Year-End Lists

A hand-curated, browsable index of notable year-end lists. Follow the link for each list to see essential commentary from its author, at the source.
Movies TV Shows Music Books Poetry Podcasts

Highlights

2018 Music

Fact: Best Albums of 2018

13 December 2018

Power - Lotic

Fact Magazine: Best Albums of 2018

[see also 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

  1. Power
    Lotic
  2. Make Me Know You Sweet
    Pendant
  3. El Mal Querer
    Rosalía
  4. Debiasing
    Barker
  5. Nasty
    Rico Nasty
  6. DNA Feelings
    Aïsha Devi
  7. Unfold
    Gábor Lázár
  8. Whack World
    Tierra Whack
  9. Queen of Golden Dogs
    Vessel
  10. Miro Tape
    Duppy Gun
  11. Body Mods
    LSDXOXO
  12. soil
    serpentwithfeet
  13. Devotion
    Tirzah
  14. Animus
    Debit
  15. Some Rap Songs
    Earl Sweatshirt
  16. Another Life
    Amnesia Scanner
  17. The Midnight Orchard
    Neville Watson
  18. Safe in the Hands of Love
    Yves Tumor
  19. Turning Points
    Renick Bell
  20. Invasion of Privacy
    Cardi B
  21. Gave In Rest
    Sarah Davachi
  22. Ephorize
    cupcakKe
  23. Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
    Sophie
  24. Inner Worlds
    TSVI
  25. Somewhere Decent To Live
    Space Afrika
  26. Colt
    Hilary Woods
  27. Human Lines
    Astrid Sonne
  28. 13th Month
    Kelman Duran
  29. SlimeBall 3
    Young Nudy
  30. Beacon
    Tess Roby
  31. Period
    City Girls
  32. Sanguine Bond
    Beta Librae
  33. Silk Eternity
    Martyn Bootyspoon
  34. Isolation
    Kali Uchis
  35. Die Lit
    Playboi Carti
  36. Sonder Somatic
    Bruce
  37. Low Power
    H.Takahashi
  38. In a Poem Unlimited
    U.S. Girls
  39. Raw Silk Uncut Wood
    Laurel Halo
  40. K.T.S.E.
    Teyana Taylor
  41. Adoration
    Cecilia
  42. Compro
    Skee Mask
  43. Working Class Woman
    Marie Davidson
  44. Stadium
    Eli Keszler
  45. Punken
    Maxo Kream
  46. Organ Dirges 2016​-​2017
    Kali Malone
  47. Patina Echoes
    various artists
  48. Always Yours
    Chevel
  49. Double Negative
    Low
  50. Caution
    Mariah Carey
2018 TV Shows

Variety: Daniel D’Addario: Best TV Shows of 2018

13 December 2018

Daniel D’Addario: Best TV Shows of 2018, as published by Variety

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2016]

  1. Pose
  2. The Americans
  3. Westworld
  4. Sharp Objects
  5. Patrick Melrose
  6. Atlanta
  7. Homecoming
  8. Maniac
  9. Barry
  10. Queer Eye
2018 Music

Spin: 51 Best Albums of 2018

13 December 2018

A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships - The 1975

Spin: 51 Best Albums of 2018

[see also 2021 • 2020 • 2010s • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2012 • 2011]

  1. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
    The 1975
  2. Be the Cowboy
    Mitski
  3. Golden Hour
    Kacey Musgraves
  4. Freedom
    Amen Dunes
  5. Negro Swan
    Blood Orange
  6. Some Rap Songs
    Earl Sweatshirt
  7. Double Negative
    Low
  8. Daytona
    Pusha T
  9. Honey
    Robyn
  10. Age Of
    Oneohtrix Point Never
  11. Wide Awake!
    Parquet Courts
  12. Caution
    Mariah Carey
  13. In a Poem Unlimited
    U.S. Girls
  14. Lush
    Snail Mail
  15. Sweetener
    Ariana Grande
  16. Nasty
    Rico Nasty
  17. Knock Knock
    DJ Koze
  18. Die Lit
    Playboi Carti
  19. Room 25
    Noname
  20. Isolation
    Kali Uchis
  21. Invasion of Privacy
    Cardi B
  22. MIH-TY
    Jeremih & Ty Dolla $ign
  23. Whack World
    Tierra Whack
  24. Veteran
    JPEGMAFIA
  25. Saturn
    Nao
  26. Sparkle Hard
    Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
  27. Chris
    Christine and the Queens
  28. Gangin
    SOB X RBE
  29. Devotion
    Tirzah
  30. Singularity
    Jon Hopkins
  31. God Level
    03 Greedo
  32. Parts
    Ohmme
  33. Ultraviolet
    Kelly Moran
  34. Voicenotes
    Charlie Puth
  35. Cold Devil
    Drakeo the Ruler
  36. Dirty Computer
    Janelle Monáe
  37. Care for Me
    Saba
  38. Universal Beings
    Makaya McCraven
  39. Ventriloquism
    Meshell Ndegeocello
  40. Safe in the Hands of Love
    Yves Tumor
  41. Hope Downs
    Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
  42. MITH
    Lonnie Holley
  43. soil
    serpentwithfeet
  44. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
    Deafheaven
  45. Edgewood
    Trouble & Mike WiLL Made-It
  46. Record
    Tracey Thorn
  47. Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides
    Sophie
  48. Tell Me How You Really Feel
    Courtney Barnett
  49. Ephorize
    cupcakKe
  50. Still Trippin'
    DJ Taye
  51. Hell-On
    Neko Case
2018 Poetry

Entropy: Best Poetry Books & Poetry Collections of 2018

13 December 2018

Entropy: Best Poetry Books & Poetry Collections of 2018, "in no particular order"

[see also 2019 • 2017]

  1. Ghost Of
    Diana Khoi Nguyen
  2. American Letters
    Works on Paper
    Giovanni Singleton
  3. If They Come for Us
    Fatimah Asghar
  4. Trickster Feminism
    Anne Waldman
  5. feeld
    Jos Charles
  6. Letters to the Future
    Black Women/Radical Writing
    Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin (editors)
  7. Junk
    Tommy Pico
  8. Not Here
    Hieu Minh Nguyen
  9. Feeling Upon Arrival
    Saretta Morgan
  10. Lo terciario
    Raquel Salas Rivera
  11. Be With
    Forrest Gander
  12. Outside Of The Body There Is Something Like Hope
    Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
  13. Age of Glass
    Anna Maria Hong
  14. Surge
    Etel Adnan
  15. Soap for the Dogs
    Stacey Tran
  16. The Desert
    Brandon Shimoda
  17. The Undressing
    Li-Young Lee
  18. Brown
    Kevin Young
  19. City of the Future
    Sesshu Foster
  20. Registers of Illuminated Villages
    Tarfia Faizullah
  21. New Poets of Native Nations
    Heid E. Erdrich
  22. Some Animal
    Ely Shipley
  23. Autobiography of Death
    Kim Hyesoon
  24. Crosslight for Youngbird
    Asiya Wadud
  25. Dark Hour
    Nadia de Vries
  26. Sheep Machine
    Vi Khi Nao
  27. I Don't Write about Race
    June Gehringer
  28. Inside Song
    Steve Dickison
  29. Cruel Futures
    Carmen Giménez Smith
  30. Indictus
    Natalie Eilbert
  31. Lucy 72
    Ronaldo V. Wilson and Lucy
  32. Moon
    Letters, Maps, Poems
    Jennifer S. Cheng
  33. Eye Level
    Jenny Xie
  34. Screwball
    Anne Kawala
  35. Dear Angel of Death
    Simone White
  36. Nepantla
    An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color
    Christopher Soto (editor)
  37. Landia
    Celina Su
  38. I Think I'm Ready to See Frank Ocean
    Shayla Lawson
  39. Don't Let Them See Me Like This
    Jasmine Gibson
  40. New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña
    Cecilia Vicuna
  41. To Afar from Afar
    Soham Patel
  42. When the Bird Is Not a Human
    HR Hegnauer
  43. At Your Feet
    Ana Cristina Cesare
  44. Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold
    Dorothy Chan
  45. For an Ineffable Metrics of the Desert
    Mostafa Nissabouri
  46. all this can be yours
    Isobel O'Hare
  47. Cruel Fiction
    Wendy Trevino
  48. Not My White Savior
    A Memoir in Poems
    Julayne Lee
  49. Attendance
    Rocio Carlos & Rachel McLeod Kaminer
  50. Orient
    Nicholas Gulig
  51. Nerve Chorus
    Willa Carroll
  52. the length of this gap
    Kristen E Nelson
  53. I Have Never Been Able to Sing
    Alexis Almeida
  54. The Boneyard, The Birth Manual, A Burial
    Investigations Into The Heartland
    Julia Madsen
  55. Holy Moly Carry Me
    Erika Meitner
  56. Isako Isako
    Mia Ayumi Malhotra
  57. Book of Cord
    Leona Chen
  58. Terrible Blooms
    Melissa Stein
  59. Real Life
    An Installation
    Julie Carr
  60. Obtuse Diary
    Amelia Rosselli
2018 Books

Paste: Best Books of 2018

13 December 2018

Circe - Madeline Miller

Paste Magazine: Best Books of 2018, Novels and Nonfiction

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2010s • 2017]

Novels

  1. Circe
    Madeline Miller
  2. The Incendiaries
    R.O. Kwon
  3. The Poppy War
    R.F. Kuang
  4. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
    Hank Green
  5. Warlight
    Michael Ondaatje
  6. Crudo
    Olivia Laing
  7. All the Ever Afters
    The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother
    Danielle Teller
  8. Girls Burn Brighter
    Shobha Rao
  9. The Friend
    Sigrid Nunez
  10. Melmoth
    Sarah Perry
  11. Southernmost
    Silas House
  12. The Calculating Stars
    Mary Robinette Kowal

Nonfiction

  1. Educated
    Tara Westover
  2. Into the Raging Sea
    Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
    Rachel Slade
  3. Fisherman's Blues
    A West African Community at Sea
    Anna Badkhen
  4. So You Want to Talk About Race
    Ijeoma Oluo
  5. Beastie Boys Book
    Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
  6. Feel Free
    Zadie Smith
  7. All You Can Ever Know
    Nicole Chung
  8. When They Go Low, We Go High
    Speeches That Shape the World - and Why We Need Them
    Philip Collins
  9. The Death of Truth
    Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
    Michiko Kakutani
  10. Bad Blood
    Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
    John Carreyrou
  11. Barracoon
    The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
    Zora Neale Hurston
  12. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
    Alexander Chee
  13. Not That Bad
    Dispatches from Rape Culture
    Roxane Gay (editor)
  14. Born to Be Posthumous
    The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
    Mark Dery
  15. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
    One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
    Michelle McNamara
  16. How Democracies Die
    Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
2018 Movies

Sight & Sound Poll: Best Films of 2018

13 December 2018

Sight & Sound Poll: Best Films of 2018 (a poll of 164 critics and curators published by Sight & Sound Magazine)

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

  1. Roma
    Alfonso Cuaron
  2. Phantom Thread
    Paul Thomas Anderson
  3. Burning
    Lee Chang-dong
  4. Cold War
    Pawel Pawlikowski
  5. First Reformed
    Paul Schrader
  6. Leave No Trace
    Debra Granik
  7. The Favourite
    Yorgos Lanthimos
  8. You Were Never Really Here
    Lynne Ramsay
  9. Happy as Lazzaro
    Alice Rohrwacher
  10. Zama
    Lucrecia Martel
  11. The Image Book
    Jean-Luc Godard
  12. If Beale Street Could Talk
    Barry Jenkins
  13. BlacKkKlansman
    Spike Lee
  14. The Other Side of the Wind
    Orson Welles
  15. Shirkers
    Sandi Tan
  16. Shoplifters
    Hirokazu Kore-eda
  17. Sorry to Bother You
    Boots Riley
  18. Faces Places
    Agnès Varda and JR
  19. The Rider
    Chloé Zhao
  20. Western
    Valeska Grisebach

This list summarizes other lists, including these:

2018 Movies

Los Angeles Times: Justin Chang: Best Movies of 2018

13 December 2018

Justin Chang: Best Movies of 2018, as published by The Los Angeles Times

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016]

  1. Burning
    Lee Chang-dong
  2. First Reformed
    Paul Schrader
  3. Zama
    Lucrecia Martel
  4. Black Panther
    Ryan Coogler
  5. Private Life
    Tamara Jenkins
  6. If Beale Street Could Talk
    Barry Jenkins
  7. The Rider
    Chloé Zhao
  8. Western
    Valeska Grisebach
  9. Shoplifters
    Hirokazu Kore-eda
  10. Happy as Lazzaro
    Alice Rohrwacher
  11. The Favourite
    Yorgos Lanthimos
  12. Madeline’s Madeline
    Josephine Decker
  13. Support the Girls
    Andrew Bujalski
  14. Widows
    Steve McQueen
  15. Hereditary
    Ari Aster
  16. Eighth Grade
    Bo Burnham
  17. Shirkers
    Sandi Tan
  18. Amazing Grace
    Sydney Pollack
  19. Vox Lux
    Brady Corbet
  20. Annihilation
    Alex Garland

20 honorable mentions

2018 Books

Lit Hub: Favorite Books of 2018

13 December 2018

Literary Hub: Favorite Books of 2018

[see also Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 • Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021 • Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s]

2018 Podcasts

Mercury News: Peter Larsen: 15 Best Podcasts of 2018

13 December 2018

In the Dark

Peter Larsen: 15 Best Podcasts of 2018, as published by San Jose Mercury News

  1. In the Dark
  2. Gladiator
  3. Bear Brook
  4. Cocaine & Rhinestones
  5. R U Talkin' R.E.M. RE: ME?
  6. My Dad Wrote A Porno
  7. Serial
  8. Caliphate
  9. Headlong: Surviving Y2K
  10. Obscure with Michael Ian Black
  11. Someone Knows Something
  12. Slow Burn
  13. The Teacher's Pet
  14. Death in Ice Valley
  15. Dr. Death
2018 TV Shows

Slant: 25 Best TV Shows of 2018

12 December 2018

Slant Magazine: 25 Best TV Shows of 2018

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016]

  1. Atlanta
  2. The Haunting of Hill House
  3. Big Mouth
  4. Glow
  5. Dear White People
  6. The Deuce
  7. BoJack Horseman
  8. Homecoming
  9. Legion
  10. Killing Eve
  11. The Handmaid’s Tale
  12. The Americans
  13. Better Call Saul
  14. Bob’s Burgers
  15. Random Acts of Flyness
  16. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
  17. Barry
  18. The Good Place
  19. High Maintenance
  20. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
  21. Fauda
  22. Pose
  23. Silicon Valley
  24. Mosaic
  25. The Terror

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Year-end lists are fingerprints; aggregate statistics are smudges. Therefore, I make no tallies.