For Billboard’s 2019 Year in Music, various musicians picked their favorite album released in the past 12 months -- and talked about why it’s stuck with them.
This year, the records I was really listening to were older, like McCartney II and a lot of Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, but Sharon has been one of my favorite artists and songwriters since I started listening to her in high school. I’ve always been in awe of her, her voice and her production style. When I was at New York University -- she’s such a New York figure -- she was someone I looked up to, and she inevitably became a mentor and a friend in a real way as I was graduating from college.
But this year, there was this real beautiful synchronicity -- I shared a release day with Sharon; [her] record came out the same day as [mine], Heard It in a Past Life, and we got to cheers together that night. It feels so connected to my record in a way -- like, if mine is light, hers is really dark, but in a way that I love. It’s so haunted. There’s so much grit in this record but still so much space. I’m hanging on every breath when it starts, the spacing of those chords -- you just don’t know when the next one is going to come. It grabs you immediately. I also love the pacing; the track list is perfect.
