The beauty of the album rests in Loretta Lynn's exceptional songwriting.

To Pimp a Butterfly requires an extra commitment. Even the most casual attention to the lyrics can unveil the complexity of Lamar’s critique of institutional racism, consumer capitalism, hip-hop culture, justice, and his own choices as an artist, as a black man, and as a human being.

The songs here represent more than just a band; they represent the myth, the sound of “beautiful losers,” as Buck describes them, making good on the promise their sound always presented.

Frequently labeled as a lecherous rogue or public provocateur, Gainsbourg is also one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and this masterpiece is the proof.

Three months in, DAMN. feels like our first Trump-era classic. It’s as bold and as hard and as hopeful as it is bursting with vitriol. It’s as distracting as it is inciting. It’s as cohesive as it is dense.

Black Messiah was crafted painstakingly, that’s evident, but it never sounds labored over. It sounds loose, on fire, and huge, like a truly Christian sermon.

In the end, the artificial pop of The Promise makes it, as a whole, a more realistic album.

The past few years have shown West first-hand what happens when the populace turns against its demagogues, and with Fantasy, he's letting us know that he's ready for our scorn and adulation.

A dizzying synergy of heavy brains and chemistry, culminating in blissfully fun, irreverent, and engaging brand of record-making magic.

Phil presents his thoughts here with stunning candor, using just a laptop and a microphone to capture his characteristically amorphous guitar lines and thin yet comforting balm of a voice.

At 35 minutes, Room 25 is more of a mission statement than a treatise on Noname’s self-examination. Its 11 songs leave us wanting more.

This is her second visual album, and Lemonade is best served with the visuals, a semi-autobiographical film with deft dream-logic, a Purple Rain for the internet age. Its waves wash over the political-commercial-aesthetic limits of Beyonce, which at the time of its release felt a generic/political revelation, but now seems watered-down compared to the bittersweet specificity and holler of Lemonade.

With a couple of exceptions, the Nicene Creedence Edition is the least essential of Matador’s Pavement compilations. But even with this caveat, the package performs the service of reminding us how good Brighten the Corners still is.

Ocean's work is almost as good as those he references; his lyrics are almost uniformly terrific, sensual, specific, and unpredictable.

Titanic Rising is even more accomplished than putting Mering’s state of grace to music; with her 70s-inflected approach to songwriting, she succeeds in nothing less than recalibrating time.

Melodrama overwhelms me. It reaches me at that weird and fragile center.

There is plenty here to suggest Lamar has a long career ahead of him. But the album nevertheless falls short of the pedigree his storied elders have set for him, and its status as an all-time classic is far from guaranteed. For the most part, though, good kid is solid.

Wilner’s talent lies in revealing the abundance of music locked inside even the smallest fractions of extant recordings.

Illinois certainly isn't perfect, but it does do a couple important things: it proves that Sufjan has the skill and the talent to prove flexible and long-lasting, and that it's not much of a stretch to expect even better albums from him in the future.

One of the best albums of the year, hands down.

As an album, London Zoo is simply more engaging. Kevin’s production is intense but club-ready, and the lyrics are righteous and relevant.

Sir Lucious is all but hiccup-free, exceptionally consistent in its mad musical mission. Each track on the record is an explosive standalone statement within a greater unifying framework; it's an album, but these songs are pipe bombs.

It seems as though the quick release of Untrue restricted Burial from burying his emotions underneath layers of alternatively sparse and overwhelming production as he did on his debut, resulting in an album that instead wears them unabashedly on its sleeve.

What you can expect is what makes My Morning Jacket tried and true: bigger-than-life lyrics, classic rock swagger, and the need to move forward.

St. Vincent dances with themes (family, success and the absence thereof, the isolation of the digital) but only ever seems to fringe against them in a way that doesn’t let the record add up to more than the sum of its parts.

There’s something to be said for two masters of their craft talking jazz for the joy of it, but to me, the question remains whether or not this kind of jazz is played out.

Perversion packed with allusions -- forgotten titles, purloined and paraphrased sources, pilfered public records and archives. This is what steeps the songs in American history instead of planting them in psycho wards, clinics, and retirement homes.

What emerges is a baroque topography of movement and energy, culled from the explosion of an ultra-specific cultural context outwards, and then back into the dusk.