Albums got shorter and longer, jazz came back again, and our cups ran over with killer music from Janelle Monáe, Idles, Mitski and more. See our top 10 albums below
• Read the Observer critics’ review of 2018 in full here
Not a year goes by without the music industry undergoing rapid change. This year, the UK’s biggest-selling album wasn’t by Ed Sheeran, Adele or even George Ezra, whose Staying at Tamara’s came second; it was a film soundtrack about an American circus impresario (see Turkey on my list) – a populist cultural phenomenon you could say was endemic in our times (if you weren’t over-fond), or confirmation of a renaissance in the musical form (if you were). “What a terrible time to be alive if you’re prone to overthinking,” Ezra reckoned. Or Mamma Mia!, as the fourth best-selling album of the year had it.
Did this mean that the death of the artist album, so long foretold, was finally upon us? Not quite. But things happened to the formats we listened to in 2018 – disruptions led by US hip-hop. As radio play lost ground to streaming in the US this year, songs were unhitched from the format determined long ago by 45rpm vinyl. Songs seemed to get shorter – the better, some believe, to keep our attention in the competitive churn of Spotify, or to rack up greater numbers of individual streams to maximise chart positions, or to compete with other distractions (or all three).
Dance Like Nobody Is Watching 