Tonight’s list is what all of the music lovers fight over every December. 2016 has been a terrible year, but it was a great year for music.

I don’t mean “BEST” albums of the year (though I do note one album as my best of the year). Just ones that really meant a lot to me.

I wrote in-depth reviews for 5 albums and have listed down another 5 albums (plus a bonus). They’re presented in no particular order. Enjoy!

Colouring Book (2016) – Chance the Rapper

This is the album I kept coming back to this year, and thus, probably my favourite album of the year. Released in May 2016, Coloring Book (2016) was the album of the spring. Then it became the album of the summer, with tracks like “Summer Friends”, “All Night”, and “No Problem” fueling the dance vibes in the Toronto heat. But then I kept playing it through the fall and up to now in December.

Chance released the mixtape independently and for free yet again, showing that it is possible to achieve success in the music business without the support of traditional institutions of the industry: record labels and distributors.

What Chance does best is channel millennial nostalgia in his music to evoke emotion. In his song “Same Drugs” – which isn’t about drugs – he uses the movie Hook and the story of Peter Pan and Wendy as a metaphor for growing up and friends growing apart. On “Sunday Candy”, Chance sings about going to church with his grandma. Alongside the Harry Potter and The Lion King references on “How Great,” and the memories of summers past on “Summer Friends,” Chance taps into the collective memory of our childhoods.

The album is a testament to this young 23-year-old’s hard earned wisdom and growth. And he was rewarded with seven Grammy nominations: three for Coloring Book, three for his contributions to Kanye’s The Life of Pablo (2016), and one for “Best New Artist”. He deserves these nominations and hopefully winning these Grammy awards for his standout album.

22, A Million (2016) – Bon Iver

If I had to choose one album that was the best of 2016, it’d be Bon Iver’s 22, A Million (2016). It starts by warning us that it might be over soon. Clocking in at a total running time of just over 34 minutes, a five year wait for Bon Iver’s latest album is over and perhaps too soon. But within those 34 minutes is the culmination of over a decade of works by Justin Vernon. It’s also his best work yet.

22, A Million is a dense and cryptic musical work that demands interpretation and tests our sonic musical palate. Trying to impose meaning onto the album seems impossible. However, saying it is “difficult” would be evading the challenge that Vernon poses.

The more I listen to the album and attempt to understand it, the less I am able to grasp it. But look past the esoteric song titles and arcane lyrics, past the jagged electronic textures and dark imagery and you’ll find extraordinary beauty in Bon Iver’s vulnerability. The album ends with the lines, “Cause the days have no numbers. Well it harms it harms me it harms, I’ll let it in.” While it might sound like the acceptance of the end of days, it’s also a call to just let the music hit you emotionally instead of rationalizing it. In that agony, you might find magnificence.

Secret Path (2016) – Gord Downie

Cover Art: Secret Path, for Chanie Wenjack. By Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire

This, I think, is the most important album of the year. Gord Downie’s Secret Path (2016) tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, an Ojibway boy who had run away from one of many Canadian Residential Schools and whose body was found days later next to CPR railroad track. He just wanted to return to his father, and instead he died tragically – cold and alone. The album brings to life an important part of Canadian history that needs to be remembered: the legacy of the Indian Residential School system and the attempt to systemically conduct “cultural genocide” against Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

Downie’s masterful songwriting retells Chanie’s story with heartbreakingly emotional storytelling. At times it encapsulates Chanie’s defiant and persevering nature, proclaiming “I will not be struck.” The last song, “Here, Here and Here” showcases Chanie’s final moments, breaks my heart every time when he sings, “I hurt here, here and here… I died here, here and here.”

The Life of Pablo (2016) – Kanye West

Kanye West has had a rough year, but his album The Life of Pablo (2016) is one of my favourites of the year.

We should talk first about the changes he’s made to the album since it’s been released. He’s amended the album multiple times since the initial release that has created the perception that the release was botched, but I think he’s created an interesting concept of a “living album”. It seems almost as if the album is naturally evolving. It’s an interesting concept now that streaming services have proliferated in their use, that artists could just change their album and no one would notice immediately that something had changed.

From the very beginning, Chance the Rapper steals the limelight as he delivers a show-stopping guest verse on “Ultralight Beam” — a contribution that has gotten him a few Grammy nominations. But Kanye ultimately returns as a lyricist on this album, after the experimental nature of Yeezus (2013). On “No More Parties in L.A.” Kanye shows off his skills as an emcee and matched with the usually better Kendrick Lamar. “I know some fans thought I wouldn’t rap like this again but the writer’s block is over, emcees cancel your plans,” Kanye raps on the track.

His lyrics are still as self-aggrandizing, ridiculous and ludicrously hilarious. On “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” he starts off his verse saying, “Now if I fuck this model and she just bleached her asshole and I get bleach on my T-shirt, I’ma feel like an asshole.” In the famously controversial song “Famous”, he reignited his feud with Taylor Swift with the lines, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous (Goddamn).”

But Kanye again shows how self-aware he is as a complete asshole. The song “I Love Kanye”, he takes on the persona of a fan saying “I miss the old Kanye… I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye”. He talks about his struggles with mental health and his use of the antidepressant Lexapro on “FML”.

The Life of Pablo is an album with a lot of depth and encapsulates a lot of his previous work into one record. I think it ranks among my top 3 favourite Kanye West albums, and certainly deserves a spot on my favourite albums of the year.

Farewell, Starlite! (2016) – Francis and the Lights

This album is my pick for most underrated of the year. Pitchfork panned the album. But it’s a danceable record that rewards multiple listens. The synth and the bass hit particularly hard, in a good way. Every time I listen to this album, I want to get up and just start dancing, but I also feel the emotion in his voice — and that always means a lot to me when it comes to music. If I can feel the emotion and it’s genuine, it’s better than a better composed song with an inauthentic feeling.

On “MAY I HAVE THIS DANCE?” Francis and the Lights croons, “We’re about to inherit the sins of our parents.” For some reason, it’s one of my favourite lines of the year. On “MY CITY’S GONE” he laments the disappearance of the place he once knew. It reminds me of a more sombre version of LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.”

The single from the album, “FRIENDS” was sampled on Chance the Rapper’s “Summer Friends” and has one of the best music videos of the year. Kanye West makes an appearance, just nodding his head while Francis dances around the studio. At the end, Justin Vernon joins Francis in a choreographed dance sequence that just feels oddly satisfying. And that’s perhaps what I can take away from the album: it’s oddly satisfying and works in a way that I can only barely articulate.