Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 by 
RockyRaccoon 
Also check out my 2016 Honorable Mentions chart: http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=30948
- Chart updated: 07/11/2023 16:15
- (Created: 01/08/2016 15:21).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 10 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 has an average rating of 93 out of 100 (from 24 votes). Please log in or register to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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When I first heard White Lung's last album, Deep Fantasy, I thought that the band had incredible potential. The album was so aggressive, so fast and frenetic that you almost felt like you ran a marathon by the time it was over. It was aggressive punk music with rapid guitar licks and powerful vocals. Now, with Paradise, White Lung take the next step towards greatness. This album is just as powerful and crazy as Deep Fantasy was, but more anthemic and at times, a little more scaled back. The guitar work is the best part for me, it's fast-paced, technically impressive, and can really make each song. Mish Barber-Way's voice is fantastic on this, and she's able to have a punk attitude while still maintaining a melodic voice. You can tell White Lung is moving forward with their sound on this album, they even have a ballad in "Below", they're not afraid to slow it down a little, but they still maintain the power and attitude that their previous albums have had. It's a high-octane album, but it's worth it.
[First added to this chart: 07/01/2016]
2
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Karl Blau has an expansive discography to say the least. He's ventured into just about ever genre you can imagine. From afrobeat, to lo-fi, to folk, to post-punk, Blau has tried just about all of it, but with this album, he introduces himself to the world as a cowboy. Normally, I'm a little wary of cover albums, but Blau has put together ten country songs written by the likes of Tom T Hall, Waylon Jennings, and Townes Van Zandt, and made them into something of his own. Blau diving into country music feels right, the guy can sing it with the best of them, and this album feels like it could slot right in with any other country album out there.
[First added to this chart: 07/27/2016]
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I think what I love best about this album is how loose it feels. It feels very improvisational, like no one song is completely committed to any singular idea. The music feels loose, but in reality, the band is incredibly tight. They play off each other exceptionally well. They seem to be a group of musicians who love making pop music but like to incorporate other influences as well. The first half of this album is the best, in my opinion, "Hatimanin" into "Light" is probably the best two tracks on the album, then a couple tracks later, we probably get the next best track on the album, "Jewels Of Crime". The only knock I would have against this album is that some of the songs go on a bit longer than they need to, but it's not enough to detract from the album in any meaningful way. Overall, it's a really really good indie psych blues album.
[First added to this chart: 02/18/2016]
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Brooke Waggoner is kind of all over the place. This album never settles, it's constantly changing and evolving. From straightforward rockers to lush, orchestral pop. In most cases, that might make the album sound disjointed, but Waggoner guides you through it as it slowly shifts so that by the time you hit the closing track, you realize you're listening to this beautiful orchestral pop song and you're not 100% sure how you got there but you did, and somehow it all makes sense. Waggoner's lyrics are honest and simple, and the music is intricate and exceptionally well-composed, making for an exceptionally interesting album.
[First added to this chart: 02/19/2016]
Year of Release:
2016
Appears in:
Rank Score:
2
Rank in 2016:
Rank in 2010s:
Average Rating:
Comments:
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Really interesting and virtually impossible to describe album. It's metal, I can tell you that, and it's black metal (sort of). Perhaps psychedelic black metal would work best? Whatever you want to call it, it's good. Oranssi Pazuzu build their songs around repetition, and that repetition (usually present in their riffs) serves to draw you in, and then slight variations happen. Buildups of harsh vocals, synths, more guitars, strange sounds, are all slowly added in so that by the time you get to the end of a song, you're not quite sure how you got there, you just know you're there. The album is full of trippy jams, warm synths, great buildups, and it makes for a very unique and engaging listen.
[First added to this chart: 03/03/2016]
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Omara Moctar (aka Bombino) hails from Niger, and has made his way into the American music scene. With this album, he pairs up with Dirty Projector's Dave Longstreth to create a desert blues album that is fantastic. Longstreth does a good job with the production, the focus of this album is on Moctar, his guitar and his voice, little else. The instrumentation is fairly sparse, and that's good, because Moctar is a seriously good guitarist, and that definitely needs to be the focus here. There's little more than Moctar's guitar, double-tracked, and a drum kit. If you're a guitarist, like I am, you'll probably love this, because the skill that Moctar has is incredible. He's not a shredder in the traditional sense of the word, he's a picker, and he plays these intricate, complicated, and yet beautiful licks on guitar that will fascinate you and hypnotize you. Whether he's doing some fast finger-picking like on "Naqqim Dagh Timshar" or some 70s-style blues rock like on "Iyat Ninhay/Jaguar", he does it all with ease and incredible skill.
[First added to this chart: 04/08/2016]
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For this album, James Hinton took a bunch of samples from random videos on YouTube and created beats around them. That sounds weird on the surface, and it sounds like it would make for a really choppy album, but it doesn't. Rather, it almost sounds like a digital field recording, like Hinton was walking through some public space recording what he heard and made music around it, and in a way it is. These are videos that people just put up on YouTube for whatever reason and were seen by virtually no one. But Hinton saw them, and he used them and turned them into collaborative art, even if the collaboration on the part of the YouTuber was unintentional. It makes for a really interesting listen, and Hinton's music is excellent, deeply rooted in house music, full of piano loops, drum pads, and various other things. It feels like Hinton crafted each song to accompany the YouTube samples, and that's what makes this such a fascinating listen.
[First added to this chart: 03/29/2016]
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On this album, Tim Hecker plays around with the human voice. That's what's at the heart of this album, voice. He went so far as to bring in composer Jóhann Jóhannsson to make some choral arrangements for him, which were chopped up and edited by Hecker after recording. The result is a fluid, beautiful work of art that explores the depth and the possibilities of the human voice. The beauty of Tim Hecker's work is that it's deep and powerful, but it never takes itself too too seriously. Hecker always has an air of levity to his music, it's still fun while simultaneously powerful. It's a fascinating work and really intriguing.
[First added to this chart: 04/25/2016]
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The Soft Bounce defies a specific genre bracket. You can point out different influences, but it's hard to specify one particular genre. It's somewhere between 60s psychedelic and house music, and if that sounds strange, it's because it is. For being such an odd album though, it's remarkably accessible, it never gets so crazy that it's hard to listen to, but it stays interesting enough to be engaging. It's a strange album, but a great one, and one that you really just have to listen to to understand.
[First added to this chart: 09/16/2016]
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Teen Suicide has essentially said that this is the last album they're doing. They broke up a while back and only did one more album because the fans wanted it, and there's a sense of finality to this. It's ambitious, it's a 68-minute lo-fi LP, and that could easily be too much for these guys, but it isn't. The album never feels like it's too long, there's no fat to trim here, which is hard to do on a double album. You can hear the indie rock influences for Teen Suicide, bands like Pavement, Pixies, Elliot Smith, Modest Mouse, are all obviously here, but Teen Suicide never falls into the trap of trying to sound just like any of them, they're still uniquely themselves. This album is vulnerable, it's emotional, but it still doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's that balance that makes this such a good album.
[First added to this chart: 04/25/2016]
Total albums: 100. Page 7 of 10
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Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 composition
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
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| Jefre Cantu-Ledesma | 1 | 1% | |
| Jenny Hval | 1 | 1% | |
| BadBadNotGood | 1 | 1% | |
| Blood Orange | 1 | 1% | |
| Daniel Lanois | 1 | 1% | |
| Mist Of Misery | 1 | 1% | |
| Atlanter | 1 | 1% | |
| Show all | |||
| Country | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
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53 | 53% | |
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12 | 12% | |
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9 | 9% | |
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6 | 6% | |
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4 | 4% | |
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3 | 3% | |
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3 | 3% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 chart changes
| Biggest fallers |
|---|
| Down 1 from 87th to 88th The Grander Voyage by Netherbird |
| Down 1 from 88th to 89th Telefone by Noname |
| Down 1 from 89th to 90th My Woman by Angel Olsen |
| New entries |
|---|
 My Thoughts On Youby The Band CAMINO |
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RockyRaccoon (2023)Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 ratings
93/100 (from 24 votes)
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this chart. | Show all 24 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
100/100  | 04/21/2024 20:36 |  HoldenM | | 95/100 |
90/100 | 04/21/2024 11:02 |  Tamthebam | | 85/100 |
90/100 | 04/21/2024 10:10 | Johnnyo | | 80/100 |
 100/100 | 02/13/2022 13:19 |  sszwalbenest | | 79/100 |
| 100/100 | 01/19/2021 19:09 |  LedZep | | 84/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some charts can have several thousand ratings)
This chart is rated in the top 1% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 93.3/100, a mean average of 95.4/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 96.5/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 7.8.
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Top 100 Music Albums of 2016 comments
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100/100
From 
ForegroundNoise 02/17/2020 08:20
ForegroundNoise 02/17/2020 08:20
Comprehensive, detailed, varied. It boggles my mind how a single person can know a year so intimately. This is more than just an assembled list; each album has clearly been given due attention before its placement. There's just the right balance of familiar and obscure too, a surprise from someone whose overall chart has a fair bit of classic rock. This might as well be from a one-man music publication - I'll be sure to pay your charts more attention in future!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From 
JulianR 03/09/2018 08:10
JulianR 03/09/2018 08:10
What a fantastic chart!
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 
Daydreamer 04/14/2017 15:08
Daydreamer 04/14/2017 15:08
This is great, I love the fact that you rate acclaimed and famous albums and the unknown ones the same. I hope to learn from your charts since I've never heard about a bit portion of stuff here.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
95/100
From AMBNTnoises 11/11/2016 14:59
There are a lot of fantastic albums on this chart, and a lot that I have to go listen to. Based on the albums that I have listened to on this chart, I'm excited to check out the other bands listed.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
Graeme2 10/12/2016 07:09
Graeme2 10/12/2016 07:09
Plenty to check. Very handy with the all the info too. Good stuff.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
70/100
From 
mickilennial 06/10/2016 14:57
mickilennial 06/10/2016 14:57
"This is an album that sounds like maybe it's at peace with itself" - probably because it's Richmond Fontaine final album? :F
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
70/100
From mickilennial 06/07/2016 18:10
mickilennial 06/07/2016 18:10
There's a lot here for me to look into, and already a bit I disagree with. Seems like it could be particularly interesting how this shifts as the second half of the year comes through. Will be looking through this lots.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From RockyRaccoon 05/05/2016 14:53
RockyRaccoon 05/05/2016 14:53
@dbz - dude that's awesome, lucky you.
And yes you need to check out that BJ Chicago Kid album, I'm interested to see what you think.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From RockyRaccoon 03/24/2016 18:16
RockyRaccoon 03/24/2016 18:16
u da best apple
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
100/100
From 
Applerill 03/24/2016 13:41
Applerill 03/24/2016 13:41
y r u so smrat :'(
I was originally rating this so you could eventually rate my 2016 chart, but your comments once again show that I'm not worthy. Amazing job, Rocky, especially as your picks are just as extraordinary as what you write about them.
Helpful? (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
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