VMP Magazine

Baby Keem DIE FOR MY BITCH BABY KEEM JUST HUMBLED A MODEL. (Editor’s Note: Not a fake one, a real one. Don’t stunt.) I don’t know which 2019 rap...

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Ancestral Recall (Ropeadope) There’s a sense that this is the kind of album this New Orleans native has been build...

This is the fourth year I’ve done this list for Vinyl Me, Please, and I always try to open these with an essay on The State Of Country Music, but this year feels too similar to last year for there to be too revealing: The main problem in country music this year, as it’s been forever, is that it’s extremely hard for people who are not white men to get their music on the radio or on the major labels that control so much of the country music business. There was a literal supergroup of country women formed this year in response to how hard it is to hear a woman on any hour-long block of country radio, and nothing changed. Someone in the country business also probably called Billboard to have Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” forcibly removed from the country charts, even when it was as clear as day that that song was a country song and after it was clear it was going straight to No. 1 (for more on how black artists have been written out of country music, read this.

Despite all the same old shit, this was an extremely good year for new country albums: A mix of young upstarts, old warriors, and supergroups all made great albums. Cutting my list down to 10 was extremely hard this year — which hasn’t always been the case in the past — but without further ado, here they are:

Let’s be real with each other for a minute: There is too much music every year for anyone to listen to even 1/10th of all of it. Things fall through the cracks for any number of reasons — apathy, preconceptions, literally not hearing about an album — and every year, we try to stand at the bottom of those cracks and catch some albums you should re-evaluate, as you head out into the great beyond of 2020. So, here are overlooked albums from 2019 you need to spend time with before the year is over.

I’m not a listicle individual, a blurb nerd, NONE OF THAT. In fact, we’re not even ranking these anymore. Why? For what? If it’s fie, it’s fie!

Bat For Lashes Lost Girls (AWAL) ...

After listening to all the best and some of the worst in metal this year, I only have one question remaining: Can I go back to watching Bon Appetit videos now?

While the music industry contracts and contracts, the music book publishing industry seems like it’s wantonly expanding every year. When I started this year-in-review project in 2017, it felt like I had to reach to get to 10 worthy music books. This year, I left some of my favorite books I read all year off this list because there was too much good to get to. While I have you, remember to buy the second Vinyl Me, Please book, The Best Record Stores In The United States, right here. Without further ado, the 10 best music books of 2019: