Standout releases came from established superstars Olivia Rodrigo, Paul McCartney, Drake and Kacey Musgraves as well as artists truly coming into their own like Slayyter, Raye and Ella Langley.
Dear 2026: You seem pretty rad, for a year so potentially in malaise. At least, that’s the way we feel every time we turn off the news and turn on the music that takes us away from all that. The best albums from the first half of 2026 didn’t always shut out the outside world — James Blake did title his album “Trying Times” — but we had Raye promising that “This Album May Contain Hope,” in one of many stellar releases that delivered on that happy threat. Whether it was in chart-topping efforts from Olivia Rodrigo, Drake and Ella Langley, in well-deserved breakouts from perpetually bubbling-under artists like Slayyter, Ryan Beatty and Grace Ives, or in the happy return of comeback kids ranging from Hilary Duff to Paul McCartney, we’ve had plenty of reasons already this year to celebrate the musical spirit of ’26. Here are the results of our midterm elections. —Chris Willman
This second set from British singer Abby-Lynn Keen, released in March, faced two challenges out of the gate: A virtually un-Google-able artist name (a major issue in the 21 st century) and the fact that her big sister, Rachel — a.k.a. Raye — released her hotly anticipated second album just a month later. That’s a pity, as “Paracosm” deserves a big moment all its own: It’s an ambitious, cinematic, elaborately produced and fully realized album from an artist whose vision is every bit as defined and singular as her sibling’s. Comparisons are inevitable, and while Absolutely’s voice has a similar timbre to her sister’s, her style is completely different — sweeter, more straightforward and less jazz-inflected and showy, although she has a powerful belt — and although her vision is just as ambitious, it’s totally different as well: Acoustic piano, orchestras and electronics trade the spotlight, with baroque flourishes that recall Danny Elfman’s early soundtracks for “Batman” and “Edward Scissorhands.” While she worked with a raft of different collaborators — including Timabaland protégé Danja, who helmed Britney Spears’ “Blackout,” and early Kehlani collaborators M-Phazes and Jahaan Sweet — this album sounds nothing like those artists: It’s entirely Absolutely’s lush, lavish vision, which plays out like a musical. — Jem Aswad
On “Calico,” his 2023 album, Ryan Beatty narrowed the scope of his songwriting by poring over the details of a breakup, trying to make sense of them against a lush, resplendent Americana palette. But he finds sturdier ground with his fourth album “Sweet Fortune,” a record inspired by a long-distance relationship and both the joy and strain it puts on his well-being. Beatty is at times pained — on “Delancey,” he sings of being “out of breath, on all fours, felt good in the moment, nothin’ more” — yet he finds his way back to his lover on the horn-kissed lead single “Secret Language” and “Too Many Ways.” Above all, Beatty sounds content in a way that he never quite has, using joy as a springboard to create some of the best music of his career. —Steven J. Horowitz
Over eight albums and heaven knows how many singles, EPs collaborations and stray tracks, James Blake’s haunting, mostly electronic sound and skyscraping voice are so well established that it’s fair to wonder what horizons remain unexplored beyond the experimental work he’s always pursued as alongside his “pop” work. While “Trying Times” doesn’t sound radically different from his past work, its creation coincided with a tectonic shift in Blake’s career — he severed ties with his label and most other associates and took his business career into his own hands — and, although elements of stress and anxiety are present in the album, it’s also his most free; counterintuitively, several songs have a looseness and relaxed vibe that certainly wasn’t a hallmark of his past work. “Death of Love” finds him altering his voice almost beyond recognition and rides on a Leonard Cohen sample; “I Had a Dream” has an oddly ‘50s vibe; the closing “Just a Little Higher” is bedecked with a gorgeous orchestral arrangement; the title track, a lovely ballad, may be the most beautiful song he’s released. It’s a fusion of all of his musical moods that is his most fully realized album to date. —Jem Aswad
The avant-pop star’s soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack delivered a sonic side of Charli never before heard, exemplified in opener “House”: a darker, haunting orchestral sound paired with wailing vocals and an epic spoken-word feature from John Cale. But Charli also keeps her pop sensibility with soaring ballads like “Wall of Sound” and upbeat bangers including “Dying for You” and “Out of Myself,” which poignantly express the yearning and desperation behind Emily Bronte’s classic novel while still making you want to dance. Months after the “Wuthering Heights” hype died down, Charli’s contribution has remained on repeat. —Ellise Shafer
Drake really said he wanted something fun, something for the summertime, something for the girls to get ready and party to with “Maid of Honour,” which tugs at the dance floor thread of 2022’s “Honestly, Nevermind.” Among the trio of albums he concurrently released in early May, “Maid of Honour” scratches at the rapper’s appreciation for club rap, a pressure valve release from the bitter revenge fantasy of “Iceman.” There are dashes of Miami Bass and Kraftwerk across the record, from the Afro-Rican sample on opener “Hoe Phase” to the “Cha Cha Slide” interpolation on “Cheetah Print.” The latter is a tidy summation of what works best about “Maid of Honour”: When Drake lets down his tough-guy exterior, something he meticulously curates across social media and his harder-nosed rap records, he functions best as a fun-loving guy who isn’t afraid to have a good time. Party on, Drake. —Steven J. Horowitz
Aging gracefully in pop music doesn’t always come across as graceful, yet Hilary Duff hit the sweet spot with her sixth studio album “Luck… or Something.” The project arrived nearly a decade after 2015’s “Breathe In. Breathe Out.” that featured the (sorely underrated) single “Sparks,” a slick dance-pop banger ripe for the moment but perhaps wrong for the artist. “Luck… or Something” reframes Duff as a pensive, introspective pop artisan who trades bombast for perspective, whether its singing to her younger self on “Mature” or talking shit with a friend over orange wine on “Growing Up.” Duff worked with husband Matthew Koma for the entirety of the record, a synergy that plays to Duff’s strengths — vocals that land like fists on a pillow — while giving them the space to flourish. With “Luck,” Duff has fully shaken off the Disney cobwebs, free to show the world who she’s become. —Steven J. Horowitz
Brit post-punk band Dry Cleaning has been bubbling under for years, but hit a critical peak with their third album, “Secret Love,” released in January. Drawn-out guitar lines, thumping rhythms and Florence Shaw’s lackadaisical spoken-word delivery create several earworms that you’d be hard-pressed to shake after a couple listens, especially on lead single “Hit My Head All Day” and the album’s title track “Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy).” Dry Cleaning’s secret weapon is producer Cate Le Bon, who makes every note ring crystal-clear while retaining a vintage quality reminiscent of genre greats like Television or Life Without Buildings. —Ellise Shafer
In many ways, R&B music is like reggae or other highly specialized genres of music that are ultimately more about feeling than technique, which is why novices and dilletantes fall so hard when they try and fail. That’s also a reason why an album by an artist like Brent Faiyaz, hailed by many as a leading light for R&B, crushes so many of the other hopeful entries into the genre: The man is such a gifted singer and songwriter that he could probably sneeze and it would sound soulful. The sound of “Icon,” his second and latest full-length (amid multiple EPs, a mixtape, singles and features with Drake, Alicia Keys, 21 Savage and more), is fully forward looking while acknowledging and building on the foundation of multiple influences and forebears: Prince, Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo and the old-school R&B that’s a foundation for them, with a flair for vocal arrangements that recalls Mary J. Blige. “Icon” is barely a half-hour long — the deluxe edition bumps it up to 39 minutes — but covers sultry R&B grooves, ballads, pop songs and even a semi-acoustic track. —Jem Aswad
(unofficial download) — I will admit that at first I did not get Geese. They’re from my Brooklyn neighborhood so they’ve been on my radar for a long time. I listened closely to the band’s albums, singer Cameron Winter’s feted solo outing and even went to see them at Brooklyn Paramount for a triumphant homecoming show last fall — although I thought they were very interesting and talented musically, if I don’t like the singer, I don’t like the band. Well, like coffee, whisky and other potent things that don’t go down easily at first, singers can be an acquired taste (see: Young, Neil), and for whatever reason, during the Coachella livestream in April, I got it — so much that I suddenly love them. In fact, there hasn’t been a rock band this exciting in many years — the annals of Pitchfork have many cool alternative bands, but Geese have old-school rock in their DNA, even as drummer Max Bassin peels off complicated rhythms and jazz fills and Emily Green wreaks futurist shrieks out of her guitar along with towering, angular riffs. Winter’s bellowing vocals careen over the rebellious but deceptively intricate music, providing a totally unpredictable counterpoint that’s often as hilarious as it is distinctive. (I included the Coachella download on this list because I’ve played it more than any other album this year, and let’s face it: these days the definition of an album is in the ears of the beholder.) I’d long despaired that rock music was becoming a museum piece like the blues — iconic and foundational, but basically a dead art form, or at least one that wasn’t moving forward. Geese are the first major band in a long time to refute that notion. —Jem Aswad
Solo albums from non-singing producers are a hit-or-miss proposition. While there might be a signature sound, the multiple different vocalists can make the album lack a distinct identity and feel more like a various-artists compilation or mixtape. But sometimes the producer has enough of an artist’s sensibility to make it work: Mark Ronson’s “Late Night Feelings” and Rusowsky’s “Daisy,” for example, both have well-defined moods and identities that the guest singers contribute to, rather than dominate. That is also the case with the second solo album from British producer Harle, whose sound will be familiar to fans of his past collaborators Caroline Polachek, Dua Lipa and Charli xcx. He worked his contacts hard for this one, bringing in Polachek (for two songs), Dua, PinkPantheress, Clairo, Julia Michaels and more to create a set that is split between instrumentals and vocal tracks, all of them featuring his celestial electronic textures — which would make a killer soundtrack for interstellar action films, should he ever choose that path. —Jem Aswad
Grace Ives’ music doesn’t hit you over the head, but you get the feeling she would if you crossed her. Ives has been releasing music since 2016 and although she broke big in the indiesphere with 2022’s “Janky Star,” her albums were more bedroom pop in sound and nature. While that intimacy remains on this, her third album — one song sounds like the vocal was recorded in a closet — there’s been a significant upgrade thanks to collaborators John DeBold and Ariel Rechtshaid, the latter an ace who helmed albums by Haim, Vampire Weekend, Sky Ferreira and Charli xcx (although Lorde is probably the clearest reference point — not influence — here). “Girlfriend” is filled with pulsating, atmospheric keyboards, skittering beats and her soft voice and unusual phrasing — it’s a deceptively soft-focus sound that has a lot going on beneath the surface, both musically and lyrically. The album was written in the months after she got sober: “I want, want, want, and I take, take, take/ Feeling sorry not sorry for the mess that I make,” she sings on “Avalanche.” Most of the album is a sort of impressionist pop, a collage of sounds over the gauzy keyboards and her prettily pirouetting melodies. But most of that goes out the window on the album’s 11 th and final song, “Stupid Bitches,” which is as straightforward as its title — a song about resilience (“Stupid bitches can’t hurt me/ I’ve been through the needle, I can see”) with a hard beat, dive-bombing “Pokerface”-ish synthesizers and melody that’s much more straightforward than the rest of the album; sudden drop-outs in the sound emphasize the hooks and Ives’ incisive chorus: “Doesn’t hurt me… anymore” she sings three times, and apparently has made her point because the fourth line is wordless descending humming. All music, especially ultra-personal albums like this, is inevitably a reflection of its creator, and “Girlfriend” is the sound of someone coming in at zero and trying to rebuild their life into one they will like better, with all the frustration and elation that comes with it. —Jem Aswad
After exploring a variety of sounds and textures for her 2024 album “Crash,” Kehlani went back to basics — well, her basics, at least — on her self-titled fifth album. The singer looked back at the foundation of her musical influences, corralling her muses (Missy Elliott, Usher, T-Pain) to stand beside her as she traipsed back in time to turn-of-the-millennium R&B, right when it teetered on the razor’s edge of pop. What she landed on was a sound that feels nostalgic without hewing too close to the source material — there’s a loose callback to the Pharcyde’s “Runnin” on “No Such Thing” featuring Clipse, for instance, or the faint whiff of Amerie’s “Why Don’t We Fall in Love?” on “Anotha Luva” featuring Lil Wayne. All of her influences feel just in reach, but to her credit, Kehlani suits them to her style without losing herself along the way. To that end, “Kehlani” is a triumph for an artist who is as full of artistic vitality as ever. —Steven J. Horowitz
Was it the bangs? No, it wasn’t the bangs. OK, maybe just a little bit the bangs. But the main reason we were choosin’ Ella Langley was because of her easygoing vocal warble and because of a keen song sense that would seem to bely a performer a lot further into her years than this 27-year-old Alabaman. She has had the year’s biggest single to date, by any measure, by far, in “Choosin’ Texas,” the song that caused seemingly every urbanite, everywhere, to firmly declare: Yes, I am madly in love with traditional country music, and proud of it… and I’m not sure what spirit is possessing my body right now. (Don’t worry, it’s a benign one.) If a song that massive struck anybody as the recipe for a one-smash/two-step wonder on the pop side of things, she quickly got over that hump with an almost equally Spotify-dominating followup, “Be Her,” that proved she can captivate just as easily with a tune firmly in the realm of R&B-influenced country forebears like Ronnie Milsap. You have to love an album that can include a song brilliantly questioning the existence, or at least nature, of God (“Speaking Terms”), and then follow it up with a cover of one of the great country spirituals, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Welcome to the celestial pantheon of modern country masters, Ella. —Chris Willman
“Days We Left Behind,” the teaser single that heralded McCartney’s first album in almost six years, was about as unapologetically backward-looking as it gets, and in a gentle mode that made it seem as if the former Beatles might be settling in to a subdued set of winsome reveries. Well, there was a half-truth in that promise. On roughly half of these 14 songs, McCartney is taking an unapologetically nostalgic look at his ever-present past. But he’s doing it mostly in the flagrantly commercial, engaging, oft-rocking style of a 1970s Wings record. McCartney is acting his age and defying it too, which is kind of the best of both worlds. Superlatives are meant to be quibbled over, but here’s one that will be met with a lot of agreement: “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” is absolutely the best album ever recorded and released by a rock star in his 80s… and the fact that there hasn’t been much competition for that title yet doesn’t diminish the achievement. There are other commendations that could be thrown on, like how this might be McCartney’s best album of the 21st century. Macca-heads all have their favorites from his later work; mine up until now has been 2007’s “Memory Almost Full,” partly because it was similar to this one in the way it mixed ruminative thoughts with crunchy sounds. But this album is even more a celebration of memory, with plenty of current happiness thrown in too — as if his recollections about his Liverpool boyhood and contemporary mash notes to his wife, Nancy Shevell, occupy adjacent spots on his personal timeline of time being a flat circle. He seems to get a kick out of leaping between the 1950s and the 2020s in these lyrics, with neither era luring him any closer to melancholia than the other. He found a great partner in co-producer Andrew Watt: There may be a couple of generation gaps between them, but as partners in willful agelessness, they couldn’t be better matched. —Chris Willman
The title well sums up the voice, and the spirit that animates it, with the longtime Americana favorite going easy on the tongue and on the ear with her first album in nine years. She took time off not just to be a mother but to be an academic in her native North Carolina, and returns to making new music none the worse for the time away. Her wisened-up lyrical voice revels in for the joy found in a growing daughter and a strong community of female friends, but still makes room for the possibility of new romantic horizons, as in the song where she wishes for “Someone to Watch the Band With Me.” Did music lovers anywhere ever have their romantic longing better and more bluntly stated? —Chris Willman
No album this year will have a better double entendre for a title than “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me,” which could either refer to a sense of the everyday doldrums or an awareness of impending death. Mitski doesn’t come up with a subject-to-interpretation name like that by accident, and indeed, this album is marked, as always, by her ability to get caught up in the drollery of mortal circumstance and to look at a far bigger picture. This is a less overtly Americana-flavored album than her previous one; it started out with the intention of going back to a bare-bones, indie-rock sound, before she decided to turn tail (as cats and cat lovers will) and add orchestration to a lot of the tunes. In the end, it sort of splits the difference between songs emphasizing a lean trio sound and numbers where the strings take fuller effect, which is a pretty cool combo. Uniting it all is Mitski, half-mysterious, half-mundane, always fully mesmerizing. —Chris Willman
For people that primarily wanted to hear Kacey Musgraves do just serious country music, it really had been kind of a dry spell… although the monsoon moisture of her folk-pop-leaning triumphs of the past decade were more than consolation enough for those of us who would follow her anywhere she goes. Anyway, where she has gone is back to Texas, which she views as not just the Lone Star state but a sort of happy liminal state, in its glorious, sprawling semi-emptiness. Musgraves embraces the lonesomeness of the flat spaces of her upbringing, but also delights in the Tex-Mex flavor that is increasingly seeping into her music now that she keeps homes on both sides of the border. No one does a slow burn better than Musgraves, and there are plenty of those here, but it’s sure a delight to hear her burning up into a frustrated crisp as she takes the bull by the horniness in “Dry Spell.” This album brings just about everything she learned and perfected during her “Golden Hour” era but lets her return to regionally specific flavors in a best-of-all-worlds way. —Chris Willman
It’s tough to keep count of how many debut albums Kim Petras has released, but “Detour” is perhaps the most convincing first entry into her nearly decade-old discography. With her 2023 album “Feed the Beast,” Petras seemed to be chasing the glorious high of “Unholy,” her Grammy-winning duet with Sam Smith, by kowtowing to sounds that met the moment, not her style. (Keep resting in peace, “Alone.”) “Detour” course-corrects in all the right ways, embracing the hallmarks of hyper- and electro-pop in a way that feels the most her. There’s the sprightly “I Like Ur Look,” which could have easily slotted on the underrated “Problématique,” or the thumping “Brutalist,” a garage-pop song about buildings but is, in fact, an allegory to her transition at a young age. “This is the beginning of the end,” she declares on the title track, and she means it: “Everything before is just pretend.” —Steven J. Horowitz
It makes sense that Charlie Puth closes “Whatever’s Clever!” with “I Used to Be Cringe,” a bemoaning of the missteps he once took to fit in (i.e. dyeing his hair blonde, tossing around the word “baller”). That’s because “Whatever’s Clever!” is an exercise in letting go of what constitutes cool in favor of exploring music’s schlockier yet often more compelling corners. Far more than any of his previous records, Puth goes full dad mode on his fourth studio album, diving headfirst into yacht rock (“Love in Exile” featuring Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins), Japanese city pop (“Home” with Hikaru Utada) and slaphappy doo-wop (“Until It Happens to You” rides out on a true-to-form monologue from Jeff Goldblum). All of this could come off as earnest if it weren’t for the fact that Puth is undeniably sincere, not to mention spot-on, so much so that when the gospel chorus pipes in at the end of lead single “Changes” — a risky move — it plays like a musical epiphany. —Steven J. Horowitz
This talented Puerto Rican artist’s previous albums offered a promising reggaeton-pop fusion, but “Marcriá” — a play on malcriada, basically meaning Having An Attitude, and “raised by the sea” — is something else entirely. A sprawling and ambitious album, a reference point may be Rosalia’s “Motomami,” a similar fusion of multiple genres (although here its Caribbean styles like reggaeton, bomba, salsa and more) and cutting-edge electronics that was primarily written and produced by the artist herself, although it’s much less jarring and confrontational, more like an urban garden of styles. The influences aren’t just skin deep: veteran Cuban singer Omara Portuondo, reggae band Cultura Profética, salsa singer Andy Montañez and others all contribute to this wide-ranging trek of an album, which fuses traditional sounds with contemporary electronic ones — it’s just 45 minutes long but contains proverbial multitudes. — Jem Aswad
Raye’s sophomore album is so ambitious in its scope, it’s as if she jumped straight ahead to make her “Sgt. Pepper” when she should have just been getting to her “Help!” And you have to love a woman who bites off all that she can chew, and possibly then some, in an album that has wild flourishes like the Hans Zimmer-assisted opus that is “Click-Clack Symphony” and six-and-a-half minutes’ worth of spoken end credits. But at the core of this far-flung variety show of an album is a fairly simple story of a woman in fierce recovery from a bad relationship… and not so burned that she isn’t ready for a better one, as the album’s signature hit, “Where Is My Husband?,” certainly showed. Speaking of questions… Where the hell has she been all our lives? A diva who has conceptual conceits as broad and delightful as the “four seasons” concept behind this LP, but who can dive into a scorcher as basic in its pleasures as “Nightingale Lane,” is a talent we need around for the next 50 years or so. —Chris Willman
Remember how everyone said the monoculture was dead… something that got left behind in the 20th century, as tastes became hopelessly fractured? That seemed true enough, but then how do we explain the fact that everyone in the world loves Olivia Rodrigo’s third album. No one is fighting over whether she’s too much, whether she’s overexposed, whether she’s the product of a machine or a superproducer, whether she’s repeating herself, or any of the other questions that dog just about all of our divas every time out. Somehow, there is the closest thing to unanimity that we’re about to get in this pop lifetime, as to just how thrillingly engaging and, yes, pop-tastic this record is from first note to last. It’s a spooky feeling, experiencing all that agreement, like being in the eye of a hurricane; let’s just enjoy it for the minute it lasts., In concept, “You Seem Pretty Sad…” stays true to its playfully bifurcated title, with a Side 1 that is about the rise of a promising relationship — “Here’s to hoping,” indeed! — and a Side 2 that is about the fall. But it all feels of a many-splendored piece, with co-producer/writer Dan Nigro helping make the heartbreaking ballads land and the distinctly New Wave-flavored bops turn into the ’80s-redolent earworms of your 2020s dreams. Perfection is elusive, but this Album of the Year frontrunner sure comes damned close — 100% heartfelt, 100% crafty, 1000% irresistible. —Chris Willman
Three albums in, the career of the Missouri-reared singer named Catherine Grace Garner had not quite caught fire — her music had veered between lite hyperpop reminiscent of Charli xcx (who was an early collaborator and supporter) and Gaga-esque pop, but nothing really stuck. A reboot was in order, with an emphasis on the boot — “Wor$t Girl in America” is a bruising mix of hard beats, throbbing bass, apocalyptic synthesizers and a bad-bitch persona that fits Slayyyter’s unexpectedly versatile voice like a rubber glove: Her natural tone is honey-sweet, but the contrast between her strong melodies and the violent musical backing gives the sense that at any second she could whip out a butcher knife and start shrieking — which she does a few times here, along with talk-singing, mock-seductive patter and a powerful, soaring belt. The titles (rendered in all-caps) say as much as the sound: “Crank,” “Cannibalism!,” “Gas Station,” “Brittany Murphy” (which includes the lyric “Tell them I was such a funny girl / Annoying’s probably a better word”), you get the idea. This album takes on a whole other dimension in a live setting, where she’s accompanied by a brawny rock band and proves herself to be a straight-up rock star, stomping across the stage in cut-off shorts and big boots and at one point, unleashing a total death-metal roar. As her sets at Coachella and Governors Ball prove, she can light up a festival and looks set to be one of the breakout artists of the year. —Jem Aswad
In the realm of Next Big Thing possibilities, 26-year-old artist and producer April Harper Grey — aka Underscores — has been releasing music for half a decade, but completely leveled up with “U,” her third full-length album. Grey started out making dubstep, and there’s traces of that here, but also sassy-sweet pop hooks that evoke early 2000s Britney Spears and make “U” completely accessible. It’s a no-skips body of work woven by a true lover and consumer of music, so it’s only fitting that one of the best tracks, aptly titled “Music,” compares falling in love to the craft itself. “When I’m with you it feels like music / It’s happening again, I feel the BPM,” Grey sings over drilling, layered drumbeats. With an opening slot for Charli xcx on her fall tour, it may be only a matter of time before Underscores is playing arenas herself. —Ellise Shafer
