Entertainment Weekly's 50 Best Albums of 2016

Entertainment Weekly's 50 Best Albums of 2016

Original Source →

50.

Robyn - RMX / RBN
June 25, 2016

49.

March 11, 2016
Critic Score
75
10 reviews

48.

Ricky Eat Acid - Talk To You Soon
October 28, 2016
Critic Score
71
4 reviews

42.

Loretta Lynn - Full Circle
March 4, 2016
Critic Score
80
18 reviews

41.

Tkay Maidza - Tkay
October 28, 2016
Critic Score
63
3 reviews

38.

November 4, 2016
Critic Score
80
14 reviews

Black America Again is a timely statement exploring the ills of police brutality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized racism, delivered with laser-sharp focus by one of hip-hop’s foremost poets.

37.

May 6, 2016
Critic Score
76
31 reviews

36.

August 26, 2016
Critic Score
77
11 reviews

35.

March 4, 2016
Critic Score
76
10 reviews

Ouroboros is a perfect throwback to the lost art of the album-length format.

34.

January 8, 2016
Critic Score
76
29 reviews

33.

September 2, 2016
Critic Score
86
39 reviews

32.

September 9, 2016
Critic Score
75
31 reviews

31.

October 28, 2016
Critic Score
71
19 reviews
While Lo’s lyrics are stark and intensely personal, the music sounds engineered for the masses.

30.

March 4, 2016
Critic Score
74
21 reviews

The British songwriter marries dark, club-kid influences from her nights spent at Liverpool venues with crunching heartache on 12 lush songs that morph and twist her voice into various iterations.

27.

May 20, 2016
Critic Score
72
14 reviews

While pop stars often atone for transgressions through song—just ask Justin Bieber—Grande wants to test the limits, not apologize. And that’s the best, baddest thing about Dangerous Woman.

26.

St. Lucia - Matter
January 29, 2016
Critic Score
64
8 reviews

It’s a durable, malleable passport to hedonism—loud when you want it to be, just funky enough, capable of holding up to headphone scrutiny.

24.

February 26, 2016
Critic Score
69
35 reviews

Healy may get lost in his head, but I Like It… is a delightful, overshare-y trip that celebrates a new era of boundaryless pop. As for that Tumblr rant of a title, they’re forgiven.

23.

June 3, 2016
Critic Score
82
28 reviews

Stranger to Stranger is ... Simon’s most interconnected work, a self-contained world unto itself full of backing tracks that wind up in multiple songs and recurring characters (“the Street Angel”) who pop up in unexpected places.

22.

May 6, 2016
Critic Score
79
34 reviews
If this is what modern soul music sounds like in 2016, consider James Blake the genre’s sharpest visionary.

20.

November 11, 2016
Critic Score
87
32 reviews

We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service not only satisfies its lofty expectations, it often exceeds them.

19.

February 26, 2016
Critic Score
80
27 reviews

It’s a fully-realized vision of the dreamy shoegaze-pop they’d sought to prefect for years. How heartbreaking to know such a once-in-a-lifetime creative partnership has been silenced.

17.

October 21, 2016
Critic Score
89
32 reviews
On his 14th studio album, the songwriting maestro—still vital at 82—is a lion in winter, his lyrics heavy with God and sex and death and his legendary voice scraped down to a subterranean rumble.

16.

November 18, 2016
Critic Score
83
11 reviews

There’s something pleasingly organic ... in Weight’s cohesiveness; it asks for patience and rewards it, weaving true tales of regret and resilience into one fiercely honest, gloriously flawed whole. Bless this mess.

14.

August 20, 2016
Critic Score
86
42 reviews
With these 17 tracks, Ocean shows himself to be one of pop’s foremost innovators.

12.

September 30, 2016
Critic Score
88
30 reviews

It’s a bold statement on what it means to be a proud and yet sometimes anguished black woman in 2016, and it’s also her most individuated work to date. Solange gets political by also making Seat stunningly personal and poetic.

11.

February 14, 2016
Critic Score
77
36 reviews

A right-now snapshot of a restless, neurotic artist’s ever-evolving psyche. Like the man himself, the album is emotional, explosive, unpredictable, and undeniably thrilling.

10.

May 8, 2016
Critic Score
87
49 reviews

By nature, Radiohead albums will always be somewhat epic, but this one is more consistently grandiose than any of the band’s releases since 2000’s masterpiece Kid A.

9.

January 15, 2016
Critic Score
81
19 reviews

Malibu, his second full-length, is a bracing wash of warm neo-soul that spits in the face of the chilly self-flagellation the Weeknd managed to spin into chart gold.

8.

May 6, 2016
Critic Score
81
38 reviews

7.

May 13, 2016
Critic Score
86
27 reviews

Though it doesn’t eclipse the LSD-inspired brilliance of Acid Rap, Coloring Book affirms Chance’s place as one of hip-hop’s most promising — and most uplifting — young stars.

5.

April 15, 2016
Critic Score
85
23 reviews
Overall, the album is strikingly intimate. At times, it feels like you’ve somehow found yourself in the singer’s hallway, listening as he coos lullabies to his child in a nursery.

3.

January 27, 2016
Critic Score
70
38 reviews

Anti proves Rihanna should play by her own rules more often.

2.

January 8, 2016
Critic Score
86
45 reviews
It’s the kind of album that works beautifully as a physical experience – an all-senses headphone surrender to the sound of an artist who is older and almost definitely wiser but still fantastically, singularly himself.

1.

April 23, 2016
Critic Score
90
38 reviews
If you want to spend your time speculating, cool—that’s your deal. But Beyoncé’s not thinking about that. She’s too busy putting out her boldest, most ambitious, best album to date. Middle fingers up.
Original Source: http://www.ew.com/article/2016/12/08/ew-best-albums-2016
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