This year, the three albums at the top of Stereogum's 50 favorite albums of the year are all, in one way or another, Californian studio-pop singer-songwriter opuses. Admittedly, the makers of two of the three aren't originally from California (they're from New York and New Orleans) and even though the maker of the other one doesn't really ever sing. But all three, coming from musical virtuosos with richly observant eyes and powerful emotional vocabularies, exist in that uneasy mental place where an endless string of 73-degree days can't make up for the tense and roiling things happening deep inside your soul.
All three brought their own contexts. For Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City is endless potential made good -- a guy from the rising Black Hippy crew and from the endlessly-spinning internet-rap universe seizing on the idea of being a lost kid in a hostile world, looking for depth wherever he could find it and then interrogating the moments of transcendence he does find. For Frank Ocean, there's almost too much context (major-label shelvings and Odd Future co-signs and litigious former Eagles and, more than anything, a heartening and brave Tumblr missive about his own same-sex love story), but all those disparate strands of thought somehow melted together into a soul odyssey of frightening depth and empathy. And for Fiona Apple, the woman on top of this list, the context is in the years of bungalow semi-seclusion, of past famous and maybe-genius boyfriends, of a skin so publicly thin that her every onstage hand-flutter looks like an act of courage. On her fourth album, Apple dug deep into her own braaa-ee-aa-ih!-aaain and found a musical vocabulary that mirrored her berserk lyrical synapse-firing. And in an extended music-business apocalypse, all three albums came out on major labels and sold in the six figures in their first weeks. High fives for everything.
Looking deeper at our picks for the year's best albums, we see no grand narrative, just fascinating strands splayed out in different directions. Old gods like Swans, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Converge brought monolithic dread in wildly different ways, while younger guns like Japandroids, Cloud Nothings, the Men, Baroness, and Screaming Females showed that pummeling fuzz-pound is once again, thankfully, on the upswing in the underground. Ocean personified a gentle and genteel soul-music sophistication that also showed up in the forms of Jessie Ware, Miguel, and How To Dress Well. Intricate and sophisticated indie-pop orchestrations endure in the recent records from Chairlift, Dirty Projectors, Tame Impala, and Grizzly Bear. Rap got a series of shots in the arm from outsize characters like resurgent El-P, tracksuit firebrand, Killer Mike, sad-robot fantasist Future, kid out of time Joey Bada$$, snarling head-tripper ScHoolboy Q, and comic-book food-fetishist Action Bronson.
And then there's a ton of stuff that's just on here because it's great. The Walkmen and Chromatics and Taylor Swift and Nude Beach only have one thing in common: They all made great records this year. Check out Stereogum's editorial staff's list of 2012's 50 best albums below...
STEREOGUM'S TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2012
50 Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes (Warp)
49 Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (Dull Tools)
48 The Shins - Port Of Morrow (Columbia/Aural Apothecary)
47 Rick Ross - Rich Forever (Maybach Music)
46 Matthew E. White - Big Inner (Spacebomb/Hometapes)
45 The Evens - The Odds (Dischord)
44 Bat For Lashes - The Haunted Man (Capitol)
43 Action Bronson & Party Supplies - Blue Chips (self-released)
42 Sharon Van Etten - Tramp (Jagjaguwar)
41 Sun Kil Moon - Among The Leaves (Caldo Verde)
40 Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph)
39 Jessica Pratt - Jessica Pratt (Birth Records)
38 Mount Eerie - Ocean Roar (P.W. Elverum And Sun)
37 Joey Bada$$ - 1999 (self-released)
36 Chris Cohen - Overgrown Path (Captured Tracks)
35 Swearin' - Swearin' (Salinas)
34 Future - Pluto (Epic/A1/Free Bandz)
33 How To Dress Well - Total Loss (Acéphale)
32 Ty Segall - Twins (Drag City)
31 ScHoolboy Q - Habits & Contradictions (Top Dawg Entertainment)
30 Torche - Harmonicraft (Volcom)
29 Purity Ring - Shrines (4AD/Last Gang)
28 Cat Power - Sun (Matador)
27 Beach House - Bloom (Sub Pop)
26 Grimes - Visions (4AD/Arbutus)
25 Nude Beach - II (Other Music Recording Company)
24 Sleigh Bells - Reign Of Terror (Mom + Pop)
23 Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music (Williams Street)
22 DIIV - Oshin (Captured Tracks)
21 Screaming Females - Ugly (Don Giovanni)
20 Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Fat Possum)
19 Taylor Swift - Red (Big Machine)
18 Baroness - Yellow & Green (Relapse)
17 The Men - Open Your Heart (Sacred Bones)
16 Grizzly Bear - Shields (Warp)
15 El-P - Cancer For Cure (Fat Possum)
14 Chromatics - Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better)
13 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! (Constellation)
12 Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream (RCA)
11 Tame Impala - Lonerism (Modular)
10 Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan (Domino)
09 Chairlift - Something (Columbia)
08 The Walkmen - Heaven (Fat Possum)
07 Japandroids - Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl)
06 Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory (Carpark)
05 Jessie Ware - Devotion (PMR)
04 Swans - The Seer (Young God)
03 Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d. City (TDE/Interscope)
02 Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (Def Jam)
01 Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel… (Epic)
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Coming up with the Stereogum list meant leaving out some personal favorites of our staff members:
HONORABLE MENTIONS
SCOTT
01 Wymond Miles – Under The Pale Moon
02 James Blackshaw - Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death
03 Dinosaur Jr. - I Bet On Sky
04 Ice Choir - Afar
05 Lotus Plaza – Spooky Action At A Distance
AMRIT
01 PO PO - Dope Boy Magick
02 Vijay Iyer - Accelerando
03 Yeasayer - Fragrant World
04 Santigold - Master Of My Own Make-Believe
05 Delicate Steve - Positive Force
TOM
01 Roc Marciano - Reloaded
02 Tragedy - Darker Days Ahead
03 Cult Of Youth - Love Will Prevail
04 Jack White - Blunderbuss
05 Ceremony - Zoo
MICHAEL
01 METZ - METZ
02 Liars - WIXIW
03 ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Lost Songs
04 Bob Mould - Silver Age
05 Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
CORBAN
01 Chief Keef - Back From The Dead
02 Justin Bieber - Believe
03 Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded
04 Jeremih - Late Nights With Jeremih
05 2 Chainz - Based On A T.R.U. Story
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And our favorite EPs...
STEREOGUM'S TOP 5 EPS OF 2012
01 Solange - True
02 TNGHT - TNGHT
03 Dum Dum Girls - End Of Daze
04 AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like It
05 Sky Ferreira - Ghost
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Let us know what you think in the comments (as if we have to ask). Check out last year's list here.
