The 5 Best Albums of 2026... So Far
Counting down my picks for the five best albums from the first half (plus about 15 days) of 2026.
This might not be a universal experience, but 2026 has been a much slower musical year than 2025. This time last year, I was struggling mightily to put together a midyear list. At the end of 2025, it took almost a month for me to compile an end-of-year list that I was happy with, and I tinkered with that list up to the moment I published it. 2026 has had a lot of solid albums, but only a handful that reach the upper echelon of the year’s releases. As such, the top five fell into place pretty easily once I started re-evaluating everything I’ve heard so far. I’m not unhappy with this list at all, as I think that every album here would also stand out if they released in any other year of the 2020s, but I hope that things pick up soon nonetheless. With that being said, let’s get into it.
Honorable Mentions:
Slayyyter - WORST GIRL IN AMERICA
Underscores - u
Isaiah Rashad - IT’S BEEN AWFUL
Kacey Musgraves - Middle of Nowhere
Jill Scott - To Whom It May Concern
5. Vince Staples - Cry Baby
On Cry Baby, his first independent release since departing longtime home Def Jam, Vince Staples makes his literal loudest statement in years. His last few albums were increasingly minimal, with the most personal words of his career coming over similarly understated production. Cry Baby is an album with heavy punk stylings, and over ten tracks clocking in at a characteristically compact 35 minutes, Staples delivers some pretty scathing critiques of the United States’ current political climate, down to the album’s artwork. If you’ve ever read between the lines, Staples hasn’t exactly made his stances unclear, but this is as explicit as he’s ever been in expressing himself.
There’s the police brutality critique on “Go! Go! Gorilla” and the evocative lyrical content of the lead single “Blackberry Marmalade,” where Staples discusses the exploitation of Black culture and reminds listeners that he (or any of his peers) could be killed simply for living. The production behind him makes this album the most urgent his music has felt in years, even if the crux of his observations aren’t that much different than usual.
Yes, Cry Baby can feel cynical at times, which seems like a direct extension of who Staples presents himself as away from his music. As such, it could be an easy album to dismiss at a time where so many are searching for something to believe in. Despite that, it is also 2026’s most essential hip-hop release to this point, and a worthy addition to a highly consistent discography.
4. Jessie Ware - Superbloom
Jessie Ware’s Superbloom is the third installment in what could now be considered a trilogy of excellently made disco albums, following 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels! Good! The album stands alongside the aforementioned Slayyyter album as some of the most endlessly replayable music to be come out of the dance-pop lane this year.
Ware shows her flirty side on the glossy “I Could Get Used to This,” does some yearning on “Mon Amour” and “Love You For,” and even gets genuinely personal on “16 Summers.” The latter details the passage of time, and touches on Ware’s own parenthood, as she has three kids of her own. It’s the most reflective I can remember Ware being, and it stands out in a discography where the majority of her recent work has been for more for clubgoers than anyone else.
As artists grow older and have more life experience to pull from, fans often hope that the music they make reflects where they’re at, instead of where they’ve been. Superbloom feels of the moment, marking the continued maturation of a woman whose best days as a creative mind could very well still be in front of her.
3. Kelsey Lu - So Help Me God
I have a playlist simply titled “Songs of the Year” that I update periodically so that I have a record of the songs that stood out most to me in 2026. Alongside Olivia Rodrigo’s “the cure” (more on that one later), “Reaper,” the opening track from Kelsey Lu’s long-awaited sophomore album So Help Me God, was the quickest addition to that playlist. It’s a sprawling eight-and-a-half-minute epic that begins with Lu’s trademark chamber pop sounds before giving way to something much airier and free flowing. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in years, and quite the first statement to make after being away for most of the last seven years, save for a couple of soundtracks. Seven years is simply too long for an artist of Lu’s talent to be on hiatus, because this is a special album.
So Help Me God deftly makes the most of Lu’s influences, culminating in an experience that is more cinematic in nature than anything else. Lu enlists collaborators like Jack Antonoff, Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and the iconic Kim Gordon to flesh out those ideas. It’s an album that has some stunning high points, beyond its opener. “Running To Pain” feels like something Lorde would have recorded during the Melodrama sessions, while “Comfort” is a track that’s both luscious and intense, seeing Lu attempt to find peace. There’s also “American Sonnet,” another track that runs nearly seven minutes, where Lu’s voice hits intentionally “pitchy” highs that occasionally make them sound like a mix of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom. So Help Me God is a spacious album with no lulls on the tracklist, and a rewarding return to music for one of the most unique individuals to debut in the last ten years.
2. Kelela - new avatar
I’m convinced that Kelela can make just about any type of music she wants to. Her previous work leaned most heavily into the PBR&B sounds that she helped bring to the forefront of the genre in the early 2010s, alongside acts like Tinashe, Jhene Aiko, The Weeknd, and others. Raven, her 2023 comeback statement after a five-year hiatus, felt like it could have come out 10 years earlier and fit right in. But as the genre shifted away from those sounds, it stood out among that year’s releases in the midst of what continues to be an extended down period for R&B. In 2025, she released In The Blue Light, an excellent live album made up of performances from two shows she did at the Blue Note Jazz Club the year prior. Not placing it among the honorable mentions on my year-end list was an oversight.
Now, three years have passed since Raven, and Kelela has traded in the atmospheric nightclub sounds for the most eclectic sounds of her career on new avatar, her third studio album. One could be forgiven for not expecting shoegaze, UK garage, and R&B/neo-soul to not fit together neatly, but it is also quite difficult to doubt Kelela’s artistry after the work she’s already delivered. Produced alongside Oscar Scheller, the pair create magic together, with her vocals and songwriting being the strongest they’ve ever been. There’s the shoegaze-inspired heartbreak anthem “idea 1,” the pulsating “point blank,” and the A.K. Paul-assisted “outta time,” which is also the most explicitly “R&B” song on the album.
The sultry, innuendo-filled duet “the bridge” features PinkPantheress. It doubles as Pink returning the favor after Kelela appeared on her debut album, Heaven Knows. The accompanying music video is equally gorgeous, a given considering its subjects.
Kelela’s made more accessible music in the past. new avatar isn’t inaccessible (though some may be thrown off by its soundscape on first listen), nor is it desolate or cynical in the ways that other albums this year have been (see: Cry Baby), but its downtempo nature and occasional angst feels especially appropriate for where a lot of people currently are. It’s hard to say if this is Kelela’s strongest work to date, but it is one of the most talented artists alive adding yet another fantastic collection of songs to her catalog.
1. Olivia Rodrigo - you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
I reviewed this album at length a couple of weeks ago, so check that out when you finish reading this.
After I heard you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love for the first time, I knew there was nothing else in the running for the top spot. Obviously, it’s impossible to predict what the rest of the year will look like, but I’m not really sure what would have to release for this to not also be my #1 at the end of 2026. Olivia Rodrigo ditched the pop-punk that anchored SOUR and GUTS in favor of new wave and synth-pop that sounds like it came straight from the 80s, complete with an appearance from new wave pioneer Robert Smith of The Cure. The result of said pivot is the best and most cohesive work of her young career.
Split into two sections that come together to tell the story of a romantic relationship that was likely doomed from the start, the album explores the terrifying vulnerability of infatuation on lead single “drop dead” and the understanding that a relationship won’t be “the cure” for her own anxieties regarding love, the latter also being my Song of the Year pick as of this writing. In listening to the album as much as I have over the last month or so, I’m not particularly convinced that Rodrigo has ever been in a healthy relationship.
The most impressive part of Rodrigo’s pivot is that her songwriting is that her songwriting is the most mature and painfully honest it’s ever been. “stupid song” sees Rodrigo deep in the infatuation phase, loving her partner so much that the wordsmith can’t find the words to express it. Near the end of the album, piano ballad “less” details the demise of that relationship, which she desperately wants to hold on to. She implores her partner to “love her less” if it means they don’t have to part ways.
“expectations” and “cigarette smoke” go hand in hand, with the former seeing Rodrigo recalibrate her wants in a relationship and attempt to move on, while the latter shows us that she’s not as healed as first thought. All in all, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is Olivia Rodrigo’s greatest work to date, and I think any doubts about her longevity can be put to rest. Three albums in and it’s clear to me that not only is she here to stay, she’s going to go down as one of the greats of her era.