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Bobbery's Bombastic 2015 (Favorite Albums: 5-1 NOW)
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Number 7!
Blood To Bone by Gin Wigmore
Favorite Lyric: “Give me a lifetime and then fifty more to find the words that will never explain, how I need you, how I see you, how you are everything that I have.”
Album Highlights: I Will Love You, Black Parade, and This Old Heart
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Gin. I’ve always loved how her voice sounds and the songs that she gets right she really does get right. Now I can confidently say she’s given me an album that I just love. Blood To Bone strips back the pop sheen she can have at times, though on some songs it’s still there (for example In My Way and Written In The Water), and goes for a less polished direction than she normally does. With this she also really brings out the emotion here. Like with this album she gets much more vulnerable than she’s had in the past, she focuses more on her own inner emotions instead of being so brash and sassy, especially with This Old Heart and I Will Love You.
While she does go more straightforward there are times that she goes in a more dramatic direction. One of the best examples if Black Parade, a very nice depressing number that’s complete with a nice quirky drum beat and big vocal background harmonies. I think with this album Gin has finally really mastered her craft. Generally I think that’s she’s very hit or miss with her melodies but on this album they all work on every song. Every moment of this album is at least enjoyable if not great.
One thing I’ve mentioned before are Gin’s vocals. I’ve always liked the tone of her voice and it works so well with the music here. Her gravelly voice perfectly complements this album’s more depressive tone. I also love her head voice. It just makes some songs for me, like This Old Heart, because of how emotional it sounds. However, on some songs like Holding On To Hell she sounds sexy as ****. She also sounds so sweet on the albums closer, I Will Love You (seriously I get misty eyed every time I listen to that song). The diversity of this album also keeps me coming back to it, that along with the pure emotion Gin brings, this is really her laying it all bare. This is just a really great album and I think Gin has finally hit her stride with this one.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Number 6!
Blurryface by Twenty One Pilots
Favorite Lyrics: “I don't want to know who I would be when I wake up from a dreamer's sleep”.
Album Highlights: Message Man, Goner, and Polarize.
Twenty-One Pilots had been a name I had heard of before this year, but for some reason I thought they’d be some band from the early 2000’s/late 90’s (  ). Anyway, after seeing some people taking about them on this forum I decided to give their new album a try, and I’m really glad I did. This album is great. Musically it’s an eclectic mixture of electronica, rock, and hip-hop. It’s a sound that I had never at least heard before so for me this album, and the band, have a very unique vibe around them. The songs themselves have very strong and sweeping melodies that are just so easy to get stuck in one’s head. For a rock/indie album it really does have a lot of catchy moments.
The album is a concept album based around the character Blurryface, who is supposed to represent the insecurities of both the lead singer of the album, but also the insecurities of most people in general. The songs revolve around many of the fears and insecurities that younger people have. For example the song Stressed Out deals with longing to return to childhood days in the face of experiencing for the first time just all of the pressures and stresses that exist in the adult world. Admittedly at times the lyrics do tend to lean a bit on the “teenage angst” side at times, they manage to not go too far into melodramatics to avoid going into the same territory as some punk acts fall into.
One thing I really do like is the front man, Tyler Josheph’s voice. His vocals just made everything even better. SO much passion comes from him that he really sells everything he’s singing, even some of the more melodramatic lyrics seem so great and not stupid being sung by him. He really does elevate the material, which by itself was already pretty nice in the first place. Can’t wait for more from this duo.
With that we’re at the top 5! The real grand finale is going down tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who’s followed this thread and participated! 
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bloomers
I would never have expected Conchita  Good choice though the album was great! Conchita sure rose to the occasion 
Piece By Piece is also alright. I love Take You High  She also sounds amazing throughout.
I need to listen to Thunderbitch already  |
Yeah I didn't think anyone would guess Conchita, I'd be shocked if they did. Also, yeah Thunderbitch is most certainly worth a listen to.
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Member Since: 10/13/2003
Posts: 48,022
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Ryn,Kelly & Adele 
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Here we are, the finale of Bobbery’s Bombastic 2015!
Coming in at number 5 is…
In Colour by Jamie xx
Favorite Lyrics: “I go to loud places, to search for someone, to be quiet with, who will take me home.”
Album Highlights: Loud Places, Obvs, and Seesaw.
Jamie xx, former member of the band The xx, came out this year with his debut album, In Colour. I have to say, it’s a very stunning debut, one of the strongest ones of the decade. Jamie stated that when he set out to make the album he did not want the music to sound like it belonged to any particular era, and in that he succeeded. Very little, if any, of this sounds like anything that would have come out before this decade. It is very much an album with a sound that is very unique to this time period, and in a musical climate where it seems like almost everyone is trying to recapture the sounds of old, it’s a very refreshing change of pace.
The music itself is electronica with occasional dance elements blended in. Most of the songs off of the album are instrumentals, so if you’re someone who really values lyricism this may not be the album for you. Only three of the songs off of the album have lyrics throughout the whole song; Loud Places, Stranger in a Room, and I Know There’s Gonna Be Good Times. While the last one, being a party song and all, doesn’t have the best lyrics ever, the former two do contain really great lyrics so for those of you who are lyrically inclined those would be the ones for you.
One very unique thing about this album is that most of the vocals aside from the aforementioned songs are actually samples of things such as a clip off of a British TV show at the beginning of Girl. The album takes listeners through many emotional peaks, some happy and celebratory, and others pensive and gloomy, all the while being very colorful and rich in its production. Oftentimes on repeated listens I would discover elements going on in a song that I hadn’t really heard going on before. Because of that this album was an immense grower for me. It also keeps the album sounding fresh no matter how many times I listen to it, it truly never gets old, not a single song, and that is a very rare thing for me to say about an album. This album very much lives up to its name as whenever I close my eyes while listening to this album I just imagine myself being immersed in an ever-changing and swirling world of color. (I swear I’m not crazy…well…maybe) Anyway, this is a very great album to just lay back and chill to whenever I want to just shut out life for just a while. It is a truly great album and hopefully it’s not another six years (that’s how long it took for him to make this masterpiece) until his next work.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Number 4!
Sound and Color by Alabama Shakes
Album Highlights: This Feeling, Don't Wanna Fight, and The Greatest
Favorite Lyrics: “So please don’t take my feelings, I have found at last”.
So before this year I had never heard of this band before and I’m sad that I hadn’t because they are really good. This album is just amazing. No other way to describe it. This band has a magic together that is just so rare. Musically these people just click together and as one they gifted us with one of the best albums of 2015.
Musically this album is very throwback. It’s very old school blues, rock, and soul, but at the same time it still sounds modern. It really lives up to its name because as an album it’s very eclectic and just filled with all sorts of different sounds and colorful compositions, but at the same time it’s very cohesive. It’s one of those albums that truly walks the line between eclectic and cohesive so well. As an album it has many different moods and moments, some big and dynamic (like the chorus of Miss You), and some more subtle and restrained (This Feeling), and all of these moments work so well.
Lyrically and subject wise this album revolves around a dying relationship and eventually trying to get over the residual feelings when that lover leaves you. There are songs on here about trying to get the relationship back in swing (Gimmie All Your Love and the beginning of Miss You). Some are about self-reflection in the face of new emotions (This Feeling). Some are just about reflecting on the situation they have gotten themselves into (Over My Head). No matter what mood they’re tapping into, there is a very personal feel about the lyrics. You can tell that personal experiences inspired them. Sometimes they’re quirky “I’m going to miss you and your Mickey Mouse tattoo”, most times they just cut deep “I walked, I wept enough, I turned the desert into sea”.
Finally I can get to the vocals of the lead singer, Brittany Howard. Lord, this woman has got to be one of the best singers nowadays. She can sing with so much power in her voice, she can sing with so much restraint in her voice, but the thing with her is no matter what she’s singing there is always just so much emotion in her vocals. If anything they are what really make this album, and this band’s music in general so great. While their melodies and productions are great, Brittany’s voice just makes their words come to live. This album is just filled with her belting, cooning, cooing, and what have you. Sometimes it’s the big dramatic belting that can get to you or the soft and restrained head voice that can get to you, no matter what gets to you, she will have it in her arsenal and will use it to get to you. With this album you can just feel her pain and confusion and lost as she’s trying to get over whatever lover inspired this album. To me it’s one of the best breakup albums I’ve ever heard and Brittany’s vocals have a lot to do with that. In the end this is just a phenomenal album and from a band that really does deserve all the acclaim they get.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Number 3!
Vulnicrina by Bjork
Favorite Lyrics: “You fear my limitless emotions. I am bored of your apocalyptic obsessions. Did I love you too much? My devotion bent me broken so I rebelled, destroyed the icon”.
Album Highlights: Black Lake, Family, and Notget
This year brought to us the return of Bjork with her ninth studio album, her first since 2011’s Biophillia. This was the first Bjork album I had ever listened too, and I have to say I think it is probably her best work. I’m not alone on this as many critics agreed that this is her best work in a decade and would rank highly among her already lauded discography.
The album was inspired by her breakup with Matthew Barney. In contrast to her previous album this album was based around much more raw and vulnerable emotions rather than abstract concepts. This album is indeed very raw. Lyrically this album is step above most breakup albums as Bjork gives us a myriad of emotions for us to take in as she write about her anger, frustration, a refreshing sense of self-awareness about her own role in the break up, and the healing process. The lyrics are both complex at times when the album calls for it, but simple at others. In honestly it’s the simple lyrics that are more profound as they just cut to the heart of the matter and do it so beautifully.
With help from producer Arca the album is very heavy with string instrument arrangements, leaving the album to have an almost “classical” vibe in places along with Bjork own trademark electronic beats. The music does an incredible job setting the emotional tone for the album, being more despairing in songs that are mean to be so and upbeat and light towards the end when Bjork sings about letting go of all her negativity. All of this is capped off by Bjork’s vocals, which are just so drenched in emotion throughout the whole album. She is singing her heart out and just feeling everything that’s being written. She takes listeners in and just forces them to feel what she was feeling at the time. This album is just a rollercoaster of emotions that’s just an amazing ride to experience.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Number 2!
CollXion I by Allie X
Favorite Lyrics: “It’s high-risk, not hopeless, I’m conscious, when this is over, when this is over, I’ll still be letting it grow”.
Album Highlights: Catch, Prime, and Tumor
CollXion I is the debut EP by indie pop artist Allie X. According to her it’s the first of many CollXions. Allie began putting her name out there last year with the release of Catch and Prime as singles in the effort to drum up hype for her EP. All of that hype was worth is as Allie released one of the best bodies of work in 2015, and in my opinion of the whole decade.
The album is a collection of eight songs all of which are very much pop in purest form, with 80’s era flavoring thrown in. It’s a collection of songs that are filled to the brim with brilliantly catchy choruses and salacious verses. Seriously, each of these songs are just so addictively catchy, Allie truly has a gift for crafting melodies that don’t leave the brain for quite a while after listening to them. Good thing they’re all so good or I would be very annoyed by this.
The subject matter of the ep is love, particularly that of dealing with a very tumultuous relationship. The big booming beats and simmering melodies of the album do indeed hide some dark lyricism. Allie herself said that the album was influenced by her interest in medicine and the macabre, that that shows in the words she writes for these songs, they are especially prevalent in the vengeful anthem Catch where her love for the person she’s writing about is compared to that of a bad heroin trip. However, despite the darker subject matter in most of the songs, not all of the songs are secretly unhappy. Two songs off the album, Hello and Sanctuary, are much more positive. Hello is about falling for flirtation and starting a new relationship while Sanctuary, is about Allie saying that despite the problems she is having with this person that this is a person she can run to and find peace with. However, with the re-release now featuring the greatness that is Never Enough I feel like this album has the perfect closer now. When paying attention to the lyrics of the album it’s quite obvious that whatever relationship inspired this album was not a healthy one, so I think that it’s very fitting that it ends on the note of admitting that the relationship just does not seem to be working out “choking on the ashes of burning love” as she put it, and that if this is love then it will never be enough for her.
In all this is a glorious piece of pop music that has a darker edge to it than other typical pop fare that is just such an addictive trip from beginning to end. I’m very much looking forward to the future CollXions from Miss X.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Well here we are at number one! What album was crowed number one?
Number One!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Glitch by VV Brown
Favorite Lyrics: “Will you chase mountains, will you be tough, will you stay forever, will you sacrifice and give it all up, so don’t let go, you can climb that mountain.”
Album Highlights: Lazarus, Fractured, and Will You Wait
V V Brown’s third venture is an album that brings to us songs with dark electronic beats with trip-hop and occasional rock influences all topped off with V V’s beautiful, emotionally drenched vocals. One thing to note about them is that she loves to make use of her head voice (not that it’s a bad thing, her head voice is angelic). The subject matter is just as dark as the beats are at times with some songs dealing with themes such as calling out the negatives of a capitalistic society and being torn apart by materialism. A lot of this album revolves around V V’s negative emotions she felt throughout her time as a mainstream act who was steeped in Hollywood politics. This album is such a great journey that starts us off with the ambient Bells, in which she samples Buddhist chants, it does a great job setting up the tone the rest of the album will carry. Glitch has highlights throughout the whole thing from the first half having the perfect 1-2-3 punch of Lazarus, Fractured, and Instincts (no other album this year has had as great of a 1-2-3 combo like that to me), to the second half having amazing tracks such as Flatline and Talk About This. All of this epicenes ends in the beautiful ballad Will You Wait where V V asks herself will she fail or will she make it and reassuring herself that she will, it just makes for a wonderful emotional crescendo.
I should mention that V V’s style of lyricism isn’t for everybody. She avoids going for the poetic and just gets straight to the point of what she wants to say, often very bluntly and plainly. No floweriness with her, which is just fine with me. Instead she goes for the punches and I love that about her.
One thing that really impresses me with this album is that it truly is V V perfecting her craft. After releasing a debut album of material that wasn’t that true to herself she began her evolution into who she wanted to be with her sophomore Samson and Delilah. She basically expanded upon the dark electronic sound present in S&D and added in the trip hop influences present on Glitch. While S&D is good and there are some amazing moments on that album, there were some misses, this album not so much. All of the tracks (well except a useless outro track in the middle of the album) are well crafted and enjoyable at the worst and glorious at their best. They all hit the marks with what they want to achieve, whether it’s to be an incredible bop (Talk About This), to make an emotional statement of vulnerability (Will You Wait/Space to Breathe), or just to be a strange otherworldly experience (Lazarus/Ultraviolet). With Glitch, V V has made a remarkable statement of her talent and what she has to offer us as an artist.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 43,104
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I need to listen to that Brandon Flowers album. I expected PXP to be higher tbh.
Love that you wrote in depth write ups for each album
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Member Since: 2/11/2008
Posts: 10,964
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For a moment I thought that was Natalia Kills.  Your 21P write-up.  They are really great, and the whole concept from the album is good. Don't know why people are now degrading them to Halsey level just for being popular on Tumblr, but well.
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Member Since: 5/23/2007
Posts: 65,087
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Blurryface  I absolutely love that album! every track is flawless 
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Quote:
Originally posted by ClarksonSlays
I need to listen to that Brandon Flowers album. I expected PXP to be higher tbh.
Love that you wrote in depth write ups for each album |
Thanks for the priase about the write ups. That took so much time to do
As for Kelly, I'm a bit surprised to where she wound up too. When I originally drafted this list she was in the top ten (at like 9 or something). But as I went about my listen to give these albums one last listen before finilizing this list I kept having to up albums above hers. PBP while I do think it's a better album than this fourm and even her base gives it credit for being, it really doesn't deserve as much hate as it gets, does have a few clunkers that drag it down for me overall. None of the albums above it have a song on it that can be described as bad, IMO anyway, so they win for consistency of quality.
Quote:
Originally posted by D/X
For a moment I thought that was Natalia Kills. Your 21P write-up. They are really great, and the whole concept from the album is good. Don't know why people are now degrading them to Halsey level just for being popular on Tumblr, but well. |
TBH I've never really listened to Natalia outside of Wonderland.
However, I do agree with you about being confused to the backlash Twenty-One Pilots is getting, I get not being into their music but some people are doing way to much with them.
Quote:
Originally posted by AshleeSimpsonFan
Blurryface I absolutely love that album! every track is flawless |
Thanks! It's a very great album.
Also, I've updated the OP with a full version of the lists. Doing this countdown was a lot of fun, time consuming, but fun. Thanks to all those who participated with either commenting or even just looking through the thread.
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Member Since: 2/5/2014
Posts: 29,111
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Surprising top 3  and great top 5
I have had the VV album on my list for awhile and have been meaning to get to her, which is a travesty since I like her other two albums  I'll prioritize that.
Nice albums, great taste too! Although, I'm not too surprised since you're named after one of the best Paper Mario characters.
I salute you Admiral.
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Member Since: 10/5/2009
Posts: 137,162
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Blue Neighbourhood  So so so amazing. Fantastic debut LP from Troye.
Piece by Piece is cute Maybe a tad too high, but overall it's nice.
The Fool It's just... everything. Absolutely everything. Masterpiece tbh.
Blurryface is good I like the singles more than the actual album, but I can't complain about much. It's a good introduction to their music as it's the first release I listened to from them.
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Member Since: 3/14/2013
Posts: 37,294
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PBP so low...sis 
But yay @ Allie 
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 61,634
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25 and Conchita's album have some good songs
The Fool I like about half the songs on it 
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Member Since: 7/10/2008
Posts: 13,417
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Blurryface
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,512
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bloomers
Surprising top 3 and great top 5
I have had the VV album on my list for awhile and have been meaning to get to her, which is a travesty since I like her other two albums I'll prioritize that.
Nice albums, great taste too! Although, I'm not too surprised since you're named after one of the best Paper Mario characters.
I salute you Admiral. |
Wait you're a Paper Mario fan too?! Awesome!
Also, yes you need to get onto VV"s album. It's so great.
Quote:
Originally posted by Remmy
Blue Neighbourhood So so so amazing. Fantastic debut LP from Troye.
Piece by Piece is cute Maybe a tad too high, but overall it's nice.
The Fool It's just... everything. Absolutely everything. Masterpiece tbh.
Blurryface is good I like the singles more than the actual album, but I can't complain about much. It's a good introduction to their music as it's the first release I listened to from them. |
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, I need to try and get into the Pilots other albums more. I've listened to them but not enough to really let them sink in yet.
Quote:
Originally posted by Legend E
PBP so low...sis
But yay @ Allie |
Like I told ClarksonSlays I'm shocked where Kelly ended up too.  Still a great album though.
Quote:
Originally posted by K$Ellie
25 and Conchita's album have some good songs
The Fool I like about half the songs on it |
Yeah, I was shocked at Conchita's album tbh. Also, which half of Ryn's album 
Quote:
Originally posted by las3horas220
Blurryface |
Thanks!
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