We've Taken A Vote, Are These The Best Albums Of 2018? We Think So...

Each year, The Music team and contributors take a deep dive into the year that was, scratch our heads and try to jog our memories for what were our top picks of the year. The votes have been cast, the results have been tallied and 2018's best and brightest can finally be revealed, kicking off today with the big one - Album Of The Year.

After losing out in the 2015 The Music Writers’ Poll to Tame Impala’s third record Currents, Courtney Barnett has finally taken its deserved place at the top of the pack with her grittier second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. It’s also the first time an Aussie has nabbed the top spot since the aforementioned Tame win, with important records from Kendrick Lamar and Bowie getting their due in the intervening years.

Another moment: it’s the first time a woman/band with a woman in it has taken the top spot since 2010 when Arcade Fire won for The Suburbs. Interestingly, aside from Tame Impala – and it could be argued that band really is just Kevin Parker - it looks like solo dudes are usually The Music writers’ jam for #1 (see: Kendrick in '17, Bowie in ’16) since 2011. So it’s incredibly cool to see a young woman top the list, especially solo.

Tell Me How You Really Feel has all the hallmarks of a great Australian album; Barnett’s wordy, witty songwriting, delivered mostly in a lackadaisical drawl, interrogating uncomfortable topics like violence against women and bullying online.

While lead single Nameless, Faceless dropped in February, and then the full album in May, it felt particularly of its time when in June, young Melbourne comedian, Eurydice Dixon was tragically murdered in a local park. Inspired by a Margaret Atwood quote, Barnett sings, “I wanna walk through the park in the dark, men are scared that women will laugh at them… Women are scared that men will kill them.”

The whole record is ripe with moments of emotional clarity, and Barnett’s skill as both a shit-hot guitarist and a songwriter are on show, the music taking on more of the darkness and almost garage elements of her live sets. Tell Me How You Really Feel is an artist’s statement, sometimes boiling over with anger on say, I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch, before turning back to the careful study of life’s minutiae on City Looks Pretty and Sunday Roast.

The Presets and DZ Deathrays are the only other Aussie artists to join Barnett in the top ten, at #3 and #7 respectively. The Presets’ electro-dance is some of the best in the country, if not in the world right now, while DZ’s heavy but very fun music is only getting better with every record.

Continuing the run of solo women starting with Barnett, Janelle Monae and Kali Uchis join her as #4 and #5, with Cardi B and Florence + The Machine taking the powerful female artist count up to five in the top ten, which gives us a 50-50 split for maybe the first time. That’s not to say the rest of the top ten is dude-heavy: you’ve got dream-pop duo Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, Beach House, skewing the list even more in favour of young, extremely talented women.

We’d be amiss to not talk about Parquet Courts at #2, the NYC indie band that so speaks to an Australian temperament – it’s the kind of laidback, but weirdly high energy music that helps them fit with our existing surf-garage-rock scene so seamlessly. Finishing up the list is Kanye West, an artist The Music can’t help but love, despite his now very questionable political opinions. It’s not his strongest album but it’s still got bite.