Since I typically wait until the last minute to compile this list I get to see other people’s beforehand, and the most common comment I read in the last month was that this was one of the best years for music ever. Given that it was a pretty shitty year in general, I interpreted this sunny outlook as an expression of over-compensation—good music made up for all that depressing stuff in the news. And though I did hear a lot of good music this year, when I later relistened to a lot of records I liked initially I found that much of it just washed over me; so I’m not refuting the above-mentioned consensus, just checking it against a critical sensibility that isn’t as rigorous as it used to be. There is, of course, no accounting for taste, but that probably has more to do with a declining attention span than with any drop-off in quality out there. There’s just so much to listen to, and I’m at the age where I can pretty much decide whether I will like an album as soon as I hear one song, or even half a song. The days of discovering an album’s charms over the long-term are gone, which is sort of a shame since now that I’m semi-retired I actually have more time to listen to music. But I don’t want to work at it any more. Almost all the albums on my list were ones that I liked immediately and still found interesting at the end of the year, meaning there were no ringers or surprises in the last month except for one or two records that were released late. But if I don’t necessarily follow the crowd with regard to how great music was this year, I definitely jumped on the bandwagon with my selections, since almost all of them were critical hits, so to speak. Not too sure what that says about my taste any more except that in my dotage I’ve probably become more impressionable than I’d like to think I am.

1. EURO-COUNTRY, CMAT (CMATBABY): It’s about time an Irish artist who doesn’t play punk rock addressed her country’s post-millennial socio-economic situation, even if Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s songs invariably get around to being all about her and whatever petty gripe she woke up with, including Jamie Oliver’s ubiquity and others’ problems with her weight. On her third album she doesn’t sound as country as she did previously, preferring a generic pop sweep that suits her soaring, preening vocal style and delivers the over-determined sense of drama implied by her use of all-caps. As someone who sounds as if she has a lot of axes to grind, whether personal or professional, CMAT adheres to a success-is-the-best-revenge credo, a strategy that would be ill-advised for any musician who was less talented. 

2. Los Thuthanaka (self-released): I am normally itching to turn people on to albums on this list, but I’d hold back in this case. If ever a record required to be played loud it’s this electronica-folk monster by a pair of Bolivian siblings, but the sound itself is so harsh and overpowering that I’m afraid I’d just scare people away; and it’s that very quality that appeals to me. Frankly, I care little about the ethnic provenance of the tracks, though I recognize they’re there; I just get off on the energy unleashed by the percussion effects as they build and break along lines of impossible symmetry. The fact that the siblings didn’t bother to master the recording is considered central to its visceral appeal, but I think it was inadvertent. How would anyone ever think this could be a hit until, of course, it was. 

3. The Even More Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, Jeffrey Lewis (Don Giovanni): I hate that Jeffrey Lewis’s borderline bipolar observations on the indignities of growing old as a still functioning creative type are so relatable. While I’m not into Tylenol PM and movie dates were never a thing for me and my partner, his accounts of what comes “natural” and the way life has a way of beating you up for no good reason strike at something primal in my psyche. Using peppy strummed chords, impeccable diction, and the occasional rock lick, he elevates the particular to the universal with wit and the kind of earned charm he didn’t evoke when he was mainly a cartoonist. Even more, he’s turned into a storyteller of uniquely moving insight. “Inger” destroys me every time. 

4. The Hives Forever Forever the Hives, The Hives (PIAS): At this point these beloved Swedish garage rockers are a bona fide legacy act, and lead braggart Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist has described their latest album as a greatest hits collection made up of all new songs, an assertion that perfectly represents the Hives’ professional attitude: Never admit that your pastiche is pastiche. What gives this attitude extra authority is not so much their amazing facility with fresh-sounding riffs, but rather the over-arching theme of maintaining one’s individuality (“Born a Rebel,” “Path of Most Resistance”), which, if you think about it, is pretty cheeky for a band that still lives and dies by the power chord. The miracle is that they are not only still crazy after all these years, but more engaged than they’ve ever been. 

5. Ekoya, Jupiter & Okwess (Airfono): Jupiter Bokondji and his band, a mix of Kinshasa street musicians and French pros, are seasoned veterans who’ve enjoyed international notoriety for more than three decades. Owing to Bokondji’s childhood in Europe with his diplomat father, the band’s signature Afrofunk is shot through with flamboyant rock gestures (lots of soaring electric guitar) that have become second nature, though the real attraction is Bokondji’s frantic delivery atop supersonic beats. Their latest album, only their fourth, was recorded in Mexico and features a wide range of guests, both local and far-flung, who draw out the Latin influence that’s an essential ingredient of Congolese music and which was less pronounced in Okwess’s previous work. Reportedly, the songs are political, but it’s difficult to discern what positions are being taken when everyone is partying so intensely. 

6. Golliwog, Billy Woods (Backwoodz Studioz/Big Love): Hip-hop has always been particularly good at conjuring nightmares, even when the beats are nominally dance-oriented. Billy Woods takes this concept to its natural conclusion on an album that rarely allows the listener to catch their breath between doom-laden pronouncements, much of it less literal-minded than what you usually hear in hardcore rap, even when Woods names his demons. But the impressionism inherent in both the lyrics and the music is what keeps the album interesting over its continual shifts in tone and rhythm and POV. It takes someone with a steady hand to keep things moving through such a blasted landscape. Stop for anything and you’re dead. 

7. Electro Baghdad, Shiran & Bakal (Batov): As corny as the title and cover art are, they accurately convey the contents. A collaboration between a classical Arabic singer and a DJ-producer, the album’s greatness is rooted in the duo’s shared heritage: both are Yemeni-Iraqis who grew up in Israel. Thus their interaction using both conventional Middle Eastern instruments and electronic paraphernalia makes for organic excitement that short-changes neither the emotional richness of the traditional songs nor the sweaty propulsion of modern club music. The lyrics are love poems of the most heated sort, so when the beats get lively the effect of the singing is hypnotic. What better way to deliver a line like, “My family turned against me because of you…but I stayed.”

8. The BPM, Sudan Archives (Stones Throw): More dance music from someone who wasn’t originally associated with the genre. Brittney Parks’ instrument is the violin, though she tends to process her playing into something that isn’t always recognizable as such. Her computer love is colder than Janelle’s, but she sings more assertively than she has in the past while referencing R&B formulas, the better to advance an agenda that privileges desire in all its manifestations. She takes the idea of dance as a liberating act at face value and applies it to her life, and if the music isn’t always as ecstatic as it could be, she creates sonic scenarios that are always on the verge of blowing your mind. Computers need instructions, after all. Or do they?

9. 031 Studio Camp 2.0, Dlala Thukzin (Dlala Records): The revered South African DJ convenes a camp every year that’s attended by musicians from all over Africa. Amapiano is the jumping off point, but it all ends up as house music, with Thukzin paying particular attention to layered vocal melodies and heavy-duty percussion. Since I’m not familiar with the participating artists I can’t say exactly what it is that they bring to the project, but the eight tracks on the album hang together as a unified vibe, which was probably the goal. What the guests get out of it beyond a lesson in studio technique is anyone’s guess, but I imagine Thukzin learned just as much in the process as they did. They all sure sound like they had a terrific time. 

10. Dreamsicle, Maren Morris (Columbia): The post-divorce album seems to have become a requirement for female country singers these days, and if Maren Morris’s holds its own against the competition—which includes heavy hitters like Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves—it’s probably because she sounds as if she doesn’t have time to be bitter. If anything, she sounds relieved; or, now that she’s embraced her bisexuality, happier with the wider selection available. Regardless of the reason, her songs are much sturdier than a lot of pop-country right now, and even much sturdier than a lot of mainstream pop, meaning she also holds her own against Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift. That may be a moot distinction for someone who works with Jack Antonoff, but I’ll take all the distinction I can get.

-Runners-up

West End Girl, Lily Allen (BMG): Speaking of post-divorce albums, this one is pretty funny. It will definitely make a great musical-comedy, and I’ll pay to see it, but not Broadway prices. 

Snipe Hunter, Tyler Childers (RCA): The standard bearer for all that’s progressive in country right now is traditional in one important way: he sounds like he’s hopped up on bennies.

Getting Killed, Geese (Partisan/PIAS): Consensus says this is the year’s most difficult album to love, though love it we do; not so much for Cameron Winter’s cockamamie poetry, but because it rocks in spite of itself.

Who Waters the Wilting Giving Tree Once the Leaves Dry Up and Fruits No Longer Bear, $ilkmoney (Lex): I believe he’s only trying to get us to believe he’s insane, which for a rapper is more impressive than actually being insane since it’s more of a challenge.

Harp for Harry, Hamell on Trial (Saustex): An in-studio live set of caustically comic and deeply felt rapid-fire original folk blues for a friend, complete with unhinged intersong non sequiturs. 

Committed to a Bit, Corook (Atlantic): As she admits in the opener, the bit is getting a bit tired, but the commitment remains unassailable.

The Kasambwe Brothers (MASS MoCA Records): Acoustic Afropop delivered with the kind of winning sincerity that went out of style when Pete Seeger deigned to use a microphone.

-Honorable mentions

The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy, James McMurtry; Batakari, Ata Kak; I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face, Prolapse; Double Infinity, Big Thief; No Hard Feelings, The Beaches; Straight Line Was a Lie, The Beths; Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, Patterson Hood 

-Orphan songs

“Enough,” Little Simz; “All of the Time,” Robert Forster; “Pillow Talk,” Wet Leg; “Lazy,” Panic Shack; “Man Made of Meat,” Viagra Boys; “Aku Cemas,” Subsonic Eye; “Don’t Remind Me (feat. Anderson .Paak),” Amber Mark

-EPs/Mini-albums

Headache, Girl Scout; Days Before Dreamboy, Lil Nas X; Time Is Not Yours, Say Sue Me; The Golden Heart Protector, Margaret Glaspy; Bobby’s Place (Side One), Bobby Conn

-Reissues/Archival

Obaa Sima, Ata Kak; The Making of Five Leaves Left, Nick Drake; Love Train, the Gamble and Huff Songbook

-Live

The Year of the Radical Romantics, Fever Ray; The First Family, Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967, Sly and the Family Stone