Ones I've liked this year are:

Paramore
Twenty One Pilots
Fall Out Boy
Bo Bruce
Little Boots
She & Him
Demi Lovato
Stooshe
Tom Odell
The 1975
London Grammar
Jessie J
Lorde
Miley Cyrus
Cassadee Pope
Eliza Doolittle
Katy Perry
Lady Gaga
Little Mix
Rebecca Ferguson

You have to expand your radar to find good music.

Goldfrapp's album is amazing.

Albums that I've really enjoyed this year:

Once I Was An Eagle - Laura Marling
Paramore - Paramore
Volume Three - She & Him
AM - Arctic Monkeys
PRISM - Katy Perry (this took a few listens. I wasn't totally sold at first)
Love Lust Faith + Dreams - Thirty Seconds To Mars
Same Trailer, Different Park - Kacey Musgraves
Annie Up - Pistol Annies
Little Letters - Paper Aeroplanes
Living For The Weekend - The Saturdays

Pet Shop Boys and Alison Moyet were my favourites this year. Robbie, Bastille, Hurts, Disclosure and Cher also have a lot of love from me too.


I listened to this on Spotify and found it's incredible boring, but I saw it on offer in HMV yesterday so I'm going to give it another go. I might not have been in the right frame of mind when I first listened


Initially yes, but ARTPOP is growing on me. It's not a patch on BTW or The Fame, but it went from being about 3/10 to around 7.5/10. Jewels and Drugs is utterly abysmal and shouldn't have ever seen light of day!

Prism has hardly any catchy tracks so I find it a chore to listen too. It just plays in the background. The last couple of tracks on the special edition are pretty good though.

Yes, I do. I couldn't be more disappointed in these albums if I tried. I think PR hype is a big part of the problem - these artists really art built up so much it's almost impossible to live up to what's expected.

Thanks everyone for listing some of the artists you've enjoyed this year. Some are unfamiliar to me so I will check them out an give them a chance. Others have had so little promo I had no idea they had an album out. So I'm glad I started this thread.

Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira, HAIM, Stooshe, CHVRCHES, Lady GaGa, Little Mix... it's not been a bad year!!

I meant Lady Gaga/Miley Cyrus/ Robin Thicke /David Guetta mainstream and most of them aren't particularly mainstream but have a lot of buzz, which is different.

Arctic Monkeys - AM
Fall Out Boy - Save Rock & Roll
Panic! At The Disco - Too Weird To Live, Too Rare Too Die
Paramore - Paramore
Bastille - Bad Blood
Imagine Dragons - Night Visions
Avenged Sevenfold - Hail To The King

Been a good year for albums for me.

Spotify is great for listening to albums before you buy them.

It's actually great for listening to albums released in any year you like, never mind 2013. The whole of music seems to be on there, and surely one definition of 'new' in this context is that you haven't heard it before.

I might hear an album from, say, 1975 on Spotify by an artist I've never heard before, but have seen recommended on a forum or something, and it becomes a new album to me. This is how I discovered the 70s band Fox, for instance, whose album was one of my favourites from a couple of years ago, despite having been first released 2 years before I was born!

There's been some brilliant albums this year. I've literally listened over and over again to Exile by Hurts. I also love Bad Blood by Bastille and CHVRCHES album too.

I've thought that every year since the 70s

At least as far as pop genre go...

For me i have had many albums i have LOVED and think in time will continue to be great too...these are

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (a modern classic IMO)
Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady
Solange - True EP
Blood Orange - Cupid Deluxe
Lady gaga - ARTPOP
Charli XCX - True Romance
Disclosure - Settle
David Bowie - The Next Day
Britney Spears - Britney Jean
Boards of Canada - Tomorrows Harvest
Kendrick Lamar - good Kid Maaad City

2013 has been a fantastic year for music in my opinion, though possibly not for mainstream, mega-popular music.

Phoenix - Bankrupt!
Charli XCX - True Romance
Disclosure - Settle
Robert DeLong - Just Movement
Lorde - Pure Heroine

...are all fine albums, whilst I found:

Classixx - Hanging Gardens
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
Gold Panda - Half of Where You Live
Kanye West - Yeezus
AlunaGeorge - Body Music
CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe
The Range - Nonfiction

to be EXCELLENT albums that are all at least 9/10 for me.

I love 2013 for music.


Wow we've got similar tastes hahaha I really like the albums I've put in bold, and I'm in the process of deliberation of choosing a pile of albums to get for Christmas for my good self and the ones that are underlined are definite possibilities!

Although ARTPOP was, for me, underwhelming ( and as a Gaga fan I'm a little at saying that) as a start to finish album, which is how I listen to music

Aftershock by Motorhead is brilliant, also Re-mit by The Fall was good. Push Away the Sky by Nick Cave too.

Albums I've enjoyed this year:

David Bowie - The Next Day
John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts
Agnes Obel - Aventine
Elvis Costello & The Roots - Wise Up Ghost
Laura Veirs - Warp And Weft
Goldfrapp - Tales Of Us
Bill Callahan - Dream River

Any year that the Thomas Was Alone Soundtrack came out couldn't be too bad.

2013 has been a fantastic year for new music. At least I think so.

Although, to be fair, none of it has come from the major record labels and none of it got anywhere near the charts.

I agree with OP slightly.
The big commercial stars have had so much hype around their material yet for me, it also hasn't lived up to the hype.

Jessie J - Alive (I can't say enough how disappointed I am with this album. I was willing to let it grow on me but sadly I've given up!)

Justin Timberlake - 20/20 Experience (Mirrors such a great song to this day but the album is all a bit BLAH!)

Lady Gaga - Artpop (Gypsy deserves to be a massive success for her but the album itself is chaos)

Britney Spears - Britney Jean (The woman needs to divorce Will.I.Am ASAP, the man does her no favours!! Her album has disappointed me greatly.. On further listens it might grow on me but I really think it could be her worst album yet)


I know Katy Perry - Prism has divided people but for me she has produced a more mature sound. Her album is the surprise hit of the year for me. Legendary Lovers, Ghost, Black Horse, It Takes Two.. All screaming to be singles. Commercially, this is how its done!!

The best album of the year.

Do you have any reccomendations in particular? I'm very curious.

Huge let down of a year in terms of albums. I always make a list through the year of the albums i want and then i put them into two different categories of whether i liked and purchase or whether i didn't. The latter list is so long. I have found myself liking albums i was never originally that excited for.

I never thought i would ever do this, but Britney Jean is the first ever i will not be buying from her. It has been my huge let down of the year. It is a production and creative mess.

I feel the same way about it.

Good year for singles, bad year for albums.

I've really enjoyed the album releases this year from such folk as Drake and Lorde as well as (don't hit me) that Kanye album.

I would agree, there have been some brilliant Rock albums released this year across all genres (and sub-genres!).