The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: Sturgill Simpson

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who: Sturgill Simpson

What: SOUND & FURY

When: September 2019

Where: Elektra

Why: Sturgill Simpson doesn't play by the rules, and thank fuck for that. Simpson's SOUND & FURY is probably the only country record with an anime tie-in, for one. Beyond that, the rebellious Simpson's sound has broadened, including blues, funk, psych, synth - it's a little bit country, and a little bit of a whole lot of other stuff. And it works. This isn't a man who cares much about popular opinion. With a song title like "Make Art Not Friends," it's pretty clear that Simpson is more concerned with the music and not whether that music goes down easy. As he sings in "Last Man Standing," "I never learned to play so I broke the game."

[posted 4.11.20]