The classic year-end lists from major publications bring us ever closer to the new year ahead. This time, it was Rolling Stone that shared with the world the 50 best albums of the year – check out the full list here.
With pop, R&B, and hip-hop dominating the list, some big names in rock made their mark on the highly anticipated count. Check out below who secured their spot, in what position, and what the magazine editors had to say about it.
45) AC/DC,
Power Up Aside from a few flourishes – the elegant riffs on the opening track “Realize”, a poignant chorus from Brian Johnson on “Through the Mists of Time” – AC/DC’s 17th studio LP was traded with exactly the same cocky, arena-ready hard rock that Angus Young and company perfected 40 years ago on Back in Black . As with that album, a triumph that defied death after the loss of original singer Bon Scott, this one showed that recent difficulties, including the passing of co-founder/mentor Malcolm Young and Johnson’s temporary departure due to hearing problems, haven’t left much of a mark. Standout tracks like “Shot in the Dark” and “Witch’s Spell” delivered that old AC/DC emotion – and brought home once again that no other rock band has done more with less.
40) Paul McCartney –
McCartney III Restless in lockdown, Paul McCartney began visiting his UK studio and getting to work. Without a band, McCartney had to rely on himself: playing drums, guitar, bass, piano and more, even layering tracks himself. The result is his most adventurous solo album since Chaos and Creation in the Backyard . McCartney channels the 'back-porch' charm of 1970s McCartney on “The Kiss of Venus” (which he wrote after leafing through a book on constellations) and “Lavatory Lil,” a turbulent blues that follows in the literary tradition of “Pam Polythene” and “Mean Mr. Mustard.” At 78, McCartney still seems vital and comfortable taking risks, especially on “Deep Deep Feeling”; he twists knobs and layers of tape to create a psychedelic epic.
12) Bruce Springsteen –
Letter to You The young Bruce of yesteryear blends freely with the modern icon of today on the introspective Letter to You, a particularly revealing album for Springsteen that shows him playing hopscotch around important periods of his career. He confronts the ghost of his teenage rock group, the Castiles, on the elegiac “Last Man Standing,” leads an early version of the E Street Band on the lost 1970s track “Janey Needs a Shooter,” and confronts the autumn of his years – he is now 71 – on the strangling “Ghosts.” But this isn’t Springsteen switching off – it’s a letter of intent to keep rocking, as long as the spirit of the night allows.
4) Bob Dylan,
Rough and Rowdy Ways When Dylan returned from the shadows this year, almost a decade had passed since his last album of original songs (the grumpy Tempest from 2012). During that time, he sang some pop nonsense, won a Nobel Prize, and sharpened his blade. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a lyrical tour-de-force, full of outrageous jokes (“My Own Version of You”), playful boasts (“I Contain Multitudes”), and irreverent tributes to the greats who came before him (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”). He is haunted by the ghosts of the 20th century and has leaped into the absurdity of surviving into the 21st. Beneath it all, there is a sense of melancholy that peaks in the sublime end-of-the-road ballad “Key West.” Astonishing in their own right, these songs add up to Dylan’s funniest, most surprising, and multidimensional album since Love and Theft .
READ ALSO: Bob Dylan earns a spot on The Guardian's list of the best songs of 2020.