I’d gotten into British indie pop trio Saint Etienne near the end of 1997 after picking up a used cassette of their second albumSo Toughat a thrift shop. Straightaway listening to it on a walk through Boston’s North End left me a fan for life, avidly anticipating their fourth album Good Humor (and its essential, limited edition B-sides bonus disc Fairfax High) when it received a domestic release the following September. While I still rank So Tough and at least one subsequent release above it, this winsome homage to AM radio gold of the 60s/70s remains a key text in describing my musical taste.
During my first full year in Boston with limited funds for CD purchases, I mostly stuck to what I knew, similarly lapping up new releases from longtime favorites (R.E.M., Liz Phair, Tori Amos, Madonna) and newer-to-me artists then in heavy rotation (Ani DiFranco at her commercial peak, Morcheeba expanding upon (if not surpassing) the template set in place with their 1996 debut.) Sheryl Crow’s third album demonstrated how to do mainstream rock and roll right while Billy Bragg and Wilco suggested a future for folk-rock by reaching into the past (Woody Guthrie lyrics) and translating it for the present. Velvet Goldmine took a similar path regarding 70s glam rock and proved the most innovative, impact-making soundtrack (for me, anyway) since Trainspotting.
Now:
Saint Etienne, Good Humor/Fairfax High
Massive Attack, Mezzanine
Madonna, Ray of Light
Mary Lou Lord, Got No Shadow
Billy Bragg and Wilco, Mermaid Avenue
Calexico, The Black Light
Belle and Sebastian, The Boy With The Arab Strap
PJ Harvey, Is This Desire?
Tori Amos, From The Choirgirl Hotel
Soundtrack, Velvet Goldmine
Five in, five out. I heard many more 1998 albums over the next few years but none have elicited as much affection as Good Humor does to this day. Massive Attack’s masterpiece, however, comes awfully close. A highwater mark for trip-hop as a genre, Mezzanine feels spun out of disparate parts (Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins? Why not?) almost magically cohering into a sonically distinct whole, as definitive and far-reaching of an aesthetic as Remain in Light or Steve McQueen. Boston busker Mary Lou Lord’s major label effort is a most accessible, palatable introduction that fully captures her essence. Although technically their second album, Calexico’s The Black Light is essentially where they became Calexico, a smorgasbord of instrumentals and lovesick laments, twangy guitars and mariachi horns, tunes for road trips and desert noirs.
While Ray of Light, Mermaid Avenue and (to a lesser extent) Velvet Goldmine and From The Choirgirl Hotel have endured, other 1998 records have not. A fascinating puzzle when it came out, time has diminished Up by revealing its flaws, most notably the Bill Berry-sized hole that mars the band’s output from there on (though it remains their most interesting post-Berry full-length.) I’d still pull Little Plastic Castle off the shelf before any other Ani DiFranco album apart from Dilate or Living in Clip, but that doesn’t happen often. Same thing for Liz Phair (Exile in Guyville is still her best) and Morcheeba (ditto for Who Can You Trust?); I didn’t hear The Boy With The Arab Strap or Is This Desire? until 1999 and while both are solid, I’d almost always rather once again return to If You’re Feeling Sinister and To Bring You My Love, respectively.
As with Paul McCartney in June, Madonna’s celebrating a birthday today, six weeks after releasing Confessions II, her best-received album in over two decades. Let’s see where it falls among her other 15 studio albums (I’ve omitted compilations and soundtracks apart from the one of the latter where she’s the sole artist.)
16 – Madame X (2019)
At 61, Madonna revealed herself as the Tracy Flick of pop, too overeager for praise and recognition. One appreciates such effort at her spinning some sort of extended concept about an international woman of mystery but it’s mostly a dead end—the music rarely makes the case as to why she bothered. It’s telling that the highlight is the sole disco song (“I Don’t Search I Find”).
15 – MDNA (2012)
A perfectly fine Katy Perry album; with a few exceptions, I don’t like Katy Perry.
14 – Hard Candy (2008)
I also loathe this record’s Timbaland/Timberlake hit “4 Minutes” and the ridiculous cover art put me off checking it out until now. Certainly a big step down from its immediate predecessor but unlike the bottom two, I can imagine wanting to hear this again, especially the run from “Heartbeat” to “She’s Not Me”.
13 – I’m Breathless (1990)
I originally had her “inspired by” Dick Tracy soundtrack at the bottom as it’s easily her most ephemeral long-player; it also has two (out of three) great Sondheim originals (“Sooner or Later”, “More”) and the monumental “Vogue” (even if it’s obviously tacked on at the end) along with a whole lot of pastiche, some of it interminable, some of it basic, breezy fun.
12 – American Life (2003)
Her first real flop sounds good on paper—a (more so than usual) guitar-driven, singer-songwriter confessional (note that last word), like Ray of Light without most of the electro-dressings. Fascinating for Madonna obsessives, I guess, but it doesn’t reveal anything profound behind an icon’s façade. The tacked-on Bond theme is no “Vogue”.
11 – Rebel Heart (2015)
Her best effort between the two Confessions albums. The melodic prowess of “Joan of Arc” and playfulness and ease of “Body Shop” create enough goodwill to nearly forgive strained smut talk like “Holy Water”. Perhaps she could’ve fully pulled off “Bitch, I’m Madonna” two decades earlier (and done so without a pre-heel turn Nicki Minaj.)
10 – Like A Virgin (1984)
Her second album elevated her to icon status, thanks in no small part to the title track and all-time opener/thesis statement “Material Girl”. However, beyond peppy, lesser singles “Angel” and “Dress You Up” and the driving “Over and Over”, it’s her patchiest long player until American Life.
9 – Music (2000)
I remember how gleefully the title hit (her last number one pop single) subverted expectations following Ray of Light and also how much of an incessant earworm it became over time. The auto-tune experiments (on the heels of Cher’s “Believe”) don’t convince me of her need for them, but the vulnerable “What It Feels Like For A Girl” is one of her great, somewhat lost tunes, its impact diminished at the time by a lamebrained dance remix and adjoining Guy Ritchie music video.
8 – Bedtime Stories (1994)
The closest she ever came to Adult Contemporary (my mom even bought a copy.) To her credit, it’s hardly a snooze, particularly with such left turns as the sumptuous title track (as forward-looking as Massive Attack, Portishead and other trip-hop from that year) and the ballsy, not-a-mea culpa “Human Nature”. Benefits from her not having gone further in this direction, though.
7 – True Blue (1986)
The last two songs are among her most forgettable but the five (!) singles proceeding them are all good-to-great with torch ballad “Live To Tell” and the one-act play “Papa Don’t Preach” anticipating where she’d head next. Also, the exuberant “Where’s The Party” would have been a worthy sixth single.
6 – Erotica (1992)
Generally misunderstood at its release, this deep dive into club culture might’ve been the last time she was fully ahead of the zeitgeist. “Deeper and Deeper” is an arresting culmination of her career up until that point and few other artists surveyed such vulnerability within this icy of an aesthetic. Perhaps a little too long but worth absorbing over time.
5 – Confessions II (2026)
An unexpected and thus thrilling return-to-form. After a decade-plus of attempted innovation at the expense of obscuring her strengths, she remembers why she’s an icon. Ostensibly a sequel to #4 below, this reprises its continuous mix format with invention and agility but also brings the hooks, the warmth, the personality, the chutzpah—all the reasons why we loved her in the first place. Best listened to as an album, although “One Step Away”, “School” and especially “Danceteria” are of a piece with her best work.
4 – Confessions On A Dancefloor (2005)
I dismissed this at the time, not too into club music for personal reasons and also finding the ABBA sample a little obvious. I’ve come around since then, admiring the craft and care that went into this, even feeling quite moved by its melodies and beats, especially on “Sorry”, “Hung Up” (the ABBA sample rules, actually) and the superlative “Jump”. Depeche Mode could even convincingly cover closer “Like It or Not”. Still, don’t be surprised if the “sequel” surpasses it someday.
3 – Madonna (1983)
I once wrote that the best Madonna was early Madonna which may be dismissive of everything she accomplished after but I kind of stand by it. She’d work with better collaborators and expand the very notion of what dance-pop could contain but her debut remains a unicorn, so yearning and pure a distillation of her persona that one immediately gets her whether she’s relentlessly coursing with lust (“Burning Up”, Physical Fascination”) or experiencing heartbreak in real time (the exquisite, unmatched “Borderline”).
2 – Like A Prayer (1989)
Either of my top two could be at number one, really. Her fourth album was an undeniable advance, the moment when she most successfully translated her iconicity and ambition into her music thus reinventing our perception of her. The soulful, bridge-first title track might be her greatest hit while the finale “Act of Contrition” is surely her weirdest/funniest goof. In between, she assesses her divorce, duets with no less titanic a figure than Prince, examines her parental relationships, dips into psychedelia and acknowledges AIDS with deep feeling rather than proselytization.
1 – Ray of Light (1998)
If Like A Prayer is a platonic ideal of a Madonna album, then Ray of Light is its spiritual sequel. Although she’s never sounded better due to that vocal training for Evita, and William Orbit’s (RIP) techno production fits her like a glove, what pushes it to the top for me is an unprecedented self-awareness. Opening lyric, “I traded fame for love without a second thought” sets the tone for a mask-removing work of art where fame, love, aging and motherhood are reflected upon in a simple but searching language made flesh by the propulsive sonic landscapes surrounding them. As a performer, she’s rarely gone with the flow so convincingly, her ease and urgency delicately intertwined throughout. When she throws caution to the wind and lets loose at the title track’s euphoric climax (her second greatest hit), it’s a moment of transcendence—something her many imitators were never capable of.
Bonus:Seven Essential Non-Album Madonna Singles (without notes; just listen to them!):
Although introduced in 1948, the 33rpm LP (or Long Playing record) didn’t fully catch on until about a decade later. Even then, it was mostly relegated to jazz artists, classical music, cast recordings and motion picture soundtracks. Rock and Roll was chiefly a singles (or 45rpm) medium until The Beatles helped turn the LP into an art form in the mid-60’s.
All of this is to say that of my forty favorite albums pre-1970, over thirty are from the second half of the 1960s, with over 20 of them from 1968-69 alone. The nine pre-1965 entries are all jazz save for the West Side Story movie soundtrack (which I found in a dollar bin as an undergraduate and played incessantly in my dorm.) I suspect there may be a rock (non-Beatles) album from that period worth hearing and appreciating as an album, but I have yet to hear one.
My top seven below all appeared on my 100 Albums project; I didn’t include Kind of Blue back then because I feared I wouldn’t write about jazz with the same finesse as I could about rock and pop. Gris-Gris, which I had first heard a year before starting the project would definitely make the list now–its out-of-time, psychedelic swamp rock still has no parallel, seemingly emanating from the deep woods rather than the French Quarter. The Who Sell Out was a rediscovery when I found a vinyl reissue of it for cheap in Brattleboro, Vermont; Bullet is nearly the best of instrumental composer Lalo Schifrin, although all of his late 60s soundtracks (including the TV series Mission: Impossible) are recommended.
The Beatles make up 10% of this list because, well, they’re The Beatles (and I could’ve easily added The Beatles (The White Album) and A Hard Day’s Night if I had made a top fifty.) Scanning over the titles below, I see a few that regularly pop up on best-of-decade scrolls: Getz/Gilberto’s landmark bossa nova, A Love Supreme’s melodic hard bop pushed as far as it could go before mutating into cacophony; Tommy pioneering the concept of a “rock opera”; Axis: Bold as Love taking advantage of sound technology and psychedelics to create an all-encompassing listening experience.
I’ve also included some cult favorites, beloved by critics and music obsessives (Forever Changes, Eli and the Thirteen Confession,Odyssey and Oracle) if not the public at large. My own idiosyncratic faves of this period include Tom Lehrer’s sharpest distillation of his smarty-pants novelty shtick; Frank Zappa’s first and best (and maybe only essential?) album; Bobbie Gentry’s genre-bending suite about where she came from; Gerry Mulligan’s cool jazz ideal, a record to play when you’ve listened to Getz/Gilberto one too many times.
Going forward, I’ll post similar (and likely longer) lists for each subsequent decade; I’ll also update the ones I formulated long ago for the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Perhaps I’ll get to a point where I create an all-time ranked list, something I once said I’d never do, but I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to plans (or blogging.)
Snarky American alt-rock and Britpop were my mainstays in the 1990s, so it scans that my top two albums of 1997 were from Ben Folds Five and Blur. As with 1996’sI’m With Stupid, Whatever & Ever Amen hit instantly upon its release early in the year, the soundtrack to a life in transition as I graduated from Marquette University in my hometown and moved across country to Boston to pursue a master’s in film studies at BU. Weeks before this sojourn, I saw Morphine at the H.O.R.D.E. Festival’s stop at Alpine Valley and bought their latest CD Like Swimming the next week. Incidentally, Ben Folds Five also played that festival, focusing heavily on some odd new songs that would surface on their divisive next record in 1999.
As an Anglophile deep into the Beatles, XTC and (to a lesser extent) the Kinks, Blur were ostensibly crafted in a lab specifically for me. Compared to Parklife three years before, their self-titled fifth album was a departure, throwing aside past homegrown influences for American indie bands like Pavement and Guided By Voices. Riding high on a surprise US hit (“Song 2”), I saw them with a friend live at The Rave in Milwaukee early that summer which might’ve elevated my initial, somewhat confused impression of Blur.
Weeks after arriving in Boston that September, my first purchases from Newbury Comics were the just-released Happy End of The World and Sweetness and Light. I played Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” on repeat long before it became a hit or forever associated with sad animal shelter ads. Jill Sobule’s Happy Town was a continual background presence, revealing her as a strong voice in it for the long haul even if it wasn’t as immediate as her 1995 self-titled breakthrough, home to the immortal “I Kissed A Girl”.
As with 1996, another 1997 album eventually surpassed my original number one although I didn’t hear it until years later. It’s a testament to the solidity of Whatever & Ever Amen (and I’m With Stupid) that both remain in second place of their respective years to this day but picking up a used copy of Apartment Life weeks after 9/11 was a revelation; it’s also one of the few records I’ve ever purchased the demos of (on vinyl, no less), a 2023 Record Store Day release.
Although one of their better records, Blur wasn’t as enduring. Lead track “Beetlebum” remains their greatest Beatles rip, but I don’t ever have to hear “Song 2” again (save for Emm Gryner’s version) and the rest is uneven compared to Parklife. I’d also now rather play many Jill Sobule and Depeche Mode LPs other than Happy Town or Ultra. Surfacing proved the beginning of the end for McLachlan, a real drop after the genuine mystery of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and its predecessors.
Throughout 1998, as Ani DiFranco’s Dilate and Little Plastic Castle became the soundtrack to my new life, double LP Living in Clip completed the triumvirate and served as a neat primer of highlights from her first five records, rendered in definitive live power-trio versions. Early that year, I also picked up a used copy of Jen Trynin’s second (and final) record, now a lost gem from the start of an era far less welcoming to female singer-songwriters from the electro-folk genius Beth Orton to the riot-grrl adjacent Sleater-Kinney who weren’t popping on commercial alt-rock radio anytime soon.
To list favorite films and albums at a year’s midpoint is to assess what I’ve consumed and what’s sticking; it’s also a speculative game of sorts—which titles will remain near the top of my eventual year-end lists?
Since prestige films both big and small tend to surface during the year’s last quarter (i.e. Awards Season), this is somewhat a lopsided exercise. Occasionally, I’ve seen my top film early in the year (Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World, Quo Vadis, Aida?); four films I listed at last year’s midpoint made it into my year-end top ten. Half of the 2026 releases below were seen at IFF Boston in April plus two more at that organization’s Fall Focus last October (The Love That Remains, Sound of Falling). Silent Friend also played the latter but even a recent viewing in one of the Coolidge’s smallest theaters didn’t diminish its impact for me. That leaves surprise hit (by indie standards, anyway) Pillion and Nadav Lapid’s hilarious and incendiary Yes, which I just watched and may write about at another date.
As release schedules go, albums are more luck-of-the-draw situations. At last year’s midpoint, I had already heard what would end up my year-end number one (Doves’ Constellations For The Lonely) and very much expected it to end up in that place (or close to it). Still, most of my other midyear selections ended up honorable mentions outside the top ten, so you never know. Six months in, 2026 seems pretty average for new albums; most of what’s included below are the latest efforts from artists I already love—many of them good (Gonzalez, Ware, Parks, Robyn) rather than great (the Orton just came out but I’m already feeling strongly about it.) I need to spend more time with Lu’s first release in seven years and Harding’s latest, but the key is I want to keep listening to them. The closest to a standout here is the second album from Brit RAYE (and its irresistible single “Where Is My Husband!”), which positively gives off Janelle Monae-circa-The ArchAndroid-theater-kid–vibes minus the sci-fi pretensions. With new releases to come from beabadoobee, Nicole Atkins, The Tubs, Carly Rae Jepsen and more, as usual, we’ll see where things measure up in another six months.
Favorite Films of 2026 so far (alphabetical by title):
Blue Heron
Cookie Queens
I Love Boosters
The Invite
The Love That Remains
Pillion
Remake
Silent Friend
Sound of Falling
Yes
Favorite Albums of 2026 so far (alphabetical by artist):
For years I’ve listened to a single artist’s or band’s discography (often in its entirety) an album a week on my morning commute. I’ve gone my way through the back catalogues of everyone from Led Zeppelin and solo Paul Simon to Alison Moyet and Neil Young (at least through the 1970s.) For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that I should write about these audio journeys until now. Since I just finished listening to the first decade of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career, on his 84thbirthday, here’s how I would rate his studio albums from the 1970-79. At some point, I’ll also do this with his output from McCartney II to the just-released The Boys of Dungeon Lane.
I considered going best-to-worst, but it’s better to get the lesser stuff (actually, much less of it than boomer critics at the time suggested) out of the way.
9 – Red Rose Speedway (Paul McCartney & Wings, 1973)
When the excessively syrupy and lame ballad “My Love” is your best choice for a single, you know you’re in trouble (“whoa, whoa-whoa, whoa”, indeed.) At 18, I first delved into Paul’s solo career with his 1987 hits comp All The Best! and the best thing about it was that it placed this track at the very end of it, thus making it easier to skip. The rest of RRS is not bad, necessarily, just relentlessly unmemorable (although the instrumental track is pleasant.) He’s supposed to be a melodic genius, but precious little here sticks.
8 – Wild Life (Wings, 1972)
Initially, Paul’s “Let’s start a new band with my wife and some dudes” proved more novel in theory than in practice. This is the only McCartney studio pop album devoid of any top 40 hits until the 1990s. While his originals don’t live up to the adorably ramshackle cover of “Love is Strange”, they’re pleasant tunes that could’ve benefited from some trimming (“Dear Friend”) and others that barely justify their brief durations.
7 – Back To The Egg (Wings, 1979)
Similarly, a lack of both focus and a killer hit single tarnishes the final Wings album. Side two meanders on and on, dribbling to a close with his umpteenth “When I’m 64” knockoff (“Baby’s Request”). Fortunately, side one’s compactness and energy both suggest he’s at least aware of punk/new wave even if the results veer (encouragingly!) closer to Fleetwood Mac (“Old Siam, Sir”) and Steely Dan (“Arrow Through Me”).
6 – McCartney (Paul McCartney, 1970)
His “let’s-get-this-one-out-before Let It Be” home-recorded solo debut famously has three good-to-great songs (“Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Every Night” and Beatles leftover “Junk”) and numerous little sketches not meant to be anything more than that. The whole DIY approach has aged well compared to a lot of rock and roll bloat from that period but if asked, I couldn’t hum any of the other tracks except for “Man We Was Lonely”.
5 – London Town (Wings, 1978)
The most diverse Wings album? Not much here resembles the competent (if tepid) middle-of-the-road hit, “With A Little Luck”. While making room for such odd bedfellows as “Strange Groupies” (which could’ve been sung by hobbits) or the rockabilly “Name and Address”, it somehow coheres (unlike Back To The Egg), even if it should’ve been a tight ten tracks instead of fourteen. Finale “Morse Moose and the Grey Goose” is one of his most peculiar mini-epics and also his most thrilling.
Always remember, Paul is a Weirdo
4 – Wings At The Speed Of Sound (Wings, 1976)
This has a bad reputation for including written (and sung) contributions from all five Wings members. While Linda’s “Cook of the House” is admittedly fluff, it’s charming fluff and some of the others (Denny Laine’s “The Note You Never Wrote”) could’ve come from Macca himself. Happily, Paul’s own tunes are top-notch: the deathless, hypnotic “Silly Love Songs”, the so-straight-faced-it’s-probably-subversive “Let ‘Em In” and the almost majestic “Beware My Love”.
3 – Venus and Mars (Wings, 1975)
Making the most convincing case for Paul-as-rocker (“Rock Show”, “Letting Go”, the exquisite “Call Me Back Again”) of the entire Wings era, it’s nearly as strong as its predecessor (see below), with the lovely “Love in Song” this period’s least silliest love song. To be a fan is to appreciate both the effortless hook of “Listen to The Man Said” and the utter daftness of “Magneto and Titanium Man” and Paul can ably pull both off when he’s this focused.
2 – Band On The Run (Paul McCartney and Wings, 1973)
His most widely loved solo album, I once thought it was overrated, not much to admire beyond the singles and propulsive closer “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five”. “Let Me Roll It” showing up as an effective needle drop in Licorice Pizza changed my mind somewhat, then came the proto “Hey Ho’s!” of “Mrs. Vanderbilt”; now, I like all of it except for the meandering “Mamunia”. Rather than fussing over his craft, Paul seems to be trusting his instincts here and it makes a big difference.
1 – Ram (Paul and Linda McCartney, 1971)
A less controversial take than it might’ve been decades ago, but I think Ram is the best Beatles solo album, period (and it’s co-credited to one of their wives, no less!) Not to disparage the previous entry or even John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band or All Things Must Pass, first hearing Ram in the mid-90s was akin to finding a lost Beatles album, not so much in sound as in sensibility. Think of it as an all-Paul version of The White Album, his stoner humor translating into a mostly non-linked suite of often eccentric (“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”) and occasionally insane (“Monkberry Moon Delight”!) but always impeccably crafted, infectious miniatures. I can sense its division (chances are it will either irritate or engage with little middle ground) but when a new generation of listeners discovered and fell for it in the early 21st century, I felt vindicated.
Additionally, McCartney released a slew of non-album singles through the decade. Here’s how I’d rate them best to worst (with notable B-sides also listed):
I’ve always looking back on my own best-x-of-the-year/decade/etc. lists and thinking about what changes I’d make if I were to compile the same list today. I began making album-of-the-year lists at the end of 1996 and posted them annually online as of my first blog in 2002. Thirty years on, I’m looking back at what I liked then vs. now.
One caveat: until streaming and the adoption of Friday as a global release day in 2015, the occasional record release would often fall by country in different dates and in some cases, years. A few beloved albums on my lists were not available in the U.S. until the calendar year after their original UK/European release. For the most part, I’m sticking with those US release years for point of comparison, only using original release dates on the rare occasion when I bought the import instead of waiting for a release here.
My pre-blog best-of lists were always recorded in handwritten journals I kept as of 1995. No list for that first year, so we begin with ’96.
I’m With Stupid defined my 1996. A UK release the previous summer, it was delayed here until January. Not long after finally getting my hands on it, I wrote a review of it for my Critical Writing class at Marquette; the professor liked it enough to make copies and share it with the entire class (are teachers still allowed to do this w/out the author’s permission?) We didn’t have iTunes or Spotify back then and thus no easy means of keeping track of spins but I’m almost positive I listened to it more than anything else at the time.
Kooky Japanese-America duo Cibo Matto I discovered via their video of “Know Your Chicken” on MTV’s 120 Minutes. A week later, I found a freshly used promo CD of it at my regular used-record store, Second Hand Tunes. Along with Everything But The Girl’s full-on dive into club music shortly after the success of the remixed “Missing”, it was my soundtrack going into summer between Junior and Senior years; the Trainspotting soundtrack, R.E.M.’s final classic lineup release and late-in-the-year additions from Pet Shop Boys and Luscious Jackson would take over for the fall and winter.
Only something I hadn’t heard at the time could possibly knock Mann off the top spot; I’ve written at length about Belle and Sebastian’s near-perfect record here. Morcheeba and Ani DiFranco would become favorites in 1997 (and the former still gets plenty of spins from me in 2026.) I also bought Boys for Pele when it came out (two weeks before I’m With Stupid) but had difficulty absorbing all 70+ minutes of it, returning to some tracks often (“Hey Jupiter”, “Putting The Damage On”) while ignoring others altogether (“In The Springtime of His Voodoo”?) Only after a decade or two did I come to love it nearly as much as Little Earthquakes. A dense, demanding labyrinth, Pele is worth living with for the long haul as was 2002’s similarly sprawling Scarlet’s Walk (and, though too soon to tell, potentially this year’s In Times of Dragons.)
The only post-2000 discovery here is Rigby’s now-classic debut, as accomplished an introduction as Little Earthquakes (or perhaps Fiona Apple’s Tidal, which I also likely first heard in ’97.) I hemmed and hawed over including Diary of a Mod Housewife and/or Viva! La Woman in my 100 Albums project but already had six entries for 1996 and wanted to spread the wealth around to adjacent years. I still listen to Nine Objects of Desire and Bilingual regularly; Odelay, not so much. Walked Wounded is a good EBTG album but perhaps not one of the greatest in a fairly stacked discography.
Speaking of which, is 1996 one of the *best* years for music? I haven’t even mentioned Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Pulp’s Different Class, Gillian Welch’s Revival, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…, George Michael’s Older or Fishmans’ Long Season. We’ll see if even 1997 measures up to it.
Reposting this piece originally written in 2014 in honor of this special’s/soundtrack’s 60th anniversary.
I cannot emphasize enough the impact Peanuts has had on my life. Charles Schulz’s comic strip is as important to me as any of the albums or films I’ve ever written about here. His sense of humor and highly singular yet relatable way of observing the world has resonated with me for as long as I can remember. In childhood, instead of playing with Star Wars figurines or watching Transformers after school, I dutifully collected Peanuts reprint books and watched every half-hour animated television special whenever it aired. Those shows, always preceded by that CBS Special Presentation logo with the thrilling percussive roll and orchestral fanfare, must have been my introduction to Schulz’s work. From an early age, I can recall sitting on the floor with my mom right in front of our TV set, watching the charmingly low-budget animation, hearing the identifiable soundtrack of children’s voices (a rarity at a time when adults providing cartoon character voices was the norm), the muted trumpet standing in for all parents/teachers, and of course, Vince Guaraldi’s jazz score.
In recent years, “Charlie Brown Music” has become one of my favorite phrases to utilize in music criticism because it is so obviously made-up and hyper-specific: if you’ve seen one of the fifteen or so Peanuts specials that Guaraldi scored or have even heard “Linus and Lucy” in isolation, you know exactly what that three-word term implies—mid-century instrumental piano jazz exuding equal amounts childlike whimsy and grown-up melancholy, performed with gentleness but also agility. Although Guaraldi had been recording for nearly a decade and had an actual crossover top 40 hit with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” three years before, his soundtrack for the first Peanuts special, 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas exposed him to a considerably larger audience. From then on, until his death from a heart attack at age 47 in 1976, he was known less for his status as one of his era’s most idiosyncratic and talented West coast jazz pianists and more as the man who created “Charlie Brown Music”—a role he obviously relished, as he spent his final decade working primarily with Peanuts.
A Charlie Brown Christmas received instant critical and public acclaim on its first airing and quickly became a perennial, rerunning on prime-time network TV at least once every year since. Nearly a half-century on, the soundtrack album is just as iconic, although this wasn’t always the case. Released a week before the special first aired, it initially missed the Billboard Album chart (not uncommon for a jazz record.) Over the next twenty-five years, it’s hard to say how well it sold as it was not certified Platinum or Gold during that time. However, after a CD reissue in 1988, it began popping up in more store displays every December. Since 1991, when Billboard started using Soundscan (which relies on computer data to track record sales), the album has sold over five million copies—the tenth best-selling Christmas/holiday album in the U.S. during that time period. In 1992, I bought the album on CD and it immediately became a seasonal listening staple in both my parents’ home and practically everywhere I’ve lived since.
As a soundtrack album, A Charlie Brown Christmas is somewhat peculiar. Whereas the special begins with that beautiful, evocative scene of the kids ice skating to the vocal take of “Christmas Time Is Here”, the album kicks off with “O Tannenbaum”, which doesn’t appear until the special’s second half. Not only does the entire album fail to follow the special’s chronology (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” which concludes the special, seems randomly dropped in as track eight), it includes a few selections not heard in the special at all (“My Little Drum”, “The Christmas Song”) and misses some of the stuff actually in it—most notably the lounge-y, upbeat incidental music playing when Charlie Brown frets over Snoopy’s participation in a “lights and display contest” for the latter’s doghouse. Of course, only obsessives and completists worry about such things, but after having heard this album about one hundred times in the last 30-odd years, I can’t help but notice its imperfections.
Fortunately, very little else about A Charlie Brown Christmas is less than perfect. I’d like to think one major reason why it has endured for so long and arguably grown in popularity is that it doesn’t sound like much holiday music that preceded it. Guaraldi was far from the first artist to make a Christmas jazz record—everybody from Louis Prima (the swinging “Shake Hands With Santa Claus”) to Duke Ellington (“Sugar Rum Cherry”, a sly takeoff of a song from The Nutcracker) beat him to it—but his melodic, accessible version of cool jazz proved ideal for capturing a very specific hue of the holiday season. These mostly instrumental songs, with their simple piano-bass-drums arrangements emanate as much comfort and joy as they do wistfulness and poignancy. Depending on your own present state of mind, they have the tendency to shift heavily towards either end of this emotional spectrum. However, Guaraldi has no use for grandiose melodrama: nearly every song here bespeaks understatement and intimacy and collectively, the album provides a balm of sorts to what is for many the most stressful time of year.
A Charlie Brown Christmas has its share of covers of holiday standards, roughly split between swing-trio versions of “O Tannenbaum” and “What Child Is This” and more liberal readings like “My Little Drum”, which modifies the melody of “The Little Drummer Boy”, sets it to a shuffling bossa-nova, and adds in some kiddie onomatopoeic vocals. Guaraldi’s original songs, however, have become the album’s real standards over time. Presented in both instrumental and vocal versions, “Christmas Time Is Here” is nearly as well-known as any carol you can name and possibly the epitome of the album’s equation of the season with a kind of sweet sadness. “Skating” is a lovely little tune where Guaraldi’s descending piano trills mimic gently falling snowflakes, only to follow them with ascending chords before they return and the natural cycle repeats itself. “Christmas Is Coming” has an irresistible, up-tempo momentum to it, right from Guaraldi’s opening rhythmic piano licks to its swing interlude mid-way through.
And then, there’s “Linus and Lucy”, as recognizable from its era as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” or “Strangers in the Night” and the closest thing Peanuts ever had to a theme song. It’s not a Christmas tune, and it wasn’t even written for this special but for a documentary about Schulz made two years before that never aired. It appears in the special during the rehearsal scenes where most of the cast would rather get down to Guaraldi’s catchy number than prepare for the Charlie Brown-directed Christmas pageant. The song’s instrumental primary melody is an instant earworm while the rumble of the bass melody adds complexity without distracting from the main hook. It alternately rocks, swings and sighs (those elongated chords Guaraldi occasionally throws in) and has no precedent as strictly jazz or pop—it’s a true hybrid, much like the rest of Guaraldi’s “Charlie Brown Music”.
Those interested in exploring more of his work should head directly to The Definitive Vince Guaraldi, a comprehensive two-disc career overview, and Vince Guaraldi and the Lost Cues, two volumes of music mostly from the early-mid ‘70s specials, revelatory for being unexpectedly funky, and proof that Guaraldi kept pushing himself creatively to the end. Since originally posting this essay, we’ve seen the release of multiple soundtracks from later Guaraldi-scored specials; most essential are It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) and It’s The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974). Still, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains Guaraldi’s most culturally significant achievement: as each holiday season passes, it feels more timeless, ensuring that it will be heard for many Decembers to come.
Since art can be a necessary distraction, I did not take music for granted this year. Although I spent much of its second half listening to 100 previously unheard albums saved to my streaming library, I also kept up with new releases. To encapsulate 2025, I’ve included selections from all of my top ten albums and fifteen honorable mentions plus twenty more that run the gamut from one-offs (Romy’s declaration of free love, veteran Eurodisco producer Cerrone’s energetic collab with Christine and the Queens) to album cuts (Japanese Breakfast conjuring convincing 90s shoegaze vibes, Alison Goldfrapp leading off her second solo album with her fizziest song in at least 15 years) and isolated miracles like Natalie Bergman’s Nancy Sinatra-meets-Shelby Lynne songcraft or Jamie xx sampling/transforming my favorite old discovery of this year, Terry Callier’s beguiling 1972 gem “Dancing Girl” (itself also featured heavily in the film Sentimental Value.)
The average artist age here likely mirrors my own Gen-X soul, which is not to say I was resistant to the Millennial charms of Chappell Roan’s horny take on Shania Twain, Brooke Combe’s dance apocalyptic or Yves Tumor and NINA (of Bar Italia) aesthetically smashing together to create a joyful noise. Still, when someone as established or venerated (or just plain old) as Tunde Adebimpe (of TV On The Radio), Andy Bell (of Erasure) or even ex-Go-Between Robert Forster puts out a first-rate track, I take notice. You don’t have to be an aging music geek to love Wet Leg’s snark-punk and My Morning Jacket’s gleaming Supertramp pastiche (granted, not everyone will); reheated nachos or not, few could deny the monumental, glorious nonsense of “Abracadabra” as an entirely necessary distraction amidst a world coming apart.
You’ve likely heard the Lady Gaga song without even seeking it out, so instead, I’ll highlight a choice cut from the lead singer of Wilco’s 30-track triple album. I almost can’t not like a song for this title alone but I also love how succinctly it sums up the primal allure of rock (or punk or rap or “insert genre here”) without being pretentious about it. In these messy times, we don’t need reverence or pensiveness but raw, loud, unfiltered emotion and release—“I wanna feel everything,” indeed.
2025: The Dead Don’t Die
Brooke Combe, “Dancing At The Edge Of The World”
Wolf Alice, “Wild Horses”
Cut Copy, “Belong To You”
Ivy, “Fragile People”
Stereolab, “Melodie Is A Wound (Edit)”
FKA Twigs, “Girl Feels Good”
Lady Gaga, “Abracadabra”
Romy, “Love Who You Love”
Mekons, “Mudcrawlers”
Perfume Genius, “It’s A Mirror”
Patrick Wolf, “Jupiter”
Jeff Tweedy, “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”
Bartees Strange, “Sober”
Hatchie, “Sage”
The Weather Station, “Mirror”
Jamie xx, “Dream Night”
Blood Orange, “Mind Loaded”
Destroyer, “Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World”
Jens Lekman, “With You I Can Hear My Own Voice”
Japanese Breakfast, “Honey Water”
Saint Etienne, “Glad”
Natalie Bergman, “Gunslinger”
Pulp, “Got To Have Love”
Andy Bell, “Dance For Mercy”
Cate Le Bon, “Mother of Riches”
The Tubs, “Narcissist”
Matt Berninger, “Inland Ocean”
Cerrone & Christine and the Queens, “Catching Feelings”
An exceptional year for new music, even if much of what follows are late-career triumphs by long-adored artists. Fortunately, there are two entries from singer-songwriters mostly new to me and another by a young Irish musician who seems poised to take over the world.
10. Suzanne Vega, Flying With Angels
I’d be shocked if Vega in her mid-sixties scored another surprise hit like “Luka” or “Tom’s Diner” but I also never would’ve guessed that she’d put out her best album in nearly twenty years. It helps that she’s not content to rest on her laurels, essaying new-to-her sounds like jaunty post-punk/new wave (“Rats”) or blue-eyed soul verging on yacht rock (“Love Thief”). Her signature sound is as spirited as ever whether it’s pop (the single “Speakers’ Corner”), folk (interpolating classic Dylan on “Chambermaid”) or something in between (the electric, spare title track.)
9. Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream
Just I began losing faith in Florence Welch, she came roaring back with her most interesting album in a decade. It may not have a single track as immediate as her best (from “My Love” to the immortal “Dog Days (Are Over)”) but she appears to be playing the long game, retaining an ever palpable drive but locating and cultivating a sharpened focus that has often eluded her. She acknowledges her elder status but makes artful, witty, candid sense of it: “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music because you can,” she quips in “One of the Greats”, and she’s only half-joking.
8. Hatchie, Liquorice
On her third album, this Brisbane-bred musician dives even further into lush, heavily-reverbed and multitracked guitar-centric dream pop influenced by the Cocteau Twins and an array of 90s shoegaze bands (especially The Darling Buds, who split the difference between those two genres most successfully.) Arguably, she already perfected this balance on her effervescent (and to-date, still best) song, 2022’s “Quicksand”. However, her songwriting and arrangements still feel fresh rather than frozen in amber, their sparkling hooks cascading on by in one breathless, euphoric rush, especially on “Sage”, “Lose It Again” and “Only One Laughing”.
7. Cut Copy, Moments
Like fellow Australian Hatchie, this quartet primarily draws from a distant past—in this case, early 80s synth-pop (vocalist Dan Whitford has always resembled The Human League’s Philip Oakey) but they’ve gradually outgrown coming off a tribute act with pop’s aesthetics across the past few decades slowly melding into a timeless, genre-bending whole. Their latest has some of their catchiest and tightest songs in years (“Belong To You” even manages to fold in some pedal steel!) but it also makes room for experiments like the seven-minute title track which thrillingly transforms midway into a hypnotic, Krautrock (or maybe Kraftwerk?)-derived groove.
6. Blood Orange, Essex Honey
Aware of but not really familiar with Dev Hynes’ long-running musical project, his first release in seven years got my attention with its ultra-specific tone (elegiac 80s British sophisti-pop such as Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti) and unusual song structures (tracks are often broken up by fragments of seemingly unrelated tunes and melodies.) The likes of Lorde and Caroline Polachek make guest appearances but they’re unflashy and as fully integrated into the sonic textures as samples from The Durutti Column and Ben Watt. It unfolds like a melancholic dream, evoking scattered childhood memories as it processes longing, loss and grief.
5. Jens Lekman, Songs For Other People’s Weddings
Released in tandem with a David Levithan novel of the same title (featuring Lekman’s lyrics), both the book and this album spin a narrative of “J”, a wedding singer-for-hire based on this Swede’s own side hustle (itself running parallel to being one of the more distinct singer-songwriters of his generation.) Clocking in at eighty minutes, this first solo release in eight years is easily his most ambitious to date, alternating trademark orchestral pop with electronic breakbeats and scene-setting interludes, pulling off a ten-minute epic (“Wedding in Leipzig”) as nimbly as he does impeccably conceived short stories in half that time (“A Tuxedo Sewn For Two”).
4. Anna Von Hausswolff, ICONOCLASTS
Another Swedish musician, Von Hausswolff’s gothic, cathartic wall of sound couldn’t be further from Lekman’s wistful reveries, even though her first album in five years is nearly as long (and twice as epic) as his latest. Only fleetingly aware of her past output, I immediately took to these loud, dramatic soundscapes (if only she had had the opportunity to work with the late Jim Steinman!) Kindred spirits Ethel Cain and an ever-warbly Iggy Pop show up but the album’s guest MVP is saxophonist Otis Sandsjö whose melodic riffs and raucous squawks unlock seemingly limitless possibilities in Von Hausswolff’s approach, especially on the slippery, startling, propulsive “Struggle With The Beast”.
3. CMAT, Euro-Country
Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s third album is this year’s great leap forward. I could sense it from the delightfulvideossheputout for its pre-release singles and as a whole, it’s only collectively grown on me over the past few months. One could deem her an Irish Chappell Roan but she’s closer to a Gen-Z Kirsty MacColl—clever, cheeky, impassioned, someone you can’t help but root for. She excels at tunes not only packed with memorable choruses but verses and bridges, too, plus a deeply felt perspective all her own, suffused with carefully considered snark (“The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station”) cunning wordplay (“Janis Joplining”) and eloquent heartbreak (“Lord, Let That Tesla Crash” and the sweeping title track.)
2. Saint Etienne, International
When this venerable British trio announced their 13th album would be their last, it was unexpected and bittersweet (they’re not breaking up per se but rather “drawing a line in the sand” and recording no more.) Unlike nearly all of their previous long players, International doesn’t really push their sound anywhere new, exactly, serving more as an “Oops! All Bangers” victory lap. Still, even without that added sense of finality, these twelve solid songs are both triumphant and poignant from opener/lead single “Glad” (as fresh-faced and euphoric as anything on Too Young To Die: Singles 1990-1995) to the cumulative resolve of closer “The Last Time”. A lovely bow on top of a singular discography.
1. Doves, Constellations For The Lonely
It’s awfully rare, but occasionally, upon first listen, you just know you’ve heard what could potentially become one of your all-time favorite albums. After a long absence, this active-in-the-aughts band returned with 2020’s The Universal Want; five years later, they’ve followed it with an astonishing full-length that almost eerily anticipates the chaos and anxiety of how 2025 would play out (or likely was in the air to begin with.) One of the more cinematic, post-Britpop guitar bands to emerge after Radiohead’s OK Computer, they’ve never lacked for ambition, their power-trio dynamics enhanced by their expansive arrangements. Beginning with the supposedly Mad Max-inspired single “Renegade”, each song matches a solid rhythmic foundation with a sense of awe and reaching for transcendence. Even though vocals are now shared between all three members, lead singer Jimi Goodwin still defines them as does the searching and humaneness in their lyrics (“Be careful of those stupid schemes… never let them fill your mind,” Goodwin tenderly warns.) The momentum flows steadily throughout, expertly building in final track “Southern Bell” as it shifts from a mournful lament to a declaration of purpose in its exhilarating, near-apocalyptic second half.
Haunted Jukebox 