Margo Price! I also enjoyed Haley Bonar https://www.youtube.com/wat… , Jesca Hoop https://www.youtube.com/wat… , and Billie Martin https://www.youtube.com/wat… among superficially similar musicians.

I was going to say! It's actually rhythmic to say and memorable, and it's long enough that it wouldn't get lost in online search. It's a great and effective band name.

Your Tim Heidecker reference reminds me that Matt Berry (of Toast Of London and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace) has a new album out. https://www.youtube.com/wat… Here he is playing a song on a farm?

"she has total freedom to do what she wants musically and lyrically"

I find it weird that it's only on Canadian-album-only best of lists. It's front-to-back listenable with a sense of humor to balance out the shouting and huge hooks and interesting choices on the best songs.

I had an awesome conversation about Lizzo with 1 of the kids at the school for which I raise money. She's in choir, a sweetheart, and totally cute, but also chubby and a little airheaded. Lizzo was totally inspirational to her. The system works!

I was disappointed that it slipped down to 5 on Sean's list, but that Ital Tek reboot was pretty cool. I was hoping Huerco S. would get some Tim Hecker-style crossover love, but I think he needs a couple more magical LPs/EPs in a row to break through people's apathy.

I wouldn't go that far, but from my (admittedly narrow) perception, the Beyonce brand dominated discussion far more than any individual song, passage, or lyric. I think it's easily her best album, but the stuff I saw most was tabloid-style drama, what she represents (admittedly sometimes referencing Formation),…

I would actually call it extremely traditional and use that as a compliment. There's such an attention to craft, which typically gets defined as, "Super-powered budgets and kitchen-sink design philosophy." Here, it does a couple of things very well and then every single bit of the aesthetic, as Matt wrote, is both…

I'm just glad to see The Hotelier and Pinegrove joined the ones you mentioned on quite a few lists so that people stop talking about the death of rock music.

I didn't listen to Blackstar until after he died, and I was expecting the understandable eulogy overrating. Nope! It's phenomenal.

List thread? I always adore reading people's lists, and The A.V. Club's is a good one! It was a great year in any genre you looked at, so the one's I've seen have been rather diverse.

My friends are split, too! Maybe he's just inconsistent. At Eaux Claires, Chicago, and Detroit, he yelped so much and was all over the place with pitch. If his performance job is just to sing, he should probably do better.

I think Rock would acknowledge the deserts and oases in both Dumbfuckistan and Realmerca. "Orange County is like Lesotho," he would say.

Control: Janelle Monae used to be awesome. Many Moons in particular is a star-making song.

Johnston Checks In was Onion-worthy.

I think it's telling that the main alternative way, "Fuck _," is used is when people commiserate and write, "Fuck cancer." Treating every successive year the way one treats an encroaching, unbeatable disease is probably not good for anyone's psyche. I like Clayton's take a lot. It's not they're wrong. It's that this…

Leicester City, too! (And, um, my Penguins.) Sports were wonderful.

You may be disappointed. Friends collapses after Vernon's verse is over, and he cannot really hack it live (he opened for Chance The Rapper).

The Ace Attorney/Turnabout Trial movie was almost indigestibly camp, but it is well worth seeing.