The album: dead!
OK, it’s not—we could’ve happily dropped fifty favorite albums on you this year—but it’s fun to say that it is. That’s particularly true at a time when the single has arguably become more important than it was in its 45-spinning heyday. While plenty of artists are still sending out the most representative tracks from their forthcoming albums six weeks ahead of release, others are more adept at playing the short game. D.R.A.M. expressed his fondness for lox and bagels (on a square plate, please) and rode that hunger to ubiquity (and likely upset H. W. Bush in the meantime); Woods head-faked toward Addis Ababa; Charles Bradley blew the dust off an old Black Sabbath tune and discovered a lost soul classic. Whether those songs—or any of the ones collected below—nestled easily into their surroundings was immaterial; they all provide three-minute delights that lasted the whole year long.
With that in mind, we present to you the FLOOD Top 40, our favorite songs of the year in no particular order (with bonus shoutouts to Sheer Mag’s “Can’t Stop Fighting” and Beyoncé’s “Formation,” neither of which are on Spotify).
