54 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021

Drake

Album: Certified Lover Boy
Release Date: TBA

A global pandemic does not suit an artist like Drake, who thrives on a steady stream of attention from the world. He was uncharacteristically quiet in 2020, save for “Toosie Slide,” from the lukewarm Dark Lane Demo Tapes. His follow-up to 2018’s Scorpion, which bears the quintessentially Drake title Certified Lover Boy, was announced via a sleek and mysterious album trailer, in which we see Drake’s impressive run of albums flash before our eyes via live-action cover re-enactments. What could it possibly mean? Here’s to hoping Drake sets off 2021 right.

Foo Fighters

Album: Medicine at Midnight
Release Date: February 5th

Dave Grohl & Co. have spent their past few album cycles seeking adventure: making HBO docs, buying famous recording consoles, hanging with Justin Timberlake. But for their 10th album, Medicine at Midnight, they put on blinders. It’s simply the six Foos discovering their pop side with help from songwriter-producer extraordinaire Greg Kurstin (Adele, Kelly Clarkson). They explore dusky acoustic funk on “Shame Shame” and gild the rockier protest song “No Son of Mine” with daring, hummable hooks. “Our love of rock bands that make these upbeat, up-tempo, almost danceable records inspired us to make the album that we did,” Grohl recently told Kerrang. “We surprised ourselves.”

Lorde

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Lorde is set to release a book of photos this year from her travels to Antarctica, titled Going South, and she’s hinted that the February 2019 trip also helped inspire new music: “Antarctica really acted as this great white palette cleanser, a sort of celestial foyer I had to move through in order to start making the next thing,” she wrote in a recent message to fans. She tends to take her time between projects — her widely acclaimed Melodrama came four years after her star-making debut, Pure Heroine — and we can’t wait to hear what she’s been working on this time. “The work is so fucking good, my friend,” she wrote in another post, where she revealed that she’d begun sessions with Melodrama producer Jack Antonoff prior to the global lockdown. “I am truly jazzed for you to hear it.”

Cardi B

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Cardi B kept her foot firmly on the gas for the entirety of 2020. There was the earth-rattling “WAP,” which became a cultural touchstone in a year bereft of cultural touchstones. There was also Cardi’s increasing presence as a social commentator; her conversations with presidential candidates offered more insight than plenty of cable-news hosts. Her follow-up to 2018’s Invasion of Privacy is on the way, according to Cardi herself, who tweeted last year about new music, saying, “Its going to hit too!!!”

Billie Eilish

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Judging from “Therefore I Am,” the single Billie Eilish released late last year, the neon-haired 19-year-old will carry the gloriously introverted pop sound of 2019’s When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? on to her as-yet-untitled second LP. Like on her megahit “Bad Guy,” she whispers sweet invective at all the people who have ever doubted her over a punchy beat by her brother Finneas, sounding confident and self-assured the whole time. As of a December interview with Vanity Fair, the pair were crafting 16 songs for the LP. “We’ve been working and I love all of them,” Eilish said.

Roddy Ricch

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Roddy Ricch had the biggest song of 2020 with “The Box,” and his debut album, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, won glowing reviews. The Compton rapper prefers to see all of that as a starting point for even bigger things: “The first album was just my first album,” he told RS last year. “I’ve got to remind people of that all the time. Yeah, it was big. I had big songs on there. But that was the first time I ever even did that shit.” Let’s just say expectations for his next album, due out this spring, are sky high.

Karol G

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Riding off the success of her major 2019 hit “Tusa,” it might have seemed like Karol G’s star could’t elevate any further — but she had another huge year in 2020, with a couple more bangers, including the flirtatious “Ay, DiOs Mío!” and the sultry, boss-bitch anthem “Bichota,” despite recovering from Covid-19. With her momentum in full force, we can only anticipate great things for the Colombian reggaeton singer this year. “All I can tease about my new album is that it’s going to be my best one yet!” she said in a recent interview. “Fans can expect to hear it sometime in 2021. I’m working extra hard to ensure that the top album of 2021 is by a woman to inspire others that they can do it too. Let’s open the door for others! Let’s emerge from this year hopeful and full of gratitude.”

Adele

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

It’s been a little over five years since Adele’s last album, 25, an interminable wait for her fans. But now it seems like a fair bet that the singer will finally release her fourth album sometime this year. After hosting Saturday Night Live last fall, she joked, “I’m going back to my cave now to be the (single) cat lady that I am. Peace out til next year.” Word on the project has been scant, but news has started to trickle in. Last December, veteran drummer Matt Chamberlain told interviewer Eddie Trunk that he was recently in the studio with Adele. “I just got to work on some new music for Adele,” he said. “To hear that voice in my headphones was getting me chills.”

Lana Del Rey

Album: Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Release Date: March 19th

Noname

Album: Factory Baby
Release Date: TBA

Chicago’s Noname is one of the more exciting young voices not only in music, but also in all of culture. More than most artists, she’s been able to read the room over the past year, prioritizing community action over self-promotion. That doesn’t mean fans aren’t clamoring for new music. Last January, she said that her new album, Factory Baby, was on the way. Of course, this was before, well, everything else that happened in 2020. Still, it’s hard to think of a moment more tailor-made for an artist as intentional and talented as Noname.

Lil Nas X

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

When Rolling Stone profiled Lil Nas X in 2019, shortly after “Old Town Road” trampled every other pop song on the path to Number One, his head was spinning. “It hasn’t even been a full year of me making music yet,” he said. Now two years have passed, and he still hasn’t put out his debut album (his 7 release was an EP). Late last year, he released “Holiday,” a less-countrified single with a melody that was nearly as memorable as his breakthrough hit. “I want to create new lanes within music,” he recently said of his ambitions. “I want to have even bigger songs. I want to have huge albums. I want to have sold-out tours. I want it all.”

Brandi Carlile

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

It’s been three years since Carlile’s career changed dramatically with the release of her mid-career breakthrough, By the Way, I Forgive You. “I could see why somebody couldn’t sustain the exposure that By The Way, I Forgive You has given me, emotionally,” Carlile told Rolling Stone later that year, while still in the very early stages of contemplating her next project. But Dave Cobb, who recently was in the studio for Carlile’s follow-up, recently told Rolling Stone that the album was made with some advice from a famous friend in mind: “Elton John said something to her, and it was really sweet: ‘When you have a good thing, keep going,’” he recalls. “It’s just everyone going in and trying to find that place where you’re not trying to make a competitive record. You’re making a record because it’s right for you, and honest and real. That’s how we’ve done this new record, trying to act like there is no pressure.”

St. Vincent

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

At the end of 2020, Annie Clark announced that she had a new album “locked and loaded” for 2021 — the follow-up to 2017’s futuristic, latex-clad romp Masseduction and its acoustic reimagining, MassEducation. An artist as chameleon-like as her idol, David Bowie, Clark is all for reinvention and rebirth, so it’s apt that, as she told Mojo recently, the as-yet-untitled project will mark a “tectonic shift” in her work. “I felt I had gone as far as I could possibly go with angularity,” she said. “I was interested in going back to the music I’ve listened to more than any other — Stevie Wonder records from the early ’70s, Sly and the Family Stone. I’ve studied at the feet of those masters.”

Rosalía

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

After putting out a long string of standalone singles in 2019 and early 2020, Rosalía began hinting at the release of her third album, tentatively titled R3, this past May. Rejecting the notion of releasing a singles compilation, the Barcelonian pop star has insisted that her El Mal Querer follow-up will be a full-fledged album, and that it “will be released whenever it makes sense to [do so].” The new LP will feature collaborations with a slew of Puerto Rican reggaeton hitmakers — including Tainy, Rauw Alejandro, and Tego Calderón — as well as production from the Neptunes.

Sade

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

In an October profile for British GQ, Sade confirmed that the band is recording new music at its lead singer’s home in Gloucestershire, anticipating a new album and “contemplating another tour” whenever it’s safe to go on the road again. This will mark the official end of the band’s third hiatus and their first new studio album since 2010’s Soldier of Love. In the meantime, they’ve released a complete vinyl reissue of their catalogue, and in 2018, the band recorded two soundtrack singles: “Flowers of the Universe,” for the Disney adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, and “The Big Unknown,” for the Steve McQueen film Widows.

Snail Mail

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

About a year ago, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan told RS she had begun a new album: “It’s still very much in progress,” she noted, “but it’s definitely my best work by far.” That’s about all we know, but it’s more than enough for anyone who loved her self-assured full-length debut, Lush, to put this on their list of things to look forward to in 2021. Our recommendation: Bring “Pristine” and “Heat Wave” back into rotation, daydream about guitar solos and the summer of 2018, and get ready for a new record from one of the most brilliant indie-rock prodigies in recent memory.

Anitta

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

In her native Brazil, Anitta is unquestionably a force to be reckoned with — her fans consider her the “most important woman of Brazil,” as heard on the 2018 Netflix documentary Vai Anitta. With her 2019 trilingual album Besos, the singer and businesswoman set her gaze for global dominance, teamed up with Snoop Dogg and Becky G, and continued to reign the charts with her infectious trap, pop, and reggaeton bangers. This time, however, the Río de Janeiro performer is aiming to bring Brazil to the world with her follow-up, executive-produced by Ryan Tedder (Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé). “We are showing new kinds of rhythms. It’s not about putting out songs with things that people are already used to listening to,” she told Billboard last year. “We brought urban music from Brazil, which is funk and pagode from Bahía. These are the popular rhythms from the favelas where I come from.” On her latest single, “Me Gusta,” a languid bilingual dance cut that’s already a hit, she features Cardi B, Myke Towers, and an invigorating pagode drum beat — samba’s lustier, more debaucherous cousin — to kick off the festa.

Ed Sheeran

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

On December 24th, 2019, Ed Sheeran announced an extended break, telling fans, “I’ve been a bit nonstop since 2017 so I’m just gonna take a breather to travel, write and read. I’ll be off social media until it’s time to come back.” Nearly a year to the day later, just before Christmas, Sheeran released “Afterglow,” a spare, sincere love song that had more in common with his early hits like “The A Team” than his smashes that have dominated radio ever since. It’s a promising direction, though it’s unclear if he’ll explore that sound on a full LP; Sheeran did make clear that the song “is not the first single from the next album,” but his manager Stuart Camp has said that Sheeran “already started writing and recording for what will be album five.” It’s been four years since Divide, so 2021 is a good guess for when a follow-up might arrive.

Stevie Wonder

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Last fall, Wonder rolled out two new songs: the contemplative and hopeful “Where Is Our Love Song,” partly written in the Sixties, and the spirited “Can’t Put It in the Hands of Fate,” which conjured his glorious mid-Seventies work. The songs constituted his first newly released material in 15 years and also served to kick off his own label, So What the Fuss Records (distributed by Universal-owned Republic). Wonder says the songs could end up on a forthcoming EP — or perhaps as part of his long-in-gestation album, Through the Eyes of Wonder. Those plans remain unconfirmed, but with any luck, we’ll see the first all-new Wonder album since George W. Bush’s second term.

Zayn

Album: Nobody Is Listening
Release Date: January 15th

It’s been three years since Zayn Malik’s most recent album, Icarus Falls, but the ex-One Direction member is set to break that drought January 15th with the arrival of his third solo project, Nobody Is Listening. The singer has kept a fairly low musical profile during that time, teaming with D.C. trio Shaed for a remix of “Trampoline” in 2019 and singing on two updated pop versions of Aladdin’s “A Whole New World” for the live-action remake. Malik first teased Nobody Is Listening last September with lead single “Better” — released just days after he and Gigi Hadid announced the birth of their child — while a follow-up single, “Vibes,” arrived earlier this month.

Justin Bieber

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Since releasing his most recent LP, Changes, in February of last year, Bieber has continued to release new songs, most recently “Anyone,” which came out on New Year’s Day 2021. He’s also teamed up with Chance the Rapper on the song “Holy” and Benny Blanco on “Lonely,” and appeared on Shawn Mendes’ “Monster” and a remix of 24kGoldn and Iann Dior’s hit “Mood” with J Balvin. In June, he’ll begin the world tour that was originally scheduled for last year to support Changes. “I can’t wait to get out there and connect with my fans on this tour,” Bieber said in a statement. “We’ve been through so much this year.” Last summer, Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun tweeted, “New tour..maybe a new album @justinbieber ??” More specific info on the new LP is still forthcoming.

Liz Phair

Album: Soberish
Release Date: TBA

The past few years have seen a rise of young indie-rock artists who take deep influence from Phair’s classic early-Nineties music. She was supposed to release Soberish, her first album since 2010’s Funstyle, last summer and support it by touring with Alanis Morissette, but decided to postpone the release. Late in 2020, Phair signed to Chrysalis Records and announced the album will finally come out later this year. In 2019, she released a promising new song called “Good Side,” produced by Brad Wood, who helmed her landmark 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, noting that her work with Wood on the track “set the production tone” for her upcoming release.

Lucy Dacus

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Lucy Dacus emotionally bulldozed us in 2018 with Historian, which — with songs like “Night Shift” and “Addictions” — quickly solidified her as one of the leading voices of her generation in indie rock. Since then, she formed Boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, and released a 2019 holiday EP that included awesome covers of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” There’s so much anticipation for the follow-up that there’s even a Twitter account dedicated to the release, which presumes the album will include the unreleased song “Thumbs.” We’re here for it.

Hiss Golden Messenger

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Details are scarce on M.C. Taylor’s next record, but the prolific North Carolina singer-songwriter — who records and performs as Hiss Golden Messenger — has been on a remarkable streak lately, releasing career-topping works like 2017’s Hallelujah Anyhow and 2019’s Grammy-nominated Terms of Surrender every other year. “The world is full of love songs, pretty cheap love songs, and I think Mike’s songs are about something that is much more difficult to pin down,” Hiss bandmate and collaborator Phil Cook said in 2019. “He’s not shy about saying: ‘I don’t know the fucking answer to any of this shit.’” Expect more profound, unanswered questions from Taylor in 2021, as evidenced by the moving, mournful country-soul lead single, “Sanctuary”: “Feeling bad, feeling blue/Can’t get out of my own mind,” Taylor sings. “But I know how to sing about it.”

Slowthai

Album: Tyron
Release Date: February 5th

U.K. rapper Slowthai broke out in 2019 with his incisive debut, Nothing Great About Britain, a scorched-earth salvo that spoke to and for a generation coming of age in Brexit-era Britain. His follow-up, Tyron, is a more-personal affair crafted mostly during the Covid-19 lockdown. The album is split into two halves — harder tracks up front, followed by a section of softer ones — in a way that mirrors Slowthai’s exploration of the myriad contradictions and dualities that make life messy and beautiful. “I hope this album can be the light if you’re in the dark, and to know you’re not alone,” the MC wrote in an announcement for the record, which features guests including Skepta, A$AP Rocky, Dominic Fike, Denzel Curry, Deb Never, James Blake, and Mount Kimbie. “It’s OK to be yourself, fuck everything else.”

Thalia

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

It might not come as a surprise to hear that the Mexican powerhouse is back in the studio working on what would be her 17th studio album. She certainly took advantage of quarantine, releasing a children’s album, Viva Kids, Vol. 2; a reality TV show, Latin Music Queens, also starring Farina and Sofia Reyes; and a Christmas jingle. The unrivaled Queen of Mexican Telenovelas dropped the first single off her upcoming outing, “La Luz,” featuring Myke Towers, last summer. “It’s about exploring as a performer, producer, and author. It’s about trying out different facets and styles of music. I’ve been in a constant search to do new things. Be careful: not everyone has that ability,” she said in an interview with El Tiempo. “I like to create, to explore, to throw myself at it, to merge. It’s nice to know that I can go from a ballad to a dance song, or an urban song mixed with pop.” And that’s not all: According to another recent interview, she’s also thinking about opening her own taqueria in New York!

Spoon

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

The follow-up to 2017’s Hot Thoughts would have been here already if Covid-19 shutdowns hadn’t begun just as Spoon was getting into the recording process. Frontman Britt Daniel told us that some of the band’s new material has a sizzling live-in-the-studio energy, with a sound that evokes aspects of the Doors and Led Zeppelin. “There’s a song called ‘My Babe,’ written about my babe,” he said. “It starts off as almost a piano ballad, and by the end it’s a full-on, one-fist-in-the-air rock song.” (Other songs in contention for the track list include “The Hardest Cut” and “Lucifer on the Sofa.”) Whenever they’re able to finish this album, we’re looking forward to new music from a band with one of indie rock’s highest batting averages.

Kacey Musgraves

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Juanes

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

A magnetic pop rocker. An enlightened metalhead. A cumbia-inspired poet. This bright-eyed Colombian singer-guitarist has navigated his field of music with grit and grace — so elegantly that in 2019 the Latin Recording Academy named him Person of the Year. Later that year, he dropped Más Futuro Que Pasado, a record that showed his appreciation for Latin American music of past, present, and future. Juanes’ follow-up is said to run in the same vein, a tribute album that pays homage to both Latin and American greats like Fito Paez, Joaquin Sabina, and Bruce Springsteen. The LP was originally set to drop last year but was postponed due to Covid concerns; there’s been speculation that his own compositions will be included in the mix when it’s released later this year. For now, listeners can enjoy his latest blissed-out shoegaze-y cut, “Vía Lactea,” an ode to Mexican space rock cadets Zoé.

Maren Morris

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Maren Morris has been sprinting for five years. The pop/country star rose to prominence in 2016 with her breakthrough hit “My Church,” before the Grammys, CMAs, and ACMs nominated her debut full-length, Hero, for Album of the Year awards. She got married before releasing its follow-up, Girl, in the spring of 2019. On that was “The Bones” — now triple platinum and her best-performing solo song to date. Morris toured around Girl that year but planned on hitting the road again shortly after the birth of her first child, who arrived in March 2020. Due to Covid-19, she rescheduled dates for 2021 — but found herself canceling that tour altogether by December. “I am in the midst of working on my third record, so I hope we can all come together and enjoy live shows safely again soon,” Morris shared on socials at the time. This will be Morris’ first album since the untimely passing of her producer, frequent co-writer, and friend Busbee; she told CBS This Morning that she’s “feeling through the dark” and makes “the best art and decisions in life when [she’s] scared.”

Evanescence

Album: The Bitter Truth
Release Date: March 26th

It has been nine years since Evanescence’s last album, but the alternative-metal group is ready to make some noise in 2021. “The energy was just amped,” lead singer Amy Lee told Rolling Stone of the sessions for their new LP in Nashville. “We were in there on fire.” The Bitter Truth will be the first full-length release with Evanescence’s current lineup, and they’ve sounded strong on recent tracks such as the activist anthem “Use My Voice” and “Wasted on You.”

The Cure

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

As with any time during the past decade, a new Cure album could surface any day. But Robert Smith isn’t about to rush things. In 2018, he told Rolling Stone that the group spent a month in the studio where Queen cut “Bohemian Rhapsody” to record a follow-up to 2008’s 4:13 Dream, but then they changed their minds and booked another 10 days to re-record some songs in a quest for perfection. “We’ve waited more than 10 years [to make this], and I can’t just think, ‘Oh, that’ll do,'” he said. “It’s kind of hard because I’m measuring the songs and the whole thing up to Pornography and Disintegration.”

Steve Gunn

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Steve Gunn is a guitar player’s guitar player, someone whose quiet mastery of his instrument has made fans out of everyone from Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo to Kurt Vile. On his most recent solo LP, 2019’s The Unseen in Between, he took a big leap forward with his songwriting, tightening up his folk-rock verses and choruses without losing any of his lead-guitar flash. He returned to his instrumental Gunn-Truscinski Duo last year with Soundkeeper, a dizzying double-LP odyssey; listen to that one as a perfect palate cleanser while waiting for his next solo move, due out this year on Matador Records.

Valerie June

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

The first taste of Valerie June’s first album since her 2017 breakthrough, The Order of Time, was “Stay/Stay Meditation/You and I,” a shimmering suite of meditative, orchestral pop soul produced by Jack Splash (Alicia Keys, Cee-Lo Green). Most recently, Splash helped St. Paul and the Broken Bones modernize their Sixties-R&B roots on 2018’s Young Sick Camelia, so expect a similarly bright-sounding, high-fi rendering of Junes’ astral folk soul on her yet-untitled 2021 release. If early previews like “Stay” and “You And I” are any indication, June’s next record should be a career-making statement.

Ian Sweet

Album: Show Me How You Disappear
Release Date: March 5th

Jilian Medford, who performs sharp-edged indie rock as Ian Sweet, leveled up with 2018’s Crush Crusher, a technicolor tornado of noise and emotion. Last year it was announced that she’d signed with venerable indie label Polyvinyl, and the new Ian Sweet songs released since then (including “Dumb Driver” and “Drink the Lake”) have a dreamy magnetism that makes us eager to hear where she goes next. In a press release, Medford said that her new LP follows an intense period of therapy and personal growth: “By saying ‘I want to get better, better, better’ out loud, I started to feel something.”

Madlib

Album: Sound Ancestors
Release Date: January 29th

Madlib (a.k.a. Otis Jackson Jr.) and Four Tet (a.k.a Kieran Hebden) are two of the most consistently brilliant producers of the past 20 years, so it’s exciting to see them teaming up for this full-length collaboration, which is being released as a Madlib solo album with arrangements by Hebden. The two sample sculptors came up with the idea over a nice meal circa 2018: “We decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas, and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate, and combine,” Hebden recalled. “I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years’ stretch, and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that [fit] with my vision.” Lead singles like “Road of the Lonely Ones” have shown all of the gracefully mind-blowing groove acrobatics you’d expect from these two guys working together.

Ozzy Osbourne

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

The Prince of Darkness’ most recent offering, last year’s Ordinary Man, was anything but ordinary. With a guest list that included Elton John, Post Malone, and members of Guns N’ Roses, Rage Against the Machine, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzy Osbourne crafted his most vital album in years. The follow-up — like Ordinary Man, helmed by A-list pop producer Andrew Watt — will carry on the same vein, adding members of Metallica and Foo Fighters. “There’s some songs on there that are like eight or nine minutes long that are these really crazy journeys,” Watt recently told Guitar World. “I’m really excited about it.”

Greta Van Fleet

Album: The Battle at Garden’s Gate
Release Date: April 16th

Greta Van Fleet frontman Josh Kiszka was inspired to write a song on his band’s upcoming album after watching an ice cube undulate in his drink, so you can guess where the LP is going. Replete with the band’s trademark bombast, The Battle at Garden’s Gate promises to bring trippy, retro-styled rock back in 2021. “This is a world with the ancient civilizations in it, just like our own parallel universe, really. It’s an analogy,” Kiszka told Rolling Stone. “Each song is a theme. A magnification of different cultures and civilizations inside of this world searching for some kind of salvation or enlightenment.” 

Ani DiFranco

Album: Revolutionary Love
Release Date: January 29th

Ani DiFranco wrote much of her new album on the road before the pandemic. To record, she made a whirlwind trip to Durham, North Carolina, where she teamed up with producer Brad Cook and an eclectic group of musicians — including Hiss Golden Messenger percussionist Brevan Hampden and the Mountain Goats’ Matt Douglas — capturing many of the performances in one or two takes. “It’s about carrying the energy of love and compassion into the center of our social movements and making it the driving force,” the indie troubadour says about the title track. “It’s about finding it within ourselves to stay curious about our opponents instead of shutting down.”

Loretta Lynn

Album: Still Woman Enough
Release Date: March 19th

The resilient country-music icon revisits old favorites like her own “Honky Tonk Girl” and the standard “Keep on the Sunny Side” on her first new album in three years. But it’s the impressive guest stars that underscore the album’s title: Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Margo Price all show up. Tanya Tucker does too, adding her signature attitude to Lynn’s come-and-take-him throwdown “You Ain’t Woman Enough.” “I am just so thankful to have some of my friends join me on my new album,” Lynn said in a press release. “We girl singers gotta stick together.”

Megadeth

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Megadeth began work on their 16th studio album, tentatively titled The Sick, the Dying and the Dead, about two years ago. Then frontman Dave Mustaine was diagnosed with throat cancer, which he beat in early 2020, and pandemic-related shutdowns further slowed progress. Still, the band maintains it will put out an album of what Mustaine told Rolling Stone would be “really crushing songs” in 2021. “We’ve got, I think, probably one of the most ferocious records we’ve done since [1990’s] Rust in Peace,” he recently said. “[Bassist] David Ellefson, he’s a pretty good barometer of things, and when he did his bass parts, he [went], ‘Man, my arm is killing me. I can’t believe this.'”

The Hold Steady

Album: Open Door Policy
Release Date: February 19th

The beloved Brooklyn rockers’ upcoming eighth album is yet more proof that Craig Finn is one of the most vivid songwriters in rock. It’s led by the excellent single “Family Farm,” a guitar-crunch catharsis that opens with a first-person recounting of a stint in rehab where the nurse annoyingly “has ‘Eruption’ for a ringtone,” then spins off into a classic Finnian swirl of drugs, desperation, Catholic affliction, and the thinnest possible chance of redemption. The Hold Steady recorded the album in upstate New York in 2019 and will release it on their own Positive Jams label. Says Finn of the album, “Open Door Policy was very much approached as an album, versus a collection of individual songs, and it feels like our most musically expansive record.”

Weezer

Album: Van Weezer
Release Date: May 7th

Weezer’s 14th album was supposed to be released last May, following the pair of albums they released in 2019, The Black Album and The Teal Album. As its title implies, Van Weezer is steeped in the band’s love of vintage hard rock. “The inspiration for this album derives from the deepest roots of Weezer — metal!” the band said in a statement. “What has metal got to do with Weezer, you ask? In his earliest years, Rivers was a huge Kiss fan; Brian was a big Black Sabbath fan; Pat worshipped at the altar of Van Halen and Rush; Scott loved Slayer and Metallica.”

Darkside

Album: Spiral
Release Date: TBA

After an eight-year hiatus, Darkside — the duo of Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington — will return with their long-awaited second album, set to arrive this spring via Matador. The experimental electronic outfit emerged in 2011 with a self-titled EP, followed it up in 2013 with the acclaimed Psychic, but then announced they’d be taking a break after a final show in 2014. In the intervening years, Harrington and Jaar stayed busy with solo projects and other work, but in 2018, they quietly reunited and began working on new music. While a proper release date for Spiral has yet to be announced, the duo has shared one offering from the LP, the slinky and prickly “Liberty Bell.”

Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

After recording 2019’s Turn Off the News (Build a Garden) in Malibu, Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real headed to Nashville to cut the follow-up with producer Dave Cobb at historic RCA Studio A. Cobb raves that the singer-guitarist — the son and bandmate of dad Willie — has written his best album yet. “He’s really a master of songcraft, and this record is a song record,” Cobb tells Rolling Stone of the upcoming LP, which is due in late spring or early summer. “He’s singing amazing, the band is amazing, and it’s just done really honest and heartfelt.”

Kings of Leon

Album: When You See Yourself
Release Date: March 5th

After a five-year break (and 10 months after announcing new music on the way), the Kings of Leon finally released two singles early this year. “The Bandit” is an ominous rocker highlighting Matt Followill’s guitar attack and cousin Caleb Followill’s emotive howl; “100,000 People” has them pushing their sound into a new minimalist direction. “I try to write and convince myself that I’m writing about something else, but a vein of my personal life flows through these songs,” Caleb told The Sun recently. Like 2016’s Walls, the album was produced by Markus Dravs (Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire). “A lot of the instruments on this album, you could’ve heard on Pink Floyd or Beatles albums,” Caleb said. “We really dug deep to find the proper equipment.”

King Princess

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Mikaela Straus, also known as alt-pop darling King Princess, turned heads in 2018 when acclaimed producer Mark Ronson introduced her as the first signing to his new label. Straus — whose debut single, “1950,” is currently approaching half a billion streams — was supposed to spend the summer of 2020 opening up for Harry Styles, touring around her first LP, Cheap Queen, and commanding stages in some of the biggest venues she’s ever performed in. Instead, she spent that time quarantining and working on her sophomore album. When she described her creative goals to i-D in March, Strauss said she wanted the album to be “Bangertown USA” and more collaborative than her first. Nostalgic for club-life camaraderie, she told W in December, “I wanted to make songs that I would’ve absolutely gagged over if I’d heard them on a dance floor.”

M.I.A.

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Last year, M.I.A. set up a Patreon account where, for $5 a month, you can get all kinds of exclusive content. She approached the platform with the sort of creative curiosity that makes her an exciting artist to keep up with. Her last single, “Ctrl,” which was released in the fall, was an efficient use of M.I.A.’s frenetic energy. She assured fans that the record was just a loosie, leaving us to wonder where the endlessly surprising musician might land next.

Julien Baker

Album: Little Oblivions
Release Date: February 26th

Little Oblivions will be Julien Baker’s first release since her 2018 EP with Boygenius, the supergroup she formed with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Baker has the most intense, powerhouse vocals of the trio, so it’s no surprise that we’ve been eagerly waiting for her next solo album, which will showcase that voice alongside her sharp songwriting. Baker has said that Little Oblivions — which she produced herself with a more full-band sound than she’s had in the past — is a document of her experience of 2019, when she went through emotional turmoil, confronted her sobriety, and completed her undergraduate degree. That ache for stability is felt in the first single, “Faith Healer,” on which Baker sings, “I’ll believe you if you make me feel something.”

Duran Duran

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA

Duran Duran originally intended on spending 2020 on the road celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band. Instead, they had to yank all their plans, and bassist John Taylor came down with Covid-19. He’s all better now, and the group is working on its follow-up to 2015’s Paper Gods. It’s being co-produced by DJ Erol Alkan and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. “It’s quite naked, raw. The grass is slightly sharp and twinkly rather than smooth,” said singer Simon Le Bon. “It’s groovy (and) modern and very honest. The lyrics are quite something.”