This year, I honestly thought I wasn’t going to be able to get this done. It was difficult for all the usual reasons - the impossibility of ranking art, the even greater impossibility of trying to be objective about it, the question of whether it’s even valuable to do at all, etc. - but also because I haven’t written anything about music beyond an informal sentence or two for almost an entire year. The thought of trying to say something meaningful about thirty different albums initially filled me with dread.

Of course, as soon as I started writing, I couldn’t really stop, which shouldn’t have surprised me, and it actually helped guide the list’s final order a lot more than usual. I figured the albums I wanted to write more about or had more interesting things to say regarding were the ones that probably deserved to be highest - bearing in mind, obviously, that being higher or lower doesn’t necessarily mean anything is better or worse. Because this year, more than ever, this is truly a personal list of favorites: not me trying to make an argument for the best or top albums of 2019 but simply sharing the ones that were most meaningful and impactful to me. The main question I asked myself was how deeply do these releases make me feel and how well does that ineffable feeling hold up across multiple plays?

All that is to say, I’m pretty pleased right now with how everything turned out. The order feels right, at least for the moment. My only real goal here is to get all these thoughts out of my head, spread the love for these albums, and hope they resonate with someone else as much as they have with me. And, in order to spare you from an entire building of text, I’m giving you one manageable wall at a time by splitting the list up. Playlist to come after I’ve revealed everything because posting it now would spoil all the fun.

Now, without further ado...

30. Tegan and Sara - Hey, I’m Just Like You

This year, Tegan and Sara released a memoir about their teenage years called High School, and Hey, I’m Just Like You is a companion piece, composed of updated versions of demos from the same period. Hardcore fans know that several have been floating around the Internet for years, so it’s satisfying to see them used as creative fuel now. As frequently fun as it was to follow the sisters into shiny electropop territory, the return to a more rock-oriented approach is welcome. There’s still a glossy sheen to the production, which waters down the impact in a few places: the schlocky string arrangements on “Hello, I’m Right Here” make it a weak spot, despite being one of my favorites in demo form, and the performances in general often sound a bit too polished to fully sell the teenage angst. This makes choices that do work, like Tegan’s raspy delivery on the bridge of “Hold My Breath Until I Die” and the theatrically dark atmosphere of “Don’t Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie),” deeply satisfying. Hey, I’m Just Like You isn’t perfect, but it’s an admirable way for Tegan and Sara to provide fans and themselves closure before moving onto their next chapter.

29. Tinashe - Songs for You

I don’t know Tinashe’s music well enough to say for sure how Songs for You measures up to her past work, but, while not exactly experimental, it does hold the sense of liberation one might expect from her first release as an independent artist after a lengthy and tumultuous tenure under a major label. There’s an alluring looseness to how easily she jumps between musical styles. The shifts in her vocal delivery are often subtle but reveal different personas depending on what each song calls for. Tracks like “Hopscotch,” “Cash Race,” and “Link Up” are more hip-hop adjacent, full of swagger that Tinashe has the charisma to sell just as successfully as swooning pop songs like “Save Room for Us” and smoky ballads like “Touch & Go” and “Know Better,” which hearken back to the mid-’90s heyday of sultry R&B love songs delivered by powerhouse vocalists. Tinashe’s voice may not be quite as singular as the voices of the legends who inspire her, but it holds enough power and emotion to tug at the listener’s heartstrings at all the right moments. Overall, this release serves as a tentative blueprint for Tinashe’s future: it’s solid in its own right, but it also leaves room for plenty of growth.

28. Sui Zhen - Losing, Linda

On Losing, Linda, Australian artist Sui Zhen faces mortality through the lens of technology. There’s a serenity and measured calmness to her compositions that is lovely but also vaguely unnerving, like the album cover itself, which is simply a nice photograph of Sui Zhen holding a bouquet of flowers - until you see she’s wearing a latex replica of her own face. In a way, her songs, too, are masquerading themselves, hiding a creeping discomfort beneath their placid surfaces. Thematically, they raise questions about the possibility - and desirability - of artificially-reconstructed human life, a theme the artist became fixated on when her mother passed away from cancer. Despite its complex concept, many of the album’s themes are surprisingly immediate and relatable. When she sings, “I look to the sky/Does it look the same to you?” or “All I see are things that I could be missing/All I know are things from another life,” she could just as easily be speaking from the perspective of a grieving daughter as that of an AI processing the world for the first time. Although a couple songs veer a bit too close to easy listening for my taste, the album as a whole is a deeply moving experience.

27. Dorian Electra - Flamboyant

Released in an underground pop scene filled with singers and producers indulging in early 2000s nostalgia, Flamboyant is a refreshingly forward-thinking album. At first, it’s hard to tell if Dorian Electra’s music and persona are an act of sincerity or parody. I think the correct answer is both. The character of Dorian Electra uses high camp aesthetics to lampoon gender stereotypes, but it’s also a genuine if exaggerated way of exploring an identity that feels truest to the person behind the costumes and makeup. Their lyrics abound with cliches about manhood, but these familiar concepts are turned on their head to expose the dangers of toxic masculinity (“Man to Man,” “Emasculate,” “Musical Genius”). Other songs are about celebrating queerness (“FReAkY 4 Life”), having fun with gender presentation (“Guyliner”), and reconciling religion with sexuality (“Adam & Steve”). At first, it’s all a bit much, but it’s hard not to be won over by Electra’s theatrical vocal acrobatics and the outlandish production, which is impressive in its own right thanks to producers to watch like umru and Dylan Brady. Flamboyant is an unpredictable experience from beginning to end, which is occasionally jarring but mostly exhilarating.

26. Ezra Furman - Twelve Nudes

Ezra Furman’s last album, Transangelic Exodus, addressed politics via metaphor, following a protagonist on the run from an oppressive society with their angel boyfriend. This time around, to ensure the message comes through loud and clear, Furman takes a more direct route: Twelve Nudes is a self-proclaimed “punk record,” containing songs that are “naked with nothing to hide.” The recordings are raw and in your face, hardly striving for perfection, and the lyrics are incisive and blunt. Ragers like “Evening Prayer aka Justice” and “Trauma” are calls for a disheartened generation to stop watching the world burn from the sidelines and rise up. “I wasted my twenties in submission/I thought I was outside the system,” Furman sings before vowing to “do justice” from now on. “In America” makes the case for a reconsideration of what it means to love your country: “I don’t give a shit what Ben Franklin intended/What some slave owner men said/Well, they’re all dead.” In the midst of this, there’s the disarmingly sweet “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,” where Furman navigates transgender identity (“I was considering ditching Ezra and going by Esme”) and yearns for an uncomplicated relationship without any strings or hang-ups attached: “Maybe, baby, it’s not all about what you thought that you wanted/It’s about the way I can make you feel.”