Le londonnien a fait ses armes au prestigieux Collège royal de musique de la capitale britannique. Their screwball energy is still there on Wide Awake, but diverted into a wider range of sound than ever before: bluesy rock’n’roll on Freebird II, a honky-tonk knees-up on Tenderness, punk-funk shimmying on the title track.

Dans Ces cinq garçons ne manquent pas de panache. Lead single Roll (Burbank Funk) plays off a Motown-inspired bassline to create a perfectly condensed three-minute earworm, while slower numbers like Hold On showcase singer Syd’s silken falsetto. La fin de l’an­née et son lot de mar­ronniers : les gens qui se tapent dessus à Black Fri­day, les idées de cadeaux de Noël, les bons plans du Nou­v­el An… Et, bien sûr, les tops. Fans of Metalheadz and classic Warp will find much to love here.Kindness is often wrongly considered a twee emotion, the sentiment of cross-stitched homilies and that weepy girl who sneaks into the reconciliation at the end of Mean Girls. On her second album of sultry, scrunchily funky R&B, Nao writes about the so-called Saturn return: the point around age 27 when the planet returns to the position of your birth and causes spiritual upheaval.
Few artists made a greater leap forward this year than this Norwich duo, who swapped the psych whimsy of their debut for monstrous electronic pop.

Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner, AKA Noname, has carved out a reputation as an heir to the socially conscious lyricism of A Tribe Called Quest ever since her debut mixtape, The 1970s soft-rock spirit of the likes of Nicolette Larson, Carly Simon and Laura Allan fill this sophisticated, superbly written collection of songs – but there are also touches of Haim’s pure pop (on the restless The Fire) and Erykah Badu’s jazz-funk (Hot for the Mountain and Ship Go Down). It’s been a great year for grown-up pop: Florence Welch, the 1975, Lily Allen and Neneh Cherry have all made boundary-pushing albums about, well, pushing boundaries as pop stars over the age of 30. There’s a touch of 60s pop to Charity, while opener Hopefulessness evokes a Kurt Cobain dirge, and Need a Little Time playfully interjects dissonance into Barnett’s sweet chorus. The result is bracing: gothic touches and New Romantic grandeur create the perfect stage for Sivan’s songwriting, often rooted in his experiences of love and lust as a young gay man. “Remember when they used to say I look too mannish?” Before the Bronx rapper released her 2017-defining single Bodak Yellow, she was better known for snatching wigs on the VH1 reality show Love & Hip Hop. Genres. Avec ce nouveau projet, Antoine Valentinelli livre un deuxième disque plus personnel, dans lequel souffle un vent de folie des grandeurs. But that’s the source of Devotion’s intimacy. Matt Helders caresses the drum kit with jazzbo sensitivity instead of pummelling it. Turning the kitsch dance-punk of his band Test Icicles into the off-kilter introspection of his first solo project as Lightspeed Champion, as Blood Orange he now negotiates identity as a black man in contemporary America. Les critiques musiques du « Monde » présentent chacun(e) leurs cinq opus favoris, parmi ceux remarqués et défendus durant l’année écoulée. As a rule, the cheerier songs conceal the bleakest sentiments.

But pop moves fast and a new, woozier kind of tune by the likes of Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa has made such coldly strident numbers seem old-fashioned. Goat Girl’s first release in 2016 lamented: “How can an entire nation be so fucking thick?” Following this pithy post-Brexit-vote line, their debut album continues the disaffection, with singer Clottie Cream drawling through 19 tracks of fuzzy guitar, pounding drums and lyrics taking aim at everything from public transport sexual harassers to the Tories and the DUP, who they suggest could form a pyre in Burn the Stake. But there are moments of pop, too: the gathering rush of the chorus on Woman, a duet with Lana Del Rey, and her authoritative piano ballad cover of Rihanna’s Stay. Lien ... Nos quarante coups de cœur pour des albums parus en 2018. BFM Pratique vous a fait une sélection des meilleurs albums de Rap Français de l’année 2018 >> Retrouvez tous les codes promo Fnac sur BFMTV BFM Pratique Culture

On the razor-sharp songs that make up her Australian trio’s second record—a mix of folk-rock intimacy, punk incision, and loud emo catharsis—she shares her path forward. À 32 ans, Alex Turner a sans doute jugé qu'une mutation était nécessaire. Post-punk, tropical house, We Didn’t Start the Fire-style diatribes, Siri stories, heroin love songs, Britpop anthems, sentimental jazzy reveries: there is no way the 1975’s scattershot third album should work, and yet, thanks to Matt Healy’s endearingly self-excoriating, unashamed presence, the four-piece pull it off yet again. Avec l’année qui tire à sa fin vient le moment inévitable où l’on jette un regard dans le rétroviseur. It hits like a cleansing Atlantic wave to the face, with Alice Merida Richards proposing a lucid, wry feminist utopia mirrored by the luscious clarity of the pair’s take on 80s avant-garde pop.
It is a sadder conclusion than you’d expect from a record perceived as a raunchy flex, but a truthful one: what if self-belief isn’t always enough? Along with the other producers in the PC Music stable, at first, Sophie brilliantly highlighted the euphoria in J-pop and trance – and then, on her debut full-length, invested it all with emotional depth.

The best music of 2018. Tirzah and producer Mica Levi coax the listener into her world with cocooning loops and unobtrusively scratchy electronics that add to her portrayal of imperfection as beauty.

No other woke pop or evisceration of Trump’s America sums up how 2018 frequently felt quite as well as Low’s Double Negative. After providing the saccharine falsetto on Tyler, the Creator’s See You last year and taking a lower register on the G-funk of Snoop Dogg’s On Edge, Isolation sees Uchis in full flow, without the one-verse constraints of a feature slot. Une demi-douzaine d'années à jouer ensemble dans de multiples projets auront suffi à Patrick Hetherington (claviers), Jules Crommelin (guitare), Noah Hill (basse), Louie Swain (claviers) et Anatole Serret (batterie) à ciseler un swing irréprochable.