Seemingly ever-dwindling attention spans have given commentators anxiety that people simply won’t care to engage with albums anymore. But time and again, artists have proved that they’re still committed to using the format to communicate a Big Idea, make a creative pivot, or announce a new chapter in their career. The album is still the most coherent way for us to understand where music culture is in any particular moment.

Indeed, as you can see from this list, pop music has gone country. Not only do the Billboard receipts and Beyoncé’s sprawling Cowboy Carter bear this out, there are copious twangs, pedal steel weeps, and pastoral narratives infecting indie music too (see Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch and Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood).

Beyond the country craze and several major returns to form from long-absent or fallow major talents, our list is marked by a dystopian air.