Hey, I'm Brian Hyatt, and this is Rolling Stone Music Now.

I'm in the studio with Rob Sheffield, Brendan Flinkenberg, Brinkinis, and Simon Vosick Levenson.

That's all we could fit, actually.

But we thought we would celebrate the year that just passed again by looking at the best albums of 2018.

Before we get to an album by album sort of breakdown,

we've done this before and usually we end up talking

about what the overall trends look like for the year.

And one thing I'm curious about, where is the year that was 2018, especially in America, this

insane year?

Where are the sort of realities of 2018 reflected if at all

in the music on this list? I'd be curious if anyone has any thoughts on that.

I didn't see too much. The vast majority of like the pop albums weren't really engaging with the news cycle in that kind of way.

I also think that we haven't been in this moment for that long.

I don't think the great art of the Trump age is upon us just yet. I think mostly people are still looking to music to just be music.

If someone like Drake, who's like the artist of the time right now, isn't gonna gonna like he's never been the kind of

person to engage with what's going on in the world he's kind of always giving you

what's going on with Drake and I think a lot of people are kind of following suit even

someone like

Kanye who like is very much commenting on what's going on in the world.

The music doesn't really reflect that. He's really not getting too into it if you

watched him over the past year kind of torch his own reputation and then we're like will he better

Ex played all this with his album you were gonna be very disappointed there were no like coherent thoughts about what he was saying on record.

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