70 Most Anticipated Albums of 2020

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
In the four years since we last got a new Justin Bieber album, the man with a Purpose got married, became a wife guy, and — aside from a country song here and an Ed Sheeran feature there — took a musical sabbatical. “Just thinking about music stresses me out,” Bieber told Vogue in 2019. “I’ve been successful since I was 13, so I didn’t really have a chance to find who I was apart from what I did.” Since then, it seems Bieber has found what he’s been looking for: He just released a romantic new single, “Yummy” (“I’m elated that you’re my lady… Yeah, you got that yummy yum, that yummy yum, that yummy yummy”), and he has a new North American tour coming up. “As humans we are imperfect,” Bieber said in a video announcement. “My past, my mistakes, all the things that I’ve been through, I believe that I’m right where I’m supposed to be and God has me right where he wants me. I feel like this is different than the previous albums just because of where I’m at in my life.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
In early 2019, Bruce Springsteen broke free from whatever had kept him from writing songs for the E Street Band for nearly a decade — and new tunes began pouring out of him. “I wrote almost an album’s worth of material for the band,” he said in May. “It just came out of almost nowhere.” He hasn’t said much about those songs in more recent months, but there are strong indications he’s been recording at his home studio in New Jersey with producer Ron Aniello and gearing up for a release at some point in 2020. It’ll be his first album with the band since 2009’s Working on a Dream. 

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Perhaps one of the greatest trolls of 2019 came at Drake’s expense. Standing at a party, Drake notices a bystander and leans in to answer a question. “Who invited you?” the man asks. A befuddled Drake cocks his head and with a mouth full of disdain answers, “Myself.” Unsatisfied, Drake doubles down by stating, “Do you know who I am?” That one question has come to define an unusually off year for one of the world’s most popular musicians. In November, he was booed offstage at Camp Flog Gnaw. A month later, his texting friendship with Billie Eilish drew the ire of the internet. His latest song, “War,” was met with a tepid response. But if the past decade proved anything, it’s that Drake is at his best when cornered. In an interview with Rap Radar, Drake briefly discussed the work he’s putting into his sixth studio album. “I’ll go, like, three weeks in between making songs, because I’m just kind of enjoying life,” he explained. “I’m enjoying living, going out with people, investing in personal connections. And it’s making my music better.” 

Album: White Hot Forever
Release Date: TBA
Norman Fucking Rockwell! had barely cooled off before Lana Del Rey announced its follow-up: the mysterious White Hot Forever, which she told The Times of London would arrive as a “surprise release sometime within the next 12 or 13 months.” As of August, when she made the announcement, she was still in the writing process. The rest of Del Rey’s 2019 was spent celebrating the success of NFR!, but as the year came to a close, she offered one more hint at what’s coming next. “Norm is really having a year. I already feel kinda bad for however his younger sister turns out,” she wrote on Instagram. Before any new music, she’s also planning to release a poetry book and a spoken-word album, both out in February and titled Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
As of July 2018, Rihanna’s ninth studio album was heading in a dancehall direction, with multiple sources confirming to RS that her team had sought out Caribbean-leaning beats from a who’s who of experienced reggae musicians including Supa Dups, R. City, Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor, Linton “TJ Records” White, Ricky Blaze, Tyshane “Beam” Thompson, dancehall singer Kranium, and reggae singer Chronixx. “They’ve been having writing camps and trying to keep them quiet for almost a year and a half now,” one producer said at the time. Since then, details on the album that fans have provisionally dubbed R9 have been scarce. Is it still a reggae album? Will we hear it in the next 12 months? This past December, Rihanna teased fans with an Instagram meme of a very cute dancing puppy captioned “me listening to R9 by myself and refusing to release it.” So: Maybe!

Album:The Slow Rush
Release Date: February 14th
After five years and one Rihanna cover, Australian psych rock outfit Tame Impala will finally release their new album, The Slow Rush, on Valentine’s Day. The band’s mastermind, Kevin Parker, began teasing their return back in March 2019 with the new single “Patience,” and while that track doesn’t appear to be on the record, the band’s next three singles — “Borderline,” “Posthumous Forgiveness” and “It Might Be Time” — all will be. In a May interview with Rolling Stone, Parker said the album’s sound would be Tame Impala’s most stylistically varied to date and name-checked a few surprising influences: “I’ve been embracing my love of weird Seventies stadium rock, like, epic Meat Loaf stuff.” Tame Impala are set to embark on a North American tour in support of The Slow Rush March 9th in San Diego, California.

Album: High Road
Release Date: January 31st
Kesha announced her latest project this past October, with a trailer premiere at Rolling Stone. “On the last record [2017’s Rainbow], I feel like I had to address some very serious things, and now this time around I have reclaimed my love of life,” she said. Shortly after, she released the album’s raucous lead single, “Raising Hell,” featuring Big Freedia. High Road will also feature songwriting credits from Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, Fun.’s Nate Ruess, and Kesha’s own mother, songwriter Pebe Sebert.

Album: The Fall Off
Release Date: TBA
J. Cole hasn’t exactly been quiet lately — “Middle Child,” the single he released in 2019 as part of his Revenge of the Dreamers III group compilation, became his biggest chart hit ever. Still, it’s been nearly two years since he closed out his last solo album, KOD, with a song called “1985 (Intro to The Fall Off),” and fans have been eagerly waiting to find out what comes next. In a faux political ad released in November, Cole dropped a few more hints: “It seems like shit is all fucked up. The country needs a hero to turn to in these turbulent times. Jermaine Cole is that hero… Vote The Fall Off for 2020.”

Album: 30
Release Date: TBA
“Bunch of fucking savages, 30 will be a drum n bass record to spite you,” Adele wrote on Instagram on her 31st birthday last May. She was almost certainly joking about the sound of her fourth studio album — but the months since that post have only made fans even more eager for details of whatever she’s working on. We don’t know much else about this one (even the title 30 is just a guess at this point), but our ears are very much perked.

Album: Homegrown
Release Date: TBA
New songs were coming to Neil Young so quickly in the mid-1970s that his record label simply couldn’t keep up, and several complete albums were placed in the vault as to not flood the marketplace. One of them, 1975’s Homegrown, has become the most legendary among fans, since it’s packed with so many wonderful obscurities like “Love is a Rose,” “Try,” and Mexico.” Even more intriguing are the ones like “We Don’t Smoke It,” which has never even been bootlegged. The whole thing is finally slated for release in 2020. “A record full of love lost and explorations,” Young recently wrote on his website. “A record that has been hidden for decades. Too personal and revealing to expose in the freshness of those times…The unheard bridge between Harvest and Comes a Time.”

Album: My Turn
Release Date: TBA
After spending the last two years closing out a decade of Atlanta dominance, Lil Baby is poised to become even more popular than his mentors (Young Thug, Future) and stand alongside Gunna as one of 2020’s most streamed artists. His latest single, “Woah,” doubles down on the high-octane simplicity of previous hits like “Drip Too Hard” and “Yes Indeed,” but instead of needing a running mate like Gunna or Drake, Baby carries the momentum of the song by himself. In December, the Quality Control rapper teased on Twitter that he has both a mixtape (Lamborghini Boys) and an album (My Turn) on the way. If everything goes Baby’s way, he’ll be the new face of the South for years to come.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The last time the Dixie Chicks released an album (the Grammy-winning Taking the Long Way), George W. Bush was still in the White House. For the past two years, the country trio has been working on their much-anticipated studio return with mega-pop producer Jack Antonoff. Last fall, Maines opened up about the record, announcing that its working title was Gaslighter and that the record would be largely inspired by Maines’ divorce with actor Adrian Pasdar. Initially, Maines said, the group had planned to record a covers album. “But then my relationship fell apart, and I had a lot to say.”

Album: Manic
Release Date: January 17th
Halsey has been rolling out her third album for well over a year, leading off her new music with Number One single “Without Me.” But if fans were looking for the syrup-y, hip-hop-infused pop song to be a major clue for how her new music would sound, they were in for a surprise: This LP promises to be one of her most diverse-sounding yet. “It’s so manic. It’s sooooo manic. It’s literally just, like, whatever the fuck I felt like making; there was no reason I couldn’t make it,” she told Rolling Stone months before revealing that the album is called Manic. For her first non-concept album, she’s called upon a wide array of collaborators to perform interludes, including Alanis Morissette, BTS rapper Suga, and indie-rap star Dominic Fike.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
One fan on Twitter spoke for many in early January when they asked SZA, “are we getting anything this year ma’am i’m STARVING.” Her response: “short answer is yes.” That crumb of information was more than enough to set off anticipation for the star’s first full-length release since 2017’s Ctrl, the album that won her a Best New Artist Grammy nomination and made her one of R&B’s leading lights.

Album: Future Nostalgia
Release Date: TBA
Describing the sound of her upcoming second album, the rising British pop star has said: “What I wanted to do with this album was to break out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to make music that felt like it could sit alongside some of my favorite classic pop songs, whilst still feeling fresh and uniquely mine.” The two singles released so far, “Don’t Start Now” and “Future Nostalgia,” carry influences from classic house, disco, and electro tracks.

Album: Rare
Release Date: January 10th
Selena Gomez’s 2015 album Revival was a turning point for the former Barney kid and Disney star, showcasing musical and personal growth. In the time since, she has undergone more life changes: a kidney transplant in 2017 due to ongoing struggles with lupus, and a final nail in the coffin for her on-again-off-again romance with Justin Bieber. “It took me four years now to even feel at a good place with this album,” she told Jimmy Fallon over the summer, “and it’s just because I had such huge moments that happened in my life personally that ‘How was I going to capture that?’ So I just kept going, and I’m relieved.” Led by singles “Look at Her Now” and “Lose You to Love Me,” Rare has been teased as “strong pop” by Gomez, and features guest appearances by 6lack and Kid Cudi.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
In the time since taking home an Oscar and a Grammy for her Number One single “Shallow” from the A Star Is Born soundtrack, Lady Gaga has been balancing her two Las Vegas residencies with writing and recording her sixth studio album. LG6, as its been called by both Gaga and her little monsters, has been heavily — though vaguely — teased by the pop star on social media. “I’m calling my next album ADELE,” she (hopefully) joked on Twitter in October. In December, she noted a lack of bathing happening in the studio. But apologies to fans hoping for Artpop 2: Gaga also recently tweeted that she doesn’t remember that 2013 fan favorite.

Album: Likewise
Release Date: January 31st
Frances Quinlan has written and sung some of contemporary indie rock’s most unforgettable songs with Philadelphia’s Hop Along, most recently guiding her band from the howling heights of 2015’s Painted Shut into the subtler, stranger waters of 2018’s Bark Your Head Off, Dog. On her first solo album under her name, co-produced with Hop Along bandmate Joe Reinhart, Quinlan keeps pushing onward, dipping into homespun dance-pop (“Rare Thing”) and richly textured studio collage (“Now That I’m Back”), with her lyrical insights as sharp and specific as ever. “Working with Joe on this made me able to better see that the guitar is just one vehicle,” she said in a statement. “There are so many others to explore.”

Album: Masochism
Release Date: TBA
Sky Ferreira’s long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Night Time, My Time has been marked by extensive delays and ongoing conflicts between Ferreira and her label, but last March we finally got a taste of the project with the slow-churning single “Downhill Lullaby.” Over the past year and a half, the artist has shared snippets and teasers from other Masochism songs on her Instagram. She last spoke publicly about the album in December, tweeting, “I finished my singles a while ago. All I’m going to say is…they aren’t Christmas songs. It’s kind of important for it to be released properly considering what I’ve gone through to make it & get it out.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: March
Katie Crutchfield wrote Waxahatchee’s fifth album — a stripped-down singer-songwriter record that’s her first full-length since Out in the Storm, her electrified tour-de-force breakup record from 2017 —  in the wake of her newfound sobriety. “There’s pockets of ideas and there’s melodies and there’s lyrics and there are little pieces of the puzzles that are fragmented and scattered all over the place in my life,” Crutchfield said of songwriting in 2018. “When I have a moment to really organize everything, that’s when the full songs come to fruition.” Produced by indie-rock jack of all trades Brad Cook (Bon Iver, The War on Drugs) and aided by session pros like Josh Kaufman, Crutchfield’s latest promises to be her most accomplished.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
“The 2010s, whatever the fuck they’re called, we took ‘em off,” Julian Casablancas said toward the end of the Strokes’ New Year’s Eve performance in Brooklyn. He also said, “If you really love someone, you’ll be frozen with them.” But none of that compares to the most newsworthy statement he made that night: “Yeah, we’ve got a new album coming out soon. 2020, here we come.” The new Strokes album, which has been a subject of rumors for years now — at one point, it was reported to involve contributions from either Rick Rubin or NBA point guard Ricky Rubio — will be their first since 2013’s Comedown Machine, whose title track holds up better than you remember. Judging by “Ode to the Mets,” the slow, melancholy new song they played after Casablancas’ announcement, all that time in the freezer hasn’t burned them too much.

Album: Imploding the Mirage
Release Date: Spring
The Killers have been half the band they used to be over the past couple of years, at least on tour, where bassist Mark Stoermer and guitarist Dave Keuning have been notably absent as they focus on their solo careers and young families. As of this past summer, they were missing from the studio sessions for the band’s upcoming sixth record, Imploding the Mirage, too. “We’ve been having fun with the fact that we don’t have our guitar player, we don’t have our bass player with us, so it sounds different,” drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. said in June. “It sucks sometimes because you’re very used to hearing those two elements. At the same time it’s really liberating and forces us to grow in a different way.” Little else is known about the record, but it’s expected to hit in spring, and song titles they’ve shared via Twitter include “Dying Breed,” “My God,” “Blowback,” and My Own Souls Warning.” Their most recent song, 2019’s standalone single “Land of the Free,” was a politically-charged anthem taking on gun violence and Trump’s inhumane immigration policies.

Album: TBA
Release Date: January
In November, Partynextdoor arrived in the best way possible in the streaming age: He secured the Drake feature. After 2017’s lackluster Seven Days, the bright and poppy “Loyal” and the sultry “The News” represent a return to form for the mercurial Mississauga singer. While Party suggested around American Thanksgiving that his next album would arrive this month, Drake said in a later interview with Rap Radar that OVO’s second-biggest artist will release on his own schedule. “Party is going to drop when Party wants to drop,” he explained. “That’s who Party is. Anybody that’s ever worked with him knows he does shit on his own time.”

Album: Map of the Soul: 7
Release Date: February 21st
The K-pop superstars announced the sequel to their April 2019 EP Map of the Soul: Persona just a few days into 2020. It’s been a huge couple of years for the seven-person group, who appeared on Saturday Night Live last spring and collaborated with Halsey on their hit “Boy With Luv.” (BTS’ Suga returned the favor by recording a song called “SUGA’s Interlude” for Halsey’s upcoming album Manic.) Will Map of the Soul: 7 take them even higher? We’ll find out soon.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The Weeknd’s latest album cycle has it all — a Hunter S. Thompson aesthetic, some Metro Boomin, and a lil’ bit of misogyny. Over a chaotic beat on his recent single “Heartless,” the Toronto singer declared, “Never need a bitch, I’m what a bitch need,” and the self-proclaimed “King of the Fall” reclaimed his throne. On Instagram, he’s called his next project a “brain melting psychotic chapter,” and the visuals for his album art and videos have borrowed heavily from the 1998 movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Weeknd’s last project was 2018’s bleak, dreary My Dear Melancholy. If “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” are any indication, Abel has momentarily sidelined his more dismal inclinations for something brighter and more urgent. It’s about time.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Former One Directioner Niall Horan ended 2019 with a flourish, dropping two new singles, “Nice to Meet Ya” and “Put a Little Love On Me,” while also making his solo debut on Saturday Night Live. Both tracks are expected to appear on the follow-up to Horan’s 2017 solo debut, Flicker. In an October interview with the Toronto Sun, Horan said the new LP would explore heartbreak from “all angles” and described the sound as “guitar based with big drums… When I’m making records, I see what’s on the charts and then I find a sound that’s not there.” Horan is set to embark on a North American tour April 20th in Nashville. 

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The uptown New York rapper traveled to Puerto Rico to write her first full-length album since 2018. “When I go to Puerto Rico, I’m in my bag,” she told NME. “I’m with my ancestors, with my country, with my people. I’m with the things that you can never buy: nature, the elements, the trees, the beach, the ocean. It makes me feel complete, like a real person.” You can hear that focus on “Sugar Honey Iced Tea (S.H.I.T.)” and “Balenciaga” (“Is that retail or is that resale?/I look so fly you can’t even tell”), the pair of ice-cool singles she released in the fall. In the same interview, Nokia suggested those songs will be part of “a really well composed, thought-out brilliantly musical project” in the first half of 2020.

Album: TBA
Release Date: Spring
Kelsea Ballerini’s 2017 album Unapologetically showed her flexing her creative and stylistic muscles, touching on wistful, diary-page folk with “Legends,” resilience-themed dance pop with “Miss Me More,” and wry, self-aware balladry in “I Hate Love Songs.” For her as-yet-untitled third outing, the Tennessee native appears to be moving in a deeper, more introspective direction. Lead single “Homecoming Queen” — stylized on streaming services with a question mark — examined the hidden anxiety, sadness, and loneliness of somebody who’s “been so good at smiling most of your life,” while the latest offering “Club” extolled the mental and physical benefits of a nice, quiet night at home.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Nashville indie rocker Soccer Mommy, real name Sophie Allison, will return this year with the follow-up to her excellent 2018 debut, Clean (one of Rolling Stone‘s 100 Best Albums of the 2010s). She’s taken a darker turn with the slow-burning single “Lucy” (short for “Lucifer”) and “Feed,” a song for the upcoming horror film The Turning. But the seven-minute “Yellow Is the Color of Her Eyes” is classic Soccer Mommy, with dreamy, melodic textures and blissfully bummed-out lyrics.

Album: Van Weezer
Release Date: May 15th
Weeks before they launch the Hella Mega tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy, Weezer will drop their 14th LP, tentatively titled Van Weezer as a nod to the guitar heroics of Van Halen. “The inspiration came from our live shows, where, in the middle of ‘Beverly Hills,’ unlike on the album, everything stops and I just break out with this crazy guitar solo,” Rivers Cuomo said. “We noticed that, recently, the crowd just goes crazy when I do that. So it feels like maybe the audience is ready for some shredding again.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Though Jason Isbell hasn’t released any new material since 2017’s The Nashville Sound, the Alabama native stayed plenty active in the interim. In 2018, he put out a live document of his famed Ryman Auditorium shows with his band, the 400 Unit and, more recently, he provided his talents to the soundtrack for A Star Is Born and the Highwomen’s debut album. One of his generation’s most gifted writers, Isbell has been back in the studio with his band and their producer Dave Cobb, who has recorded every Isbell album since 2013’s Southeastern. Instagram photos have shown him hanging out in the studio with Sixties icon (and Rolling Stone columnist) David Crosby, who suggested the two sang together on one of the new tracks. Fans who caught Isbell live in the last year may also have heard him perform the new song “Overseas,” a characteristically mournful number about two estranged people with a literal ocean between them.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The Bee Gees great is recording with producer Dave Cobb in Nashville. Even Jason Isbell is involved — the songwriter posted a photo of himself with Gibb back in the summer, writing that he sang high harmony with the disco survivor in the studio. “It was a great honor, and also terrifying because in order to sing with Barry Gibb, you have to sing,” Isbell wrote. Consider us excited.

Album: Notes on a Conditional Form
Release Date: February 21st
In 2018, the 1975’s lead singer, Matty Healy, revealed that his band were scrapping their previous idea for a third album, Music for Cars, in favor of two new LPs. Later that year, they dropped the first one, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, and they’ve been working on the second, Notes on a Conditional Form, ever since. Over the course of 2019, the group released three songs off the album, each politically charged and one featuring climate change activist Greta Thunberg. “Notes is a U.K. nighttime record,” he told Rolling Stone, citing the Streets and Burial as influences. “I’ve spent so much of my life in vans and cars, stopping off at a McDonald’s when you don’t want McDonald’s. I wanted to make a record that reminds me of that.”

Album: Suddenly
Release Date: February 28th
Six years ago, Caribou’s Dan Snaith took an unexpectedly graceful leap into R&B-flavored house music with Our Love, one of last decade’s most whole-heartedly romantic albums. Signs for this long-awaited follow-up are promising: Early singles “You and I” and “Home” dip rewardingly into Hall & Oates pop, mutant disco, and sample-deck soul, among other sounds. In a statement, Snaith said that the former song “captures a lot of what the record, and the title of the album, are about — the track changes suddenly and unpredictably, and it is about a change in my life that happened out of the blue.”

Album: Miss Anthropocene
Release Date: February 21st
After nearly a year of build-up — this album was announced back in March of 2019 — Canadian producer Claire Boucher is ready to release her fifth studio LP as Grimes. She’s described the project as a concept album about “an anthropomorphic goddess of climate change,” and promised to take on a villainous tone, taking inspiration from nu metal and industrial rock. So far, she has released five tracks from the album, including “Violence” and “We Appreciate Power.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: April
After co-producing Jesse Malin’s Sunset Kids with her husband, Tom Overby, in 2019, Williams returns her attention to her own material. The Americana songwriter recorded the follow-up to 2017’s This Sweet Old World in Nashville with producer Ray Kennedy, who engineered Williams’ 1998 breakout LP Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. A lucky few have already heard it during an album preview party she hosted just before the holidays in New York. “It really rocks,” Williams told Rolling Stone of the yet-untitled project, describing it as “a lot of stuff that is blues-rocky, edgy, grungy, and political.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Ashley McBryde’s 2018 debut album, Girl Going Nowhere, brought together disparate types of fans through its mix of intricate storytelling, rock & roll attitude, and McBryde’s singular voice. The title track and “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” were uplifting numbers about perseverance even in the lowest of moments, while “American Scandal” hinted at a bolder, edgier perspective around matters of the heart. “One Night Standards,” McBryde’s first release from her new album, continues in this direction and puts a new spin on the country cheating song trope by laying out some dispassionate, clearly defined boundaries before the encounter goes down. “Can’t you just use me like I’m using you?” she implores, gritty and sweetly sad all at once.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
The last time Bridgers released a solo album, it was 2017 and she was feeling the effects of emotional motion sickness. Three years later, the 25-year-old phenom has become one of the most dominating forces in indie rock, forming two excellent supergroups: boygenius with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker and Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst. This spring, she’ll release a proper follow-up to Stranger in the Alps. The new LP was recorded at the famed Sound City Studios in Van Nuys and mixed by Mike Mogis in Omaha, who previously worked with Bridgers on Alps. A single has yet to be released, but we can expect to hear more introspective, heart-wrenching lyrics over crushing guitar riffs.

Album: Ordinary Man
Release Date: Early 2020
The Prince of Darkness spent most of last year in excruciating pain as he recovered from a nasty fall. After Post Malone asked him to guest on “Take What You Want,” the former Black Sabbath leader decided he felt like making a new album and worked with Post’s producer, Andrew Watt, and members of Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers on what will be his first solo record in a decade. The lead single, “Under the Graveyard,” is a gothic headbanger that recalls his early solo classic “Diary of a Madman” but with poppier hooks, and “Straight to Hell” is a galloping rocker with a solo by Slash and Ozzy doing his best demon laugh. If his health continues to improve, he’ll be singing some of these songs on new legs of his ongoing No More Tours 2 trek. “This is quite possibly the most important album I have done in a very long time,” Osbourne said in a statement.

Album: Splid
Release Date: February 14th
Metal birthed all kinds of wild hybrids in the 2010s, from Deafheaven’s blastbeat-powered shoegaze to Babymetal’s bubblegummy shred pop. Of all these, maybe the most fun came courtesy of Kvelertak, a Norwegian band that mashed up aggro black metal with big, beery riff rock and slyly sophisticated hooks. Their upcoming fourth LP is their first without co-founding frontman Erlend Hjelvik, whose unhinged yowl was a key element of their sound, and their first to feature English lyrics on some songs. New screamer Ivar Nikolaisen has a scrappier, punkier delivery, but the band’s basic M.O. — and their trademark beefy sound, realized with help from longtime producer Kurt Ballou — is unchanged. New songs like “Crack of Doom,” which features guest vocals from Mastodon’s Troy Sanders, still gleefully trample the boundaries separating various metal subscenes. “Splid (‘discord’ in English) is a deep dive into Western gluttony, our own stupidity, and the abyss of the earth,” the band said in a press release.

Album: Carly Pearce
Release Date: February 14th
Carly Pearce swam upstream in a tough radio environment to earn a Number One song for her 2017 single, the heartbroken ballad “Every Little Thing,” but didn’t see the same result for its funkier follow-up, “Hide the Wine.” Pearce regrouped and released the sleek, romantic “Closer to You” as a preview of her self-titled second album as well as the gentle, live-in-the-moment anthem “It Won’t Always Be Like This.” She also appears to have another bona fide hit on her hands with “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” a wrenching duet with Lee Brice that was co-written by newly minted superstar Luke Combs. In addition to featuring contributions from Hillary Lindsey, Shane McAnally, and Laura Veltz, Pearce’s new album includes a duet with her country-singing husband, Michael Ray: the appropriately titled “Finish Your Sentences.”

Album: Father of All…
Release Date: February 7th
After the back-to-basics approach of 2016’s Revolution Radio, Green Day decided to go in a drastically different direction for their upcoming LP. “I’d always loved British mod music from the Sixties,” said Billie Joe Armstrong, “but I wanted to go to where the source was and see if I could put [soul] through the Green Day filter.” The result is a bold experiment that incorporates dance grooves, New Wave, and vintage R&B. And while “Meet Me on the Roof” and “Junkies on a High” may have somewhat of a classic Green Day flavor, the others are way out there. “Billie was pushing himself to get to a newer place,” said bassist Mike Dirnt. “We had to chase that down. Which is par for the course, because nobody digs deeper than Billie.”

Album: Superstar
Release Date: March 6th
The rootsy singer-songwriter turned electro-pop auteur doubles down on the slacker-synth storytelling on her 2018 breakthrough Loner. Rose recorded and produced the bulk of the record, which she wrote during her past two years of relentless touring, in her home studio. “I realized at some point that I’m not going to fit into any one box, and maybe that’s a good thing,” Rose said of her upcoming record. “This new record is me embracing feeling like an outsider making my own path.”

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Paramore’s Hayley Williams marked the end of a decade (and her 31st birthday) by announcing that she’s preparing to release her debut solo album in 2020. Previously, the singer had been unsure what would be next for Paramore following the release of 2017’s After Laughter. “The guys [Taylor York, Zak Farro] and I just had dinner the other night at my house, and I think we’re just really enjoying being friends and adult human beings at home by ourselves, without music,” she told ET earlier this year. Williams’ solo music could come as early as January.

Album: Nightfall
Release Date: January 17th
For Nightfall, the follow-up to 2017’s The Breaker, the Grammy-winning country vocal group took the reins and self-produced their new 13-song project. The hushed ballad “The Daughters,” the cinematic “Sugar Coat,” and their trad-country single “Over Drinking” reflect a Little Big Town that’s embracing its sonic diversity — no song on Nightfall sounds much like any other. All four members of the band wrote on the album, too, especially Karen Fairchild, who teamed with Kacey Musgraves collaborators Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian to pen “River of Stars” and “Bluebird.” The group will preview the album in grand fashion: they’re playing it at Carnegie Hall in New York the night before its release.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Tame Impala recently announced that Perfume Genius will be joining them on their summer tour this year — which means we’re on the lookout for new Perfume Genius. Mike Hadreas last released music in 2017, with his gorgeous fourth album, No Shape, which Rolling Stone’s Will Hermes called “startlingly optimistic, with pop and rock tropes queered into dreamlike scenarios.” We say it’s high time for Hadreas to churn out some more beauty.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Word on the street is that Elizabeth Cook has made one hell of a rock record with a hook-minded, big-name producer. She’s already been performing guitar-forward new tracks like “Bones ” and “Thick Georgia Woman” in concert, flanked by her electric-guitar foil Andrew Leahey, a member of Cook’s ferocious live band (and occasional Rolling Stone contributor) who she has said plays all over the album. The follow-up to 2016’s Exodus of Venus, the as-yet-untitled LP is poised to introduce Cook to some new fans and give the frequent Grand Ole Opry guest performer (and host of a new fishing-and-interview series) a long-overdue moment outside of the Americana universe.

Album: Have We Met
Release Date: January 31st
As 2020 marches toward a landmark election, we could all use a dose of Destroyer’s “watch the world burn” (and warm your hands by the fire) energy. The Canadian band, fronted by Dan Bejar, has always made its bones by finding the beauty in the dark side, and their upcoming album, Have We Met, promises to be gloriously dark. Singles “Crimson Tide” and “It Just Doesn’t Happen” are wonderfully claustrophobic (Bejar recorded all vocals at his kitchen table) and laden with doomy touchstones: Satan and vultures in “Crimson Tide,” unbearable silence and poisonous looks in “It Just Doesn’t Happen.” What’s more, the album is set to arrive just in time for the dead of winter — or, as we know it, Destroyer season.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Following his 2016 collaboration with Rostam, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, former Walkman frontman Hamilton Leithauser told Vogue that his next album would be a fully solo endeavor (save for some samples provided by his old Walkman bandmate Paul Maroon). “I play everything — even drums — and I’m going to record it and mix it myself,” he said. “I just like the process better.” Leithuaser spent much of last year touring, while he also teamed with Maroon for a new song, “The One That Got Away,” and Angel Olsen for another, “Heartstruck (Wild Hunger).”

Album: Saturn Return
Release Date: February 28th
For their first record since 2017’s overlooked You Don’t Own Me Anymore, Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle headed to Brandi Carlile’s Washington state studio, teaming up with the singer-producer for an intense collection about grief and love. The Alabama duo’s single, “Cabin,” is a piercing statement on restlessness inspired in part by the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh hearings. “To be a harbinger for their honesty in these songs…was one of the greatest gifts of my career,” Carlile has said. “Those are two very powerful people in a very interesting point in their lives.”