Lists & Guides

Here is a list of albums from vital artists who are supposed to gift us with new music this year; we know more about some than about others, but all of them are making us very optimistic for the future.

The Pitchfork Readers Poll features your picks for the best (and worst) in the world of music, including your choices for Top Albums and Top Tracks, along with Most Underrated and Overrated Albums, Best New Artists, Best Musician Twitters, plus your answers to a number of either/or questions.

Jeff Weiss details Drake’s two high-profile rap wars this year—the hot one with Meek Mill and the cold one with Kendrick Lamar—and how his flouting of traditional hip-hop ethics runs parallel to our accelerating world of nihilist-flavored capitalism.

The best lyrics stick in your head like the best scenes in a movie. To honor some of the most indelible lines of 2015—by the Weeknd, Courtney Barnett, Young Thug, and others—we asked visual artist Laura Breiling to bring them to life.

Marked by the exhilarating formlessness of artists like Arca, Elysia Crampton, and Lotic, this year’s vanguard electronic music resisted bite-sized, EDM-style consumption as it offered an endless malleability that spoke to our culture’s increasingly fluid sense of identity. By Philip Sherburne.

World weary rap courtesy of Vince Staples and Future. Vulnerable folk from Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens. Thundercat and Kamasi Washington’s astral musings. The welcomed comebacks of Dr. Dre and Sleater-Kinney. All of that and more makes up our Top 50 albums of the year.

Here are 20 albums that did not make our Top 50 list but still deserve extra attention, including Fetty Wap’s hook-stuffed debut LP, Lower Dens’ electro-pop surprise, DJ Paypal’s footwork experiments, Jessica Pratt’s acoustic laments, and more.

From Drake's dominance to Adele's return, Tame Impala's blissful psych to Kendrick Lamar's politically charged hip-hop, 2015 marked another diverse and strong year for music. These are our picks for the best songs of the year.

A collection of our favorite quotables from the interviews we did this year, including Madonna on modern loneliness, Earl Sweatshirt on proverbs, Bradford Cox on dogs, Jamie xx on (not) smoking weed, Sufjan Stevens on God, and much more.

Ah, 2015—another year of shocking heartbreaks, childish beefs, and WTFs. We’ve compiled a few of the year's most captivating news stories, from beef wars to unexpected returns, with accompanying comics by illustrator Johnny Sampson.

This year, Pitchfork.tv has brought you all kinds of bingeable shows, from our in-depth look at Slowdive's classic album Souvlaki, to the best live footage anywhere, to Vince Staples talking about why having pets is overrated. Tune in here for the best music you can watch in 2015.

We invited artists to discuss their favorite music of the year—be it a song, album, event, or otherwise. From Holly Herdon’s time in Poland to Fetty Wap’s graciousness over "Trap Queen"’s success, here is Pitchfork’s 2015 Guest List.

From Nicki and Beyoncé’s ecstatic Coachella road trip, to David Bowie’s haunting interstellar hallucination, to Oneohtrix Point Never’s epic LARP-ing battle, to Charli XCX’s psychotic death-by-selfie freak show, to Kendrick’s powerful levitating act, here are our 20 favorite videos of the year.

From pop goddess tarot cards, to presidential Kanye merch, to a pocket synthesizer, to Lana Del Rey paper dolls, to customizable headphones, to a Weeknd-themed vaporizer, we’ve got something for all of the music fans on your list this holiday season.

From house to hip-hop, college rock to techno, bubblegum pop to post-punk, heavy metal to hardcore—here are our favorite tracks of the 1980s.

Some of the year's worthy records that you may have missed, including albums by Joey Bada$$, Hop Along, Sam Prekop, Lakker, and more.

Details on 35 prospective records that are keeping our hopes up for music in 2015, from hip-hop heavyweights Kanye and Kendrick, to welcomed returns from Sleater-Kinney and the Wrens, along with many intriguing collaborations and debuts.

Your picks for the year's Top Albums and Tracks, Most Underrated/Overrated Albums, Best Videos, Best Album Covers, and Best New Artists.