It seemed like everyone who's anyone released music in 2016. Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Frank Ocean, Kanye West, Rihanna - the list goes on and on. Best of 2016: The 10 Best Albums of the Year But, 2016 was also a year for many new, stellar artists to make their foray into the mainstream. So with that thought in mind, we present to you: Pop's Class of 2016. From rapper eccentric Lil...

Even in 2016, there was music that grounded us and actually made us smile. By default, going forward those same songs might just elicit flashbacks to a year filled with too many musicians moving on to the afterlife, a torturous election cycle and even more mind-boggling election results, but let's just deal with the present for now and put a nice bow on these otherwise perplexing past 12 months. Just...

If there was one bright, uplifting arena in this emotional rollercoaster ride known as 2016, it was definitely politics. Ha ha. Just kidding. We're still standing on a ledge because of all of that godawful mess. No, what really got us through these tumultuous times was music, with its ability to comfort, console and lift our spirits and even break our hearts. Despite the losses of some of the recording...

Silent Shout is our recurring dispatch from pop’s fringes. It may not be music for the masses, but — to paraphrase *NSYNC — this might be pop. The great irony of 2016's biggest TV surprise, Stranger Things, is that it wasn't actually strange. It was quite familiar. The show's entire fabric was weaved out of dozens of references to prior works and a past era, all combined into some Frankenstein...

The trend over the last few years was that EPs and mixtapes were overtaking albums as the true source of experimentation and ambition, demonstrating unfiltered artistic expression that was less beholden to label interests. But in 2016, full-lengths from major artists took the sort of risks you'd usually find buried on B-sides and demos. So in terms of creative independence and challenging the...

2016 was a year of some awe-inspiring artist comebacks. Case in point: Solange and Frank Ocean both returned from their four-year hiatuses and made albums that rocked the world. Fergie put out a song and video about being a proud hot mama, which is kind of a mini-miracle if you think about it. And of course, A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, their...

Pop music in 2016 was a battle between radical paradigm shifters and risk-averse slam dunks. The beginning of the year felt like a new era. Kanye West upended the album rollout process by chronicling it in real time on Twitter. Rihanna proved she wasn't just a singles artist, crafting a surprising and surprisingly subtle portrait of an artist in flux. Beyoncé doubled down on the secret visual album...

No recounts here, folks. In early November, we asked Idolator readers to vote for their favorite albums from the first half of 2016, and followed that up two weeks ago with a poll featuring LPs released between July and December. And now the results are in, the numbers have been tallied and we’re presenting you with the 10 Best Albums Of 2016, as chosen by you! We've already put up our editors' picks...