What Is 2018's Most Iconic Album?

Lost in the annual end-of-year ranking of, well, everything, is the reality that every year is not equal. Take music. Some years you get Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Magical Mystery Tour, The Velvet Underground, Songs of Leonard Cohen, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, and The Doors. And other years you get Silent Shout by The Knife (no disrespect to The Knife).

So far as albums go, 2018 was, above all, strange. It was a year that saw the form taken to its maximalist and minimalist extremes; if a record wasn’t seven songs, it might as well be 25. The majority of pop’s biggest stars released music in 2018, and most of it was… pretty forgettable. But 2018 was also a year in which new voices emerged, in which the boundaries of genre continued to dissolve, and in which female artists in particular made work that powerfully addressed a turbulent moment.

All of which begs the question: 50 years from now, supposing for a moment that the planet is still intact and content is still in demand, what albums will our grandchildren write retrospectives on? Which of the best albums of 2018 will stand the test of time, influence how future music is made, and prove to be iconic? To find out, we surveyed 15 music writers, artists, and others in the industry. Tellingly, there wasn’t much consensus.

Lucy Dacus (musician):

Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour

I'm likely not the only one, but I think Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves will stand the test of time, not only because of the music itself, but because of the important function it played this particular year. This album is the bridge many of us hope to find between us and our families, between country and songwriter rock, between coastal culture centers and the American South. [Musgraves] never comes close to preaching, and yet her message of allowing for awestruck wonderment is clear. I think many of us are relieved to get the invitation into her mindset and her world, which is magic and flowers, love and long walks. In truth, on first listen I thought certain lyrics were corny, but I realized that was more about my occasional cynicism than her writing, and the strength of her positivity in these songs luckily won out. I reach for [Golden Hour] now when I feel myself slip out of love with the world, knowing it will guide me back.

Nile Rodgers (musician, Chic):

Anderson .Paak, Oxnard

There’s only one Anderson .Paak. He’s worked incredibly hard over the last four or five years to get to the point where his is the name on the tip of everyone’s lips and Oxnard feels like a classic that will be remembered for the rest of his career. He and Om’Mas Keith killed it with “Tints” and Kendrick’s contribution is one of his finest. Great songs, great musicianship and so 2019 at a point when very few records have people playing on them! Anderson and I wrote for a week at my home away from home—Abbey Road Studios—earlier this year and we had everyone from Bruno Mars to Disclosure dropping in to participate. One of those songs “Till The World Falls” with Mura Masa, Nao, and Vic Mensa made the new Chic album, It’s About Time. At one point in the song Anderson ad-libs “YES LAWD” and that’s how I feel about him!

Lizzy Goodman (author, Meet Me In the Bathroom):

Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy

With albums like [Beyonce’s] Lemonade or [Taylor Swift’s] 1989, there are these massive events that change the culture, change the way other music is getting made, and I think that Cardi's record is that. There are about a million reasons why it's a phenomenon and why it changes things in [music]. For one, this is a reality TV star and an internet phenomenon who then became [a rap star], and the reverse cycle of that is new. To my mind, the commercial success of that album is astonishing—the records it's broken, and her being the first solo female rapper since Lauryn Hill to have a Billboard #1 single. But it's also a super fucking tight, incredibly inspired, multi-layered piece of intricate, pretty unique hip-hop. I think there's a long list of under-acknowledged female voices in hip-hop. But as a fan, you're always waiting for someone to do what you always knew was possible, which is to roll in and just take it over and have a voice and vulnerability. Cardi is occupying a space that belongs uniquely to her.

Charli XCX (musician):

Tommy Cash, ¥€$

Tommy Cash’s album ¥€$ because he is a three dimensional artist who is ahead of his time both visually and sonically.

Harry (musician, Superorganism):

MGMT, Little Dark Age

I think that Little Dark Age will come to be seen as the record where MGMT managed to coalesce everything great from their previous work into a classic record. They've got the bombastic should-have-been-a-hit of "Me and Michael," the nihilistic ‘60s psych of "When You Die" and "Hand it Over," and their best opener since "Time To Pretend" in "She Works Out Too Much." I hope the album represents the beginning of MGMT finally being liberated from the shadow of their early hits to own the bizarro psych pop lane they have ruled in my brain since 2008.

Steven Hyden (author, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me and Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock):

Justin Timberlake, Man of the Woods

The album that comes immediately to mind is Man of the Woods—not because it's great or innovative or hugely popular or any other positive reason. I predict that Man of the Woods will be iconic for accidental and largely negative reasons. It's a half-hearted stab at a country-music crossover in which one of the world's biggest pop stars literally sings about flannel. It will seem both hilarious and emblematic of the 2010s to future generations. Our kids and grandkids will reference Man of the Woods in the way that millennials and Gen-Z occasionally snark about Garth Brooks' Chris Gaines era. And culture writers will write anniversary pieces that attempt to link Timberlake's "log cabins and facial hair" iconography to the rise of white nationalism during the early years of the Trump administration. Some of this will be fair and some of it will be hyperbole—the reality of Man of the Woods is that it seemed to fall into a memory hole almost immediately after it was released. I bet that you're mildly shocked that this album actually came out in 2018. It's a pretty forgettable record. But at some point, it won't be. It will in fact be one of the only albums from 2018 that anyone still talks about, precisely because it seems so utterly average now. It's a signpost for our contemporary malaise.

Nate Chinen (editorial director, WBGO):

Ambrose Akinmusire, Origami Harvest

This is an album by a jazz trumpeter that synthesizes experimental hip-hop and contemporary chamber music and electronic music. We've seen a lot of attempts to combine jazz and hip-hop or jazz and electronic music or what have you. And some of them are great. This is an album where that combination does not seem to be the point. It's just a means to an end. The album is extremely stylistically thoughtful, and impossible to categorize anyway. Not only do you not see the seams, it feels like this thing is a new alloy. It's like a gleaming thing that just is of itself. But it's also an album that very clearly speaks to a social political moment that's still totally urgent, which is the violence committed against people of color by our institutions, and especially against black men, by the police. There's a lot about what it means to move through the world as an African American man in America. And so it's related to similar ideas that surface on the Childish Gambino album and in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. It's a very sophisticated and pointed and purposefully unsettling experience topically. And that strikes me as really important. And I think the ringing urgency of the themes on this album will age well.

TT Torrez (music executive, Hot 97):

Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Everything Is Love

I think that when you look at what Beyoncé and Jay-Z did with their album, to me that's a classic album. When you think about touring 10 to 15 years from now, they can still tour off those records because those records were so iconic and the production quality of that album was really good. And the overall concept of that album was amazing. I love the fact that they meshed their talents together, for one. And it was a very culture-driven album. It had a lot of things that was very cultural and relatable. It was very rap-rooted. I loved Jay-Z's gems on the album and how he talked about being financially free. There are so many great moments.

Craig Jenkins (music critic, Vulture):

Mitski, Be the Cowboy

I had an internal dialogue a few weeks into listening to the Mitski album Be the Cowboy, and really just being swept away by it. I tried to remember what it felt like, as a kid in the early alternative rock years, to have a flawless album drop onto your head. It felt like I was getting it from Be the Cowboy, the giddy rush of a volley of airtight hooks, the deer-in-the-headlights freeze when a lyric hits too close to home, the failing quest to find fault or error. I think what is going to make Cowboy feel epochal in the future is a very modern sense that everyone is playing life and love as they lay—sorry, I had a big Joan Didion kick this year—and a deep, numb sadness. I think we're going to look back on this year and wonder how we got into it and how we got out of it, and I think those are the root questions these Mitski songs are asking. Classic sentiment, you know? "What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."

Skylar Grey (musician):

Post Malone, beerbongs & bentleys

It epitomizes the zeitgeist of where hip-hop has evolved to; the music, the audience, and its culture. In 10 years no one will be able to argue he didn’t take the crown of of the class of 2018—a new era is upon us.

Dave 1 (musician, Chromeo):

Nu Guinea, Nuova Napoli

When this first came out I thought it was a compilation of rare Neapolitan disco gems. Turns out it's a bunch of Italians living in Berlin who made the most authentic disco album in years. Obscure vocalists and musicians from Naples complement their impeccable songwriting and production chops. And of course it's all in their native dialect. The true classic of 2018 may be Gunna and Lil Baby's Drip Harder, but if I had my way, this gem would sit right alongside it.

AJR (band):

Panic! At the Disco, Pray for the Wicked

Panic! has had such a rollercoaster of a career and this latest album has the production, the songwriting, and the quirky singles to give it staying power. Brendon Urie puts on an impassioned live show, constantly reinventing himself to both fit into the mainstream and stand out as uniquely himself. He does the same with Pray for the Wicked. In "Say Amen (Saturday Night)," he reaches back to his alternative roots. On songs like "High Hopes," his pop sensibilities and big brassy production open the door to new people discovering (or rediscovering) the band. This album has something for everyone and that is what will give it the staying power it deserves.

Snail Mail (musician):

Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour

I know very little about music journalism/music criticism/what makes an album important in the long term, but I think Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves deserves to be called iconic and will hopefully outlive us all!

Shira Knishkowy (director of publicity, Matador Records):

Neko Case, Hell-On

I don’t know that this will happen, but I think that Neko Case’s Hell-On should be referenced 20 years from now and continue to be important, kind of like how Liz Phair’s Exile is referenced to this day (it celebrated its 25th anniversary this year to much fanfare), and continues to be a major inspiration for young female songwriters who feel like they can do or say whatever the fuck they want, the patriarchy be damned, because Liz paved the way. But I digress. Though I haven’t heard Case say it directly, I think Hell-On's a response to the Trump era, and it nods to climate change. It’s brave and the lyrics kind of scare me sometimes, that’s how bold they are (“God is a lusty tire fire” is an iconic line). It’s a feminist masterpiece, with lines like “I fucked every man that I wanted to be.” Case is crass and freaky and dark and we need an album like this in our lives. All of us.

MØ (musician):

Santigold, I Don't Want: The Gold Fire Sessions

Santigold is a unique artist—the COOLEST artist. I've always been massively inspired by her and I have been jamming to her new album I Don't Want: The Gold Fire Sessions all summer and fall. I think it embodies everything I've always loved about Santigold—her twisted melodies, cool production, high energy, and vibrant lyrical universe. Yet at the same time it all feels new and fresh to the ear. I love that there's an undertone of political messaging on this album and I think that's so important in today’s musical landscape. I get excited and inspired when I listen to it, and I still do now after having listened to the full album maybe 30 times. To me, this album is already a classic.