Best Albums Made by Women (2019)

BEST ALBUMS MADE BY WOMEN

(2019)

In mid-2019 we both realized that this year had been stormed by great albums made by women. 2019 is really all about the feminine in music. This small project is a way to honor this beautiful year. We hope it’s up to the task.

HONORABLE

MENTIONS

Atlanta Millionaire's Club — Faye Webster
While We Wait — Kehlani
The Practice Of Love — Jenny Hval
Cuz I Love You — Lizzo
Remind Me Tomorrow — Sharon Van Etten

TOP

TEN

(10)

JAMILA WOODS

LEGACY! LEGACY!

It may sometimes sound Legacy! Legacy! could easily be a live album, because much of Jamila Woods power comes from her natural singing voice. She merges songs into this continuous jam of R&B, sounding like the band is just following her orders. With free spirit, Jamila conquers the idea of a monologue album as if studio music is as real as a live concert. May sometimes sound like black-music history being retold, but it’s actually brand-new modern R&B being written before our very eyes.

(09)

JESSICA PRATT

QUIET SIGNS

Quiet Signs starts with a song that summons the 1977 Cassavetes’s movie Opening Night. The album uses this citation as a guide, because it alludes the images of a lost woman in a mausoleum of ghosts. Like the picture, this is a work about conflict. They’re very different though, because Opening Night is a masculine vision of pain, where Quiet Signs is a subtle walk into Pratt’s mind. Without blinds she brings us close to her, like talking about romance is not a secret, like singing about lost love is not personal and like broken hearts are forever.

(08)

CAROLINE POLACHEK

PANG

What if pop stars started listening to music through Kate Bush, will pop sound any different? Caroline Polachek tries to answer this question here. Molded by wacky and weird noises, Pang is kind of a strange object. Imagine watching a romcom movie with 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack. Feels cheesy and sound from outer space. Pang is Polachek’s checkmate into pop songwriting. It may look obvious, but it’s just a first impression: the monster comes out when you least expect.

(07)

LITTLE SIMZ

GREY AREA

Is hip-hop really a masculine world? Little Simz certainly make it more feminine. How? Going to places that modern rap simply isn’t able to go. No new gigs, she brings back the old classics. Simz seen very capable to show of her flow and her view of jazz and blues. Her way of singing sure is more flexible and truer than almost all we’ve being exposed in this autotuned obsessed era. Even better: she is a woman rapping about violence & power without the self-indulge macho psychotic way that makes hip-hop so boring nowadays. She writes murder like any big rap act, but in classier way.

(06)

BIG THIEF

U.F.O.F.

People say that listening to Big Thief live is kinda insane, because Adrienne Lenker (the mind behind this indie band) looks like a mad person on stage. Her writing in the album also search for this passionate & feverish persona. In this sense, the rest of the band is free to jam as if this is a live album - which is powerful, because when noise comes in it doesn’t impact us as pure aesthetic, it rises as a way to reveals Lenker’s soul. Small, almost cute, quiet songs become a big apparatus to her emotion. Takes a great artist to sound this gigantic without needing to write big words. That’s why this looks like a definitive masterpiece, because the poetry is so urgent, so real. In this record Lenker embraces lyricism as the only solution to life.

(05)

SOLANGE

WHEN I GET HOME

We feel safe to say that without Solange Knowles music wouldn’t feel so refreshed late in this decade. It’s so rare for an artist to approach such themes and genres with that much confidence. She is not using pop for mere exhibition or revolution, that’s real passion for culture. This record becomes a big epic through Solange’s soft voice. Here melody and rhythm are skin and hair. That’s why it feels so direct, because this is raw, simple. The art of listening this woman sing feels enough.

(04)

WEYES BLOOD

TITANIC RISING

Embracing the whole world, Natalie Mering, offers us her maternal hold and decides to discuss the century’s syndrome: loneliness. Between themes about stars and galaxies and bizarre stuff that would only look mundane in a Murakami’s book, Titanic Rising dive into the deepest feelings of the artist and brings to the surface her most humane anxieties. Inspired by the 60s psychedelia (from Beatles to Kinks), she laid down her delusional voice, covered with layers of smoke, to offers us one last message in this beautiful chaos we call present: “don’t be afraid, you’re not alone”.

(03)

LANA DEL REY

NORMAN FUCKING ROCKWELL

It’s impossible to separate Lana’s narratives from an image of a mythological America: jeans, oil rich boys & movie stars. It’s all there. We know this universe from her other records. Now she focuses on the core of her ideas. Shattered journals, simultaneous kitsch and elegant lyrics, Sylvia Plath and Joni Mitchell, she paints a picture of feminism in pop that is vibrant, emotional and up to any war if it means being free

(02)

ANGEL OLSEN

ALL MIRRORS

Olsen anthem to time and image may hit you like a fearless album. It’s not. Even when she appears to be in full control, All Mirrors exposes her inner demons. Here she decides to pose to the mirror and question beauty, courage, love and pain. Between loud vocals and emotional bass lines, Olsen recreates the forgotten chamber pop. Placing atmosphere and songwriting at the same position, All Mirrors creates a landscape that it’s daring and noisy, but full of beauty. Not the simple beauty. Not the common beauty. But the kind of beauty that would last a century.

(01)

FKA TWIGS

MAGDALENE

Nicolas Jaar’s nocturne production could have overpowered her voice, but that’s not what happens. This is one rare album where the artist interpretation itself is enough. In 9 tracks Twigs give us all: a woman trapped in her bed with her sorrow (daybed), a woman seeking love as cure (home with you), a woman that knows all magic and nourish the soul of her loved ones (magdalene), there is a narrative for every dilemma. Without masks, twigs reinvent the feminine symbol: from the sex to the body, from the soul to the desire. In Magdalene fragility becomes steel.

Listen on Apple Music and Spotify

Listen on
Apple Music and Spotify

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Made with love to all the women in the world by José Gasparian & Pedro Primo.