2020

 I thought I started strong with introducing myself to new music this year. Right from January, I started following albums of the month lists and I thought I did find some good new albums. But then the pandemic happened and most albums were postponed so they could be released when touring was again possible. I don't think many people realised just how long it would take until that happened, so many of these albums were released later in the year anyway. In any case, when the pandemic started, I lost my momentum in looking for new albums. I got occupied by recording my own album and somehow I felt more comfortable listening to those old favourite albums of mine. I also listened to a lot of old jazz this year as I was reading more than ever and needed instrumental music in the background. Around the end of November, I started investigating albums I had missed this year. It proofed much more difficult than I had imagined to find good albums. There were good individual songs here and there, but it was kind of difficult to find albums that would've worked in their entirety. I still think this wasn't one of the best years in music, but I think I did manage to find a nice collection of albums to this list. Many of these only opened properly after listening to them many times. Only time will tell if I keep listening to these in the longer term.

2019

I’m a bit late to release my favourite albums of 2019. This is because when the year was coming to the end, I felt like I hadn’t paid enough attention to the new albums to come up with a good top10 list. It’s not that I haven’t heard any good new music, but compared to earlier years, I’ve had less time to listen to music. Partly this is because I started a new job where I have less time than before to listen to music while I work. My feeling is that 2019 was quite a good year in music. This is a list of good 10 albums from that year, but I can by no means claim that these are the best 10 from that year, since I feel like I haven’t spent enough time exploring what’s out there. Still, I want to get this out there. This year's list includes lots of country, Americana and folk sounds. It's probably not that fashionable at the moment, so it tells a lot more about my personal taste at the moment. There are also quite a few female singer-songwriters on this list. Some of the years on this blog have been quite male-dominated, so I really welcome the new wave of excellent albums by women.

2018

I just looked at my previous posts in this blog and it seems like Brexit has been the defining theme in the last couple of years. There's still no clarity of what will happen and it seems that time is running out with very little progress made. Personally, this has been a bit better year. Lots of great trips, lots of great gigs, and some professional advances. I have been really busy with my other music blog about my record collection, which means that I have mainly listened to old albums. I have enjoyed the nostalgia of it, but it means I haven't spent as much time finding new music. I think it shows in this list. I had difficulties in finding 10 albums for this list that I really like. My research for them, however, introduced me to some excellent new albums.

2017

The promise wasn't good for the year 2017. I just re-read my post from last year and I feel like, despite of all the misery that has happened in 2017, no other year can be as bad as the year 2016. There seems to be a bit of new hope in the world now. I guess people have woken up to the awfulness that followed the Brexit vote and Trump's election. In music, many of these greatest albums touch on last year's events. I have found some amazing new artists, there are some phenomenal come-back albums and just generally really good new music. I haven't been quite as active in searching for new music this year, so it was a bit more difficult to compile this list of ten best albums, although, the top 5 was pretty clear for a while. There are various different styles in this list and it's difficult to say what would really be the correct order for these, but each one of these albums has offered some great emotions to me personally and that's why they've ended up in my top ten this year.

2016

All in all, I'm sure we can all agree that the year 2016 has been a really awful year. A series of terrorist attacks, deaths of pop-icons, mistreatment of refugees, war in Syria and in Ukraine, Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism and racism around Europe have all defined this year. When it comes to music, there were quite a few excellent albums coming out. What surprised me was that many old music legends made really good albums this year. I wasn't expecting anything from these artists anymore and that's probably why I was so excited to be proofed wrong. There are some albums from those legends on this list along with some new discoveries and some more recent indie artists that surprised me with a fresh new album. I'm hoping, if anything good will come out of this year of misery, is a bunch of good music and art in general. So my expectations for the next year are quite high already. But let's move on to this year's list.

2015

The year 2015 has been quite a good year in music. Many familiar artists and bands have made good albums, but there have also been some long-awaited debut albums and some surprisingly good albums from artists that have not hit the jackpot before. On my list, there's some jazz, dream pop, folk, indie rock, psychedelia and singer-songwriter stuff. I had to leave quite a few good albums out of this list, but then again, I wasn't too disappointed, since the ones on the list really are more interesting. This year I haven't been as active than maybe before in finding everything that's out there, so I may well have missed something.

2014

The year 2014 has been a bit of a disappointment in album releases. Where 2013 was one of the best years of all times, in 2014 I had to really search for albums that would really be something exiting. There were a lot of albums from bands that have been generally really good, that now released very indifferent albums. Then again, this list also includes some surprises. Bands I did not particularly care for before surprised me with great albums. The genres range from psychedelic rock to indie rock, Krautrock, post rock and folk. What strikes me in this list is that the bands are from very different areas. There are albums from UK and US, but also from France, Finland, Germany and Ireland. But enough general talk, here's my list of the best albums in 2014.