variety is the spice of life, and in a common year, I really only write about television when it’s the Emmys or the Golden Globes¹, because, as I’ve previously established, television is stupid. 

¹ which I did not address this year, mainly because they weren’t televised, but also because it seemed like a good year not to wade on in on yet another flailing awards show that can’t seem to get its shit together. I’ve got a bunch of those on the docket already. I’ll try again next year. 

Look, I’m not claiming to not watch tv². First of all³, nobody does that anymore. It’s like claiming not to have a microwave. It’s a weird thing that people did a lot fifteen years ago and nobody cares. Second of all, there’s a box in my house that shows flashing pictures at basically any time of day or night and even I’m not able to resist the siren call of it. 

² I even, in fact, watched several of the shows below

³ yep, I’m in “embedded numbered list” territory. Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten that there are a couple of reasons and I’m only on the first one. 

So “stupid” here doesn’t mean “morally repugnant” or “something to be avoided at all costs”, it means, well, stupid. Lots of stupid things are entertaining, after all. Television is like a big, floppy dog that can’t find a tennis ball: it’s good for watching, and I’m happy that it’s in the world generally, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s capable of communicating much. Telling a story in eight-minute chunks in between commercials for prescription medicines is probably the dumbest and least-effective way to tell a story, which is why I tend to be easier on television shows that either produce punchlines or tacos.⁴

⁴ although even this I’m not doctrinaire about: you can find my praise for Ted Lasso, Bojack Horseman, The Good Place, Community and probably some other things all over this site, and all of them told stories well. Tellingly, of the four examples above, two of them are streaming comedies, without the breaks for the drugs.

Anyway, the other reason is that I was going to do the best-selling books, but it turns out that what books tell us is that nutjob conspiracy theorists buy more physical print books than the rest of us, and that people that buy kindle books prefer to be sworn at in an inspirational fashion. So somehow the list of best-selling books is more stupid than television. 

Truly, we live in Interesting Times.

Anyway, these are actually the top 23 or so, because there’s a lot of ties, and also several of them are football, because football. 

NFL Sunday Night Football
WHAT IT IS: The most popular televised sport in the country, presented here by a major network, on its canonical day of the week. The year that the most-watched show in the country is not Sunday Night Football will the the year before the Earth explodes. 

WHY IT’S HERE: well, the football question is easy to answer⁵, but Sunday isn’t a workday, and it’s also not a day when people go out at night, generally speaking, so everyone is home and watching their favorite sport. In a sort of stupidity synergy, it is also the stupidest sport. The stupidest sport on the stupidest medium. Stupid all the way down. 

⁵ people love football

NFL Thursday Night Football
WHAT IT IS: More football. Thursday is the jonny-come-lately of the televised football world, having started a mere fifteen or so years ago. Seems like it’s working out.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because people are also home on Thursday nights, and also (and perhaps more importantly), that more people watch Fox than ESPN (see below).

NFL Monday Night Football
WHAT IT IS: More football. This used to be the flagship, but Disney moved it from ABC to ESPN, so now it’s the third-highest rated. I bet Hank Junior is mad.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because fewer people have access to ESPN than the broadcast networks, even last year. 

This is Us
WHAT IT IS: The story of a family across generations. Isn’t that sweet? Aww.

WHY IT’S HERE: I have absolutely no capacity to understand the popularity of this show. I can understand liking it, I suppose, but man, everybody watches this damn thing. The only things higher than it are football! It says that popularity is  thing beyond my ken, I suppose. 

The Masked Singer
WHAT IT IS: They’re singing, but they’re also in elaborate costumes. Also, a truly annoying assemblage of reality television judges scream about it. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Clearly people have a bottomless appetite for it. The costumes are, indeed, cool, although for the last couple of seasons the early rounds have mostly been notable for revealing that several of the worst people in America⁶ are willing to put on a puppet costume and warble something.

⁶ and John Lydon, who is also terrible, but is from a different country 

Grey’s Anatomy
WHAT IT IS: The clearly-deathless soapy medical rom-dram. I hadn’t paid any attention to it until the run-up to the most recent season, and Ellen Pompeo’s press tour where she all but begged people to stop watching so that she could leave the show. That’s pretty funny.

WHY IT’S HERE: This show is old enough to vote. I would imagine the only possible answer at this point is “inertia.” 

NFL Thursday Night Football
WHAT IT IS: The weekly football game that’s aired on cable, and not on a broadcast network.

WHY IT’S HERE: Well, it’s separated from the pack because people are less likely to watch a football game on cable than on a broadcast network. 

Equalizer
WHAT IT IS: A procedural from the eighties, updated for modern discerning audiences.

WHY IT’S HERE: Look, I don’t care who brings what procedural back. I think Queen Latifah is, generally speaking, a force for good in the world. I’m just happy to be able to type Edward Woodward’s name. Edward Woodward, the man so nice they -warded him twice. 

9-1-1
WHAT IT IS: Ryan Murphy’s first stab at the procedural. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Murph is generally a good thing for ratings, and his willingness to fill the show with the most bonkers possible emergencies and/or responses to those emergencies probably doesn’t hurt. 

The Bachelorette/The Bachelor
WHAT IT IS: The pre-eminent reality show. Many have copied it, often successfully. That seems like a sentence that needs a “but” or an “or” or something, but The Bachelor is pretty straightforward, and there’s not much to explain about it.

WHY IT’S HERE: The Bachelor is forever. I don’t understand its appeal, but it does hav ea very wide appeal. The thing that makes this interesting to me is that the two are in the same spot on the list, which suggests to me that the same (enormous) set of people watches both versions of the show, interchangeably. 

Law & Order: Organized Crime
WHAT IT IS: I’m going to level with you folks: I was not actually aware that this show existed until I saw this list.

WHY IT’S HERE: It is, I will say, at least a novel incarnation of the L&O world. It sounds like a brain-dead version of, like, The Wire, only with a handsome-er lead. So probably that, then. 

Chicago P.D.
WHAT IT IS: We are in the Dick Wolf block, people. L&O is Dick Wolf, Chicago Whatever is Dick Wolf. It’s all Dick Wolf everything.

WHY IT’S HERE: It’s been hard to not type “people love copaganda”⁷ for, like, a bunch of these, but come on. It has police in the name! Stop doing this, everyone!

⁷ some of which I am, in fact to blame for, at least insofar as I do actually watch 9-1-1

Chicago Fire
WHAT IT IS: Dick Wolf, now with more fire!

WHY IT’S HERE: I mean, it’s the same as all the rest of it. On one hand, it’s still a ridiculous pro-status-quo lecture every week. On the other hand, at least it’s only copaganda-adjacent. Television is stupid, everyone!

9-1-1: Lone Star
WHAT IT IS: Like 9-1-1 original flavor, but like 1,400 miles east.

WHY IT’S HERE: Everything is bigger in Texas. Except the ratings for 9-1-1. Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week.

South Park
WHAT IT IS: The bloated-still crawling corpse of a once-funny television program, still managing to find new ground in its saturnine, “everyone is awful and caring is for chumps” worldview. It’s also really breaking up the Dick Wolf, here. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Because people like to be told that they’re making the intellectually rigorous decision by not, in fact, doing anything. 

Law & Order: SVU
WHAT IT IS: The source material for one of the greatest novellas written in my lifetime, if not ever. 

WHY IT’S HERE: People sure do love them especially heinous crimes. 

Chicago Med
WHAT IT IS: I suppose I am somewhat refreshed by the Chicago family of televisual products having extremely direct, utilitarian titles.

WHY IT’S HERE: Well, because after the cops and the firefighters, someone might need to see a doctor, of course.

FBI
WHAT IT IS: You’ll never believe this, but this is Dick Wolf copaganda. Again. 

WHY IT’S HERE: Isn’t it great how the police always and only catch the bad guys and are actually heroes, actually and certainly not anything anyone should question? So cool. 

I Can See Your Voice
WHAT IT IS: Like an inverted masked singer – the person is wearing a costume, certainly, but it’s more along the lines of a Village People situation than a special effect. Then, a somewhat-less annoying assemblage of people⁸ guess if those people can sing. 

WHY IT’S HERE: I mean, it’s essentially a guessing game. It takes even the basic knowledge of famous people out of the Masked Singer equation, replacing them with a shrug and a fifty-fifty stab in the dark. So I guess that….works? For people? I guess? 

⁸ retaining Ken Jeong, the least-annoying of the Masked Singer judges

The Good Doctor
WHAT IT IS: A medical procedural, starring the guy from Bates Motel. 

WHY IT’S HERE: I didn’t get the chance to say this during the Bates Motel years, because I write about television somewhat rarely, but I’m going to say it here because, well, I want to. I am not an actor. I’m not even interested in acting⁹. Nevertheless, there is, as with watching anyone perform any skill, an aspect of watching a television show where it’s sort of locking into a groove of expectation, and you more-or-less know how someone is, given a performance of a character, going to behave. Freddie Highmore, several times in every episode of Bates Motel, made acting decisions that I found not only counter-intuitive, but downright baffling, often to the point of it jarring me all the way out of the story being told. So I guess this is here because people want to be baffled and jarred. Ordinarily I’m among them, but I must confess that having it happen as a result of truly incoherent acting choices is not my favorite way to be either. 

⁹ people that I know in real life are shaking your heads gently right now. I know. I’m understating to move past the point. 

Station 19
WHAT IT IS: You know, if you only ever watched tv, you’d only be able to believe that there were, like, seven jobs, and that more things caught fire than do.

WHY IT’S HERE: Because after sixteen million identical shows in New York and, at present, in Chicago, Seattle must represent a nice change of scenery. 

NCIS
WHAT IT IS: Naval Crime Investigation Service. Now in its 19th year of surprisingly-little boat crime!

WHY IT’S HERE: I mean, a lot of people tune in every week expecting some delightful boat crime, and they almost never get any boat crime. This is ridiculous! Burn the whole thing down! But, you know, lock up the cast of every other show first so I don’t get arrested and/or fire-fought.

A Considered Look At Every #1 Album of 2021

Ah, the #1 album. An elusive thing – there’s, by definition, only one at a time¹, and perhaps it says something about us if we look at what it is. 

¹ I mean, there’s one per chart at a time, and while they usually match up, sometimes they don’t. I’ll be using Billboard here, because I miss it, and it’s nice to go back to it occasionally. 

I mean, maybe. Maybe what it says is “boy, people sure do like Adele”. That’s not going to stop me, however, from doing it anyway. So join me here as I examine every album that hit #1 in the previous calendar year, and see if it tells us anything. 

Taylor Swift – Evermore
WHAT IT IS: The biggest-selling holdover from 2020, a year in which Taylor made two of her best records.

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that the momentum of Taylor Swift’s pandemic year was such that it carried her over the threshold to the next Taylor Swift release (there would also be two releases in 2021, about which see below), despite the only sensible reaction to 2020 being to smash yourself in the head until you’ve given yourself selective amnesia right in the 2020 lobe. 

Playboi Carti – Whole Lotta Red
WHAT IT IS: One of the earlier pop-rap albums to get hyped to the moon last year. True fact about the person writing this: I am unusually bad at gauging how famous something actually is. I kind of live in a weird bubble where I often just have…no idea. Mainstream rap is one of the biggest blind spots in this regard: I had no idea Playboi Carti’s record sold this well. I’m kind of an idiot. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Well, having established that what it says about me is that I’m kind of an idiot, I suppose that what it says about “us” is that sometimes I like the same rap music as other people, but not very often. 

Morgan Wallen – Dangerous
WHAT IT IS: Well, it started its existence a perfectly unremarkable, well-sung-and-produced pop country album. Then it became a flashpoint. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that the wars over cancel culture have officially extended to people buying/streaming/playing records specifically because a dipshit called his friend a racial slur. See, because that’s why it’s here: a bunch of people (awards shows, the radio, that sort of thing) decided they didn’t want to willingly associate themselves with the sort of person who thought that sort of behavior was appropriate, which is apparently untenable to the sort of person that believes “cancel culture” exists. Meanwhile, quick reminder: literally no one has ever been canceled². Idiots are literally just buying this record because they’re in favor of dipshit white boys being able to call each other the n-word. What a time to be alive. 

² with the possible exception of Janet Jackson

Justin Bieber – Justice
WHAT IT IS: It’s the album about which Justin Bieber was upset to have nominated for awards as a “pop” album rather than as an “R&B” album. Beyond that, it’s yet another Justin Bieber album. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that Justin Bieber is, somehow, eternal. Even when he’s grousing about people thinking he’s a pop star. Even then. 

Rod Wave – Soulfly
WHAT IT IS: It’s almost certainly the second-best album called Soulfly. Like the other one, it really just makes me wish Max hadn’t ever left Sepultura. Ah, well. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that while Playboi Carti taught us that sometimes the rap-listening public and I have the same taste in things, it’s more often the case that, you know, we don’t. Anyway, there’s a real thing happening around very young rappers, and I’d like to be more excited by it, but this is pretty bad. 

Taylor Swift – Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
WHAT IT IS: The first of the re-recorded Taylor Swift albums, done in retaliation of the sale of her catalog. This is the one with “Love Story” on it.  It was #1 two different times. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: A thing that’s been interesting³ about Taylor Swift re-recording her old records is that, while she’s far from the first to do so to settle catalogue disputes, she is almost certainly the first to have it work to this extent. It will be interesting to see how that affects other people doing this going forward. Anyway, I guess it says that Taylor Swift is the first person big enough – or with a fanbase loyal enough – to pull this off in any meaningful way. 

³ and, if I’m being honest, that I occasionally kick around writing about here and never quite get to

Young Thug & Various Artists – Slime Language 2
WHAT IT IS: You know, I still think Young Thug is a genius. This is his less-great album of last year⁴, but it’s nice to see it here anyway. 

⁴ I preferred Punk, which was the official ONAT 102nd best album of the year, and might rise over time if I’m being honest. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: A lot of mainstream rap has moved to a really intriguing, non-traditional place – rapping across the beat rather than with it, burying hooks and all sorts of oddities, or even not having traditional hooks at all, and Young Thug was way at the front of that, so it says that we, culturally, have developed an appreciation for this sort of thing, to the tune of buying and streaming his records. 

Moneybagg Yo – A Gangsta’s Pain
WHAT IT IS: It’s a pop-rap album. It’s fine. It has, like, five record labels behind it. That’s a thing I didn’t know before I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if I had anything at all to say about it. Turns out I pretty much don’t!

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: For all that I just said, there’s also still clearly a place for straight-up rappity rap, and this is, you know, that. 

DJ Khaled – Khaled Khaled
WHAT IT IS: They told him not to. But here it is. Another one. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That we shouldn’t play ourselves. We go hard. The key is making it. 

J. Cole – The Off-Season
WHAT IT IS: It’s another J. Cole album. Remember when old-timers were super-annoying but bludgeoning people with the fact that J. Cole went platinum without any features? Yeah, that sucked. What an annoying part of the discourse. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: J. Cole is sort of the current face of “conscious” pop-rap, and so his albums are always going to sell to people that are looking for that sort of thing. Every generation gets the Common they deserve. 

Olivia Rodrigo – Sour
WHAT IT IS: Well, it was the most surprising pop album of the year. It might have also been the most talked-about. It’s also, if I’m being honest, kind of overrated: the singles are all good (three of them are even great), but it has some soggy bits in the back half. Still and all, can’t take anything away from the parts of it that work. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: It says that the bridge to “Drivers License” is like some sort of spell cast upon us all, tapping into some primeval pop-music-reflex-testing-hammer or something. 

Lil Baby & Lil Durk – The Voice of the Heroes
WHAT IT IS: Remember when there were a bunch more Lils? Man ,there were so many Lils like, five years ago. Now there’s not nearly as many⁵. Time marches on. Anyway, this is a collaborative album that, while not precisely surprising, doesn’t seem to be especially asked for. Nevertheless, I must be wrong, because here it is, one of the albums that hit #1. 

⁵ obviously some of this is due to tragedy, that’s not the part I’m making fun of. I’m making fun of the part where they’re all called “Lil” 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: We were optimistic in June, about working together and being around people and whatnot, so this upbeat collaborative album seemed like a much better idea. 

Polo G – Hall of Fame
WHAT IT IS: A surprisingly likable “Something for everyone” sort of hip-hop album, not so much stylistically as in its ability to pull producers and features from all sorts of different pockets of hip-hop. There’s several records a year that try this sort of thing, and Carti’s record was more successful than most at it. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That it’s possible, in rap music at least, currently, to have a #1 by basically appealing to an extremely wide cross-section of listeners. 

Tyler, the Creator – Call Me if You Get Lost
WHAT IT IS: The next installment in what has proven to be a really interesting artistic evolution. It’s an interesting throwback-ish⁶ record, rapping-er than any of Tyler’s more recent records, and surprisingly good. 

⁶ made even more interesting by the fact that it’s throwing back to the time right before Tyler started his own rap career, more-or-less

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: You know, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a desire for the rap world of 2011, maybe it’s just sort of good faith toward Tyler the Creator. I know what I like about this record, but I’m not entirely sure what makes it sell. It was late summer, there weren’t any high-profile veteran rappers on the release schedule, who knows? 

Pop Smoke – Faith
WHAT IT IS: The second posthumous Pop Smoke album. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Boy, it’s real hard not to be cynical about this one, isn’t it? Gosh. Ah, well. 

The Kid Laroi – Fuck Love
WHAT IT IS: The title is supposed to be in all caps, with an asterisk in place of the “u” in the word “Fuck”. Normally I’m happy to respect such stylistic conventions in album titling, but The Kid Laroi annoys me, so I’m not going to. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That a whole lot of people have a lot more patience than I do for…whatever it is that he’s doing. I mean, I know, I know, there’s words for it. But really, this is truly terrible. Stop this. 

Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever
WHAT IT IS: Billie Eilish’s second album. This time she’s blonde. Also, still whispering. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: I mean, we are in a real sad-girl period. I mean, people said so and everything at the end of last summer, when this came out, and Billie Eilish is the saddest (and mumbliest) of the sad girls. 

Kanye West – Donda
WHAT IT IS: Kanye’s post-divorce album that he named after his mother. I’m sure it’s a mess. I’m equally sure I’ll never intentionally listen to it⁷. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That Ye can, pretty much officially, never do anything so ridiculous slash dumb slash self indulgent slash annoying that people won’t listen to his records in droves.

⁷ By which I mean, there is some slim chance that I’m wrong here, but I wouldn’t bet on it. 

Drake – Certified Lover Boy
WHAT IT IS: It’s a Drake album. It went #1 three times. These are chronological by first appearance, so the least-interesting (and heaviest-hitting) albums are all to come. It’s not that there isn’t anything to say about Drake and his popularity, it’s just that I feel like I’ve said the totality of my part of it. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That we love Drake, eternally and unconditionally

YoungBoy Never Broke Again – Sincerely, Kentrell
WHAT IT IS: The album that inherited the deranged wittering about the lack of features – I don’t know that YoungBoy NBA has gone platinum, but if he does, it will have been without features. Just ask people. I have no idea what that matters, but it clearly does. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: I will never understand people. Anyway, this is a real swell album. Glad to see it here. 

Young Thug – Punk
WHAT IT IS: The better of the two Young Thug albums to top the charts this year. What a good year for Young Thug. Who’d’ve thought back at the I Came From Nothing years that 1) this would be the way he sounded now and 2) that it would be this outright popular? 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: Well, it makes me optimistic about the state of pop-rap. Moreso than, you know, the Kid Laroi or whatever.

Ed Sheeran – =
WHAT IT IS: C’mon. We can skip the charade this time. You know what this is, I know what this is. We all have the same jokes or whatever, and they never matter. This just keeps going, despite all of that. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: On a recent podcast appearance, John Flansbergh of They Might Giants recounted a conversation he had with a record executive, who proclaimed that “if you can sell records to people that don’t like music, you’ve got it made.” Now, I’m not saying anything about the tastes of the Ed Sheeran audience as such, but what I am saying is: this seems like an example of that. 

Summer Walker – Still Over It
WHAT IT IS: At this point (mid-November), sad girl summer had officially spilled over into Sad Girl Late Fall. And, like, Sad Everyone Everything All the Time Forever.

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: There are a lot of reasons to be very sad. 

Taylor Swift – Red (Taylor’s Version)
WHAT IT IS: The same stuff that it meant back at Fearless, only this time 1) later in the year, 2) with a bigger-selling record and 3) with a more-dated record. This also confirmed the existence of the eleven-minute juggernaut version of “All Too Well”, which was set to be the sort of capstone on the sad-girl pop year. Until the next thing. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: I mean, it really was the culmination of the last couple fo years of high-Taylor content. It would have, as mentioned above, been a culmination of the whole sort of general sad-girl-pop-music thing, but, well, again: see below. 

Adele – 30
WHAT IT IS: It’s the new Adele album which, having arrived on a pop music landscape that had been largely dominated by rappers and Taylor Swift, immediately mobilized the absolutely mind-boggling boat-load of people that buy Adele albums and made this number one for the entire end of the year. 

WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT US: That, even in times of trouble and constant flexion, Adele is a constant. Some of it really probably is in the nature of it being relatively unmoored from current events, some of it is because when Adele makes  a record, you know what you’re going to get, and that she’s wildly consistent. Basically, this album is a big fuzzy pillow for the end of a deeply depressing year, and people paid money for it. 

That part, at least, could be much worse. 

Shamelessly Punting: Thirty Things That Turn Twenty in Twenty Twenty Two

Silkworm – Italian Platinum

Terry Pratchett – Night Watch

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Mclusky – Mclusky Do Dallas

Sleater-Kinney – One Beat

Ted Chiang – Stories of Your Life and Others

Songs: Ohia – Didn’t It Rain

Spirited Away

Spoon – Kill the Moonlight

Kelly Link – “Lull”

24 Hour Party People

The Roots – Phrenology

Lambchop – Is a Woman

SunnO))) – Flight of the Behemoth

Brian K. Vaughan – Y The Last Man

Kim Stanley Robinson – The Years of Rice and Salt

Molly Gloss –  “Lambing Season”

El-P – Fantastic Damage

The Wire

Bill Willingham – Fables

Hella – Hold Your Horse Is

Lilo & Stitch

Tom Waits – Alice

Lynda Barry – One! Hundred! Demons!

Lauryn Hill – Unplugged

Neil Gaiman – Coraline

Storytelling

Sonic Youth – Murray Street

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Yanqui UXO

Joann Sfar – The Rabbi’s Cat

Jean Grae – Attack of the Attacking Things

The Best Records of 2021

This time they’re in ordinal order, as always! I used to be stingy with these, but I’ve stopped doing that. 100 records! Read it and, for preference, do not weep!

The Body – I’ve Seen all I need to See

Low – HEY WHAT

Grouper – Shade

Kowloon Walled City – Piecework

Big|Brave – Vital

Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime

Big|Brave & The Body – Leaving None But Small Birds

Nathan Salsburg – Psalms

Lingua Ignota – Sinner Get Ready

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

SunnO))) – Metta, Benevolence

Midwife – Luminol

Vince Staples – Vince Staples

Pelt – Reticence/Resistance

Aaron Dilloway & Lucrecia Dalt – Lucy & Aaron

Senyawa – Alkisah

Nick Cave – CARNAGE

Divide and Dissolve – Gas Lit

Year of No Light – Consolamentum

Angel Bat Dawid – Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1: Doxology

Nadja – Luminous Rot

Ka – A Martyr’s Reward

Jeff Parker – Forfolks

Weakened Friends – Quitter

Deafheaven – Infinite Granite

Moor Mother – Black Encyclopedia of the Air

Body/Dilloway/Head – Body/Dilloway/Head

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Haram

Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood

R.A.P. Ferreira – The Light Emitting Diamond Cutter Scriptures

BACKXWASH – I LIE HERE WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES

Colleen Green – Cool

Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams – Gandhi Loves Children

Irreversible Entanglements – Open the Gates

Matt Sweeney & Bonnie Prince Billy – Superwolves

Indigo De Souza – Any Shape You Take

Les Filles de Illighadad – At Pioneer Works

JPEGMAFIA – LP!

Sault – Nine

BADBADNOTGOOD – Talk Memory

Chris Brokaw – Puritan

Rachika Nayer – Our Hands Against the Dusk

Gnod – La Mort Du Sens

Theon Cross – Intra I

Arca – Kick (I’m just lumping them all together here, but I like iii the most)

Thalia Zedek Band – Perfect Vision

Felicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Un hiver en plein été

Zelooperz – Van Gogh’s Left Ear

Emma Ruth Rundle- Engine of Hell

Maxo Kream – Weight of the World

The Lasso – 2121

Black Twig Pickers – Friend’s Peace

Black Midi – Cavalcade

Xenia Rubinos – Una Rosa

Bell Orchestre – House Music

The Telescopes – Songs of Love and Revolution

Tyler the Creator – Call Me if You Get Lost

Mono – Pilgrimage of the Soul

Sally Anne Morgan – Cups

G Herbo – 25

Sons of Kemet – Black to the Future

Monolord – Your Time to Shine

Six Organs of Admittance – The Veiled Sea

The Lasso, Jordan Hamilton & The Saxsquatch – Tri Magi

Watchhouse – Watchhouse

Wiki – Half God

Ben Lamar Gay – Open Arms to Open Us

Jessica Moss – Phosphenes

Mach-Hommy – Pray for Haiti

Sarah Neufeld – Detritus

Mandy, Indiana – EP

Hutch Harris – Suck Up All the Oxygen

Kipp Stone – Faygo Baby

Marisa Anderson & William Tyler – Lost Futures

The Armed – ULTRAPOP

Mess Esque – Mess Esque

Bendik Giske – Cracks

Heart Attack Man – Thoughtz & Prayerz

Sarah Louise – Earth Bow

Chester Watson – 1997

Ben Chasny – The Intimate Landscape

Psychic Graveyard – Veins Feel Strange

Biitchseat – I’ll Become Kind

Marissa Nadler – The Path of the Clouds

Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble – NOW

Arab Strap – As Days Get Dark

Jaite – Lowlands

Gerycz/Powers/Rolin – Lamplighter

Fly Pan Am – Frontera

Skyzoo – All the Brilliant Things

Flea Collar – A Hole is a Hole

Isaiah Rashad – The House is Burning

Chromesthetic – Intone

Fresh – The Summer I Got Good at Guitar

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt – Made Out of Sound

Colleen – The Tunnel and the Clearing

Tele Novella – Merlynn Belle

Mogwai – As the Love Continues

Jazmine Sullivan – Heaux Tales

Human Impact – EP1