…And the nominees for album of the year are:
Best of 2018
#Bestof2018 : Top 100 Tracks (25-1)
… And the fourth and last instalment of 2018’s best tracks begins with one of the three songs by Janelle Monáe featured in our list, Pynk, a collaboration with Grimes which marked her public coming out as queer.
Among our favourites this year also featured more LGBT anthems; indie kiwis; female songwriter supergroups; country stars; flamenco trap; nordic pop; rap latino and a controversial indictment about the state of the (US) union.
Check out our songs of the year here:
#Bestof2018 : Top 100 Tracks (50-26)
The third part of our Top 100 favourite songs of the year begins with SOPHIE, the Glaswegian electronic artist who has shaped the sound of Today’s most adventurous pop.
In this block we will also find British icons; Spanish trap; astonishing soundtracks; gay idols; French songwriters; jazz renovators and the year’s most publicised pop break-up.. Check it all out here:
#Bestof2018 : Top 100 Tracks (75-51)
We continue our countdown of 2018’s best songs with Reggaeton’s biggest star, Colombian J Balvin, who teamed up with the artist responsible for our album of the year, ROSALíA, on his standout track, ‘Brillo.’
In the second quarter of our tracks of the year you will find Canadian hardcore punks; Spanish garage rockers; conscious rappers; Aussie bubblegum starlettes and Colombia’s biggest pop star since Shakira. All of this and more here:
#Bestof2018: Top 100 Tracks (100-76)
101-LADY GAGA & BRADLEY COOPER
Shallow
(Interscope)
After our favourite albums of the year, it’s the turn to look back at the songs that made an impact on us during the last few months, headed as the tradition mandates by the symbolic number 101; a guilty pleasure of sorts that also represents the state of mainstream music in 2018. This time the honour falls in Lady Gaga, who is back on a high, aiming at the Oscars, thanks to Bradley Cooper’s fourth take on the classic story of ‘A Star Is Born.’ A film that, albeit not quite deserving of those masterpiece-like reviews, surprises for not being half as terrible as the audacious idea may have suggested. Musically, it panders to traditionally earnest rock and roll values against the soul-destroying ones in Today’s pop music with a soundtrack that rescues the most terrible brand of anthemic, old-fashioned AOR whose standout ‘Shallow’ is both one of those tunes that gets stuck in your head forever and a good single-word description for the current state of popular music.
Inescapable stadium-rock aside, the year was packed with excellent pop, even if -or perhaps because- the genre’s shiniest stars were on hiatus or not on top form, that reached far into other genres (country, jazz, flamenco…) and brought diversity and surprise into its tried and tested formats. In a year where genre equality and representation was still at the top of the cultural agenda, female vocalist reigned supreme. Subject-wise, politics seem to be making a welcome way back into pop in the wake of the right-wing populism that is conquering the globe, as some of the best songs of the year tend to prove.
In the first quarter of our Top 100 tracks of the year recap you’ll find new jazz and old soul legends;a hip-hop street collective; R&B’s most renowned powercouple; Flamenco dance and female rockers. Check The Top 100-76 here:
#Bestof2018 : Top 50 Albums
We begin our annual end of the year music review with our favourite albums. In the coming days we will be also checking the Top 100 singles, making a brief analysis of what’s been going on during the last twelve month and will finish with the announcement of our 2018 Rober Awards nominees. Stay tuned!
The Rober Awards Best albums of 2018 are…