One of the biggest joys in choosing an album of the year is in realizing that your ultimate selection is one you never would have predicted when the year began. I went into Titanic Rising with the opinion that Natalie Mering was a remarkable singer but an uncompelling songwriter; she impressed me with her memorable contribution to Perfume Genius’ “Sides,” but her output as Weyes Blood left me bored. However, I came out of the experience believing I may have just heard an album that would one day be considered a classic, and that bold impression has only strengthened with time. Every song here sounds like some unearthed gem from the glory days of Joni Mitchell or Carole King. Mering has worked a sort of witchcraft in her songwriting, somehow managing to summon the spirit of Laurel Canyon folk, Brill Building pop, and psychedelic rock into a single evocative and, in its most gripping moments, transcendent package.

The resurgence of FKA twigs has been a long time coming, and she’s clawed her way out from beneath a crippling medical condition and a publicly scrutinized relationship to rebirth herself, a journey that is represented metaphorically in the jaw-dropping video for her comeback single, “cellophane.” The song is a stunner in its own right, an uncharacteristically organic ballad that centers twigs’ nuanced and devastating vocal delivery. “Didn’t I do it for you?/Why don’t I do it for you?/Why won’t you do it for me/When all I do is for you?” she murmurs and belts and snarls, each intonation subtly shifting her meaning. By the end of the song, both she and the listener are emotionally spent, and her final words come out in a whimper: “They’re waiting and hoping I’m not enough.” It never fails to leave me with wet eyes and serves as proof of her remarkable growth as an artist. She may have spent much of the past five years flying under the radar, but she certainly hasn’t been lazy.

As much as she may deny it, Lana Del Rey has always seemed more like a character than a real person. Her music has largely concerned itself with a version of the American dream that is built on a romanticized sense of patriotism, an idealized vision of former glory, and an exaggeration of all-American stereotypes. However, with all its less favorable history stripped away, the country Lana Del Rey worships has never actually existed. It’s obvious Del Rey knows this. She’s always been a smart songwriter, and her music has often been delivered with a wink and a nod. But the country has changed dramatically since 2012, when she released her first album, Born to Die. The national mood has shifted from hopefulness to despair. In keeping with this, Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an album in which Del Rey admits that the America of her own creation (and, by extension, the men who populate it and her own perception of her place within it) is a far cry from the reality she now finds herself occupying.