albums

A hammer can break and it can mend. On the cover of her debut album, With a Hammer, Yaeji wields her own mallet. The Korean-American artist’s face is calm, but the cute smirk drawn on to the tool has an air of playful menace. Is she going to use it to destroy or create? A glance over her shoulder is an invitation for us to follow her and find out.With a Hammer is Yaeji’s debut full-length album, but the 30-year-old singer-producer-DJ spent her 20s becoming a rising star of New York’s underground club scene. Along the way,…

Steps are giving fans an early Christmas present with the announcement that their first three albums will be released on vinyl for the very first time. ‘Step One’, ‘Steptacular’ and ‘Buzz’ will be released on 23rd February 2024 and you can pre-order them now at https://demonrecords.lnk.to/steps. All three albums are available in multiple formats. The 5x platinum debut album ‘Step One’ (1998), 4x platinum and #1 album ‘Steptacular’ (1999) and double platinum album ‘Buzz’ (2000) had previously only been available…

Prior to the release of The Ballad of Darren, Damon Albarn described Blur’s ninth album as “a record that sort of delves into what it’s like to be 55”. But it seems more universal than that, drenched in the horror of realising that time has passed and continues to pass. There’s mourning for the years you’ve already lived and the feelings you’ve long since felt, and anxiety for the years and feelings yet to come. It seems to say that life is long until it’s not, that love is safe until it’s not, that the world is easy to…

When the Ghanaian-American singer, songwriter and producer Amaarae emerged internationally from west Africa’s alté scene in 2020, she told Pitchfork: “I want to be the quintessential African princess of pop.” This year, ahead of the release of her second record, Fountain Baby, she had upgraded her ambitions, stating: “Fountain Baby is a pop album above all else. It should not be pigeonholed solely as an ‘Afrobeats’ project.” Defying limited cultural and social imaginations, confidently stating and fulfilling her desires,…

Olivia Rodrigo imagines punk as it seemed when you were a kid: loud, angry, melodic, giddily girly, the kind of music that Lindsay Lohan played in Freaky Friday and which Josie and the Pussycats used to wake the world up from a state of bubblegum-pop-induced hypnosis. Rodrigo’s firecracker second album, Guts, draws from beloved pop-rock both classic and contemporary – Liz Phair, Courtney Barnett, Weezer – but it feels most indebted to this Hollywood version of punk, which somehow seemed snarlier and snarkier than anything…

As the lines between private and public spaces became ever blurrier, the music of 2023 pondered the meaning of self — who creates it, who defines it, who controls the rights to manipulate it. Here are our 20 favorite albums of 2023, in descending order. 1. SZA, “SOS”Technically, it came out at the tail end of 2022. But SZA does so many things so well on her instant classic of a second studio album — plush R&B slow jams, boom-bappy hip-hop, manicured bubble-grunge pop — that perhaps she knew we’d need an extra…

Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she…

Taylor Swift has been pronounced Spotify’s most streamed artist in 2023 – but now we would like to hear about your favourite album of the year.Tell us your nomination and why you like it using the form below.Share your favouriteYou can tell us about your favourite album of 2023 using this form.Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any…

From Lil Yachty to Olivia Rodrigo, from R&B to indie rock to Afrobeats In 2023, must-hear albums kept piling up at an insane rate. Olivia Rodrigo proved the truth-bomb punk-pop of her 2021 Sour was no fluke. Boygenius blew first-album expectations out of the water. Lil Yachty traded in his boat for a space cruiser. Zach Bryan released an album of deeply personal songs that subverted country-bro masculinity (and still packed arenas). Underground rapper Billy Woods and…

Since iOS 6, you can share albums with friends and family. Then, with iOS 16, Apple introduced iCloud Shared Photo Library, which is perfect for sharing memories as they’re happening. If you’re on a trip, at a family dinner, or just enjoying the holiday season, creating a shared album on your iPhone is the best way to easily offer all these moments to all friends and family members. Here’s how to create shared albums on your iPhone and why you should use this function now. The basics: Shared albums on your…