January is supposed to be a month of new beginnings, but it felt like the tail-end of a bad dream. After sending off 2015 with the loss of a metal icon, we began the new year by losing one of the greatest performers the world has ever seen. But while that low note will likely be the lingering memory of January 2016, the month did hold many bright spots scattered among the blizzards; a sign that there are good things to come as we begin to awake from our hibernation. Maybe it’s time we start looking to the lunar new year for a fresh start.
The Best Album of January 2016
David Bowie, Blackstar (ISO Records)
Closing out a prolific career spanning over half a century in accomplished works that dabbled in a variety of styles, concepts, genre tropes, synthesizing together modern theses and antitheses in manners of provocation by way of performance, David Bowie could have rested high on his laurels and just released The Next Day 2 as the sunset epilogue to cap off his golden years. Instead the world was gifted Blackstar, the omega to the Ziggy Stardust paradigm’s alpha rife with enough cryptic allusions, meanings, multimedia presentations (those intense videos for the title track, “Lazarus”, an off-Broadway musical, etc) for new and old fans alike to pine over now and for years to follow.
Here are the rest of our favorites for January 2016, in no particular order.
