Happy holidays! A tradition six years in the making has come around again.
NPR has released their list of the 50 Best Albums of 2018, and again, I have compiled it into an Apple Music playlist.
I used to do this playlist in Spotify and did not for the first time last year. By popular request, I was prepared to do it in both Apple Music and Spotify this year but found that NPR had already published the list in Spotify! I still had to make it in Apple Music (what does that say about AM?) which I wanted to do anyway because this is tradition now. So here it is. Ready to take you soaring in to the new year, I present to you a playlist of NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year.
From NPR:
Art is identity, scream these best albums of 2018. Even when it's pure invention. The most striking things we heard this year mined personal experiences that could feel intimate as whispers or bold and overstuffed as superhero science fiction. Even in an era where listeners have been primed for the unexpected, genuine surprises arrived steadily across the last 12 months – a cascade of introductions, breakthroughs, revelations and rebirths to reward whatever precious attention you could give. (Not a huge surprise: Most of them, after the votes from our staff and member station partners were tallied, turned out to have been made by women.) We're happy to share NPR Music's list of the 50 best albums of 2018. You can listen to them here and hear a discussion on the year in music on All Songs Considered. We'll have lots more before the year ends.
NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year - Spotify Playlist
NPR’s 50 Best Albums of the Year - Apple Music Playlist
I direct you now to last year’s version of this post where I highlight some of my favorites albums from these lists over the past five years.
Favorites from this year's list include:
The Other Side of Air | Myra Melford's Snowy Egret
Víkingur Ólafsson | Johann Sebastian Bach
Kamashi Washington | Heaven And Earth
Janelle Monáe | Dirty Computer
Enjoy!