Tag: Lists

2020 has been a year of exceptions. There will forever be an asterisk marked next to the year in any textbook we read. But damn were there a lot of great albums this year. Some were years in the making (A Written Testimony, Fetch the Bolt Cutters), some started and completed all in quarantine (Folklore, McCartney III). And wow was music our saving grace this year – whether it was refrigerator buzz noise just to have on in the background to keep us company, or in depth, reflective epics that required us to study. Despite the feeling that making an album and needing to share it with the world is so self-indulgent, these albums were here to remind us that, we don’t have to make anything during this time. We don’t have to be productive. But rather, sit in and feel these feelings that we’ve suppressed and never had to feel before. Here are Era of Good Feeling’s top 10 albums of 2020.

The pace at which music has changed this past decade has been almost rapid. Ten years has seen the death of rock as a popular genre, Soundcloud rap as the rising beast, and synthwave as the new punk rock. Many genres have come and gone, styles have melded into each other. So then, what’s next for music in the next decade? Well, the answer is, everything. These past ten years have arguably been the most turbulent ten years in the industry’s history. We’ve now entered an era where a new generation of musicians have not known a world without the internet, where everything is available to everyone. Nothing is off limits, everyone has the same resources (if everyone has super powers, how can anyone truly be super?). But like I say every year, we live in a world where everyone is allowed to like everything. There is no old music or new music, but music we have heard, and music we have not. Here are our top 20 albums from this past decade.

To be honest, I couldn’t compile this list in any easy way other than choosing what was worthy. To me, there was no clear winner, there’s no favorable album over another. 2018 didn’t feature the juggernaut artists like we’ve been treated to in the past few years. But for the better, because it allowed young, new artists like Snail Mail, Parquet Courts, Kasey Musgraves, Yves Tumor, and Playboy Carti to allow them to cement themselves atop of critics’ year-end lists, a year that introduced us to new artists to prove that the next generation of musicians truly doesn’t suck.

Here are the top 10 albums of 2018.

It’s funny to think that, given the amount of tours, one-off shows, reunions, and festivals this year, that this list would seem kind of arbitrary. Could he possibly have seen every live show this year? Is he making this list out of a vacuum? Well, of course this list has not come out of a vacuum, and naturally, I couldn’t have seen EVERY SINGLE live event from 2018. But with ambition, confidence, and enthusiasm for discovering something new and memorable, I did my best. Here are the best live acts of 2018.

Heartbreak. Disappointment. Broken promises. Fallen dignities…. just a few words to sum up this year in review. Whatever optimism we once had going into this year slowly diminished following suits of sexual harassment, a false Best Picture announcement, take-a-knee protests, hurricanes, an opioid epidemic, and a total solar eclipse, all in a span of 12 months. But like I’ve said for a while, it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. The good thing is: we have nowhere else to go but up. Here are the best albums we have to associate this year with of fond memories:

As every year, there’s an influx of tours, festivals, and one-off reunion shows that come along with the fear of missing out. Some offer more than others, some are disappointments. And then there are some that change your life in ways you never could’ve imagined. And in a year full of protest attitudes and resistance, 2017 provided a fertile breeding ground ripe for new, original live shows. Here are the best that came from the most volatile year in recent memory.