It’s been another trying year for many of us, but as always, music has proven to offer much-needed inspiration and solace as we all navigate these crazy times. And with the promise of the new year upon us, we’re looking forward to all of the new music waiting to bless our eager ears in the days, weeks and months to come.
Below, we’ve identified the 30 albums we’re most excited to lay our ears upon in 2022, based on the information available to date, which is admittedly scarce for select titles. As the respective album details and as-yet-to-be-announced release dates emerge, we’ll provide additional coverage, streams and reviews.
In the meantime, explore the list and be sure to let us know which forthcoming albums are on your wishlist for the year ahead!
BONNIE RAITT | Just Like That…
Release Date: April 22nd
Photo: Ken Friedman
What We Know So Far: Across her storied career that has now spanned six different decades, Bonnie Raitt’s music has been defined by her unshakeable artistic integrity and her undying devotion to the Blues, among other American roots traditions. Therefore, it comes as no surprise at all that the Recording Academy will honor her with a lifetime achievement award during next month’s Special Merit Awards Ceremony in conjunction with the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards.
A few months after she accepts the well-earned honor, Raitt will release her eighteenth studio album Just Like That…, which follows 2016’s Dig In Deep. She’ll support the album by embarking upon an extensive tour featuring special guests including Lucinda Williams. "I’m excited to share the stage with Lucinda,” Raitt explains in an official statement “Having been a fan from afar for years, it’s great that we’re finally getting to tour together next year. Can’t wait to hit the road!"
Revisit:
OLIVIA RODRIGO | Title TBD
Release Date: TBD
Photo: Grant Spanier
What We Know So Far: Punctuated by TIME Magazine recently naming her their Entertainer of the Year, 2021 belonged to Olivia Rodrigo. Nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album—along with five other noms including Best New Artist—at the upcoming GRAMMY Awards, Rodrigo’s generation-defining, multiple chart-topping debut album SOUR formally introduced the world to her candid, confessional and thoroughly captivating songwriting.
And while the glow of her inaugural record remains as luminous as ever seven months after its May release, speculation has been swirling among Rodrigo’s legion of fervent fans that her sophomore effort—rumored, and understandably so, to be titled SWEET—will arrive sooner than later.
While Rodrigo has yet to definitely weigh in on such conjecture, we wouldn’t be surprised if she pulls a Taylor Swift and blesses us with another magical record in short order. “Salty, savory, umami, ya know, there’s so many different things,” she coyly responded during her late October appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! when Kimmel inquired about the successor to SOUR. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s my little secret. I’m still kinda working on the rest of it.”
Revisit:
SADE | Title TBD
Release Date: TBD
What We Know So Far: Did we include Sade’s as-yet-announced seventh studio album in last year’s new music preview? Yes, we did. Did said album actually materialize in 2021? No, it did not. Are we just as hopeful that 2022 will (finally) be the year that the follow-up to 2010’s Soldier of Love surfaces? Yes, we are. Would we be surprised if the record doesn’t arrive in 2022, despite the band’s reported return to the recording studio? No, we would not. Are we confident that when it finally does arrive, it’ll be well worth the wait? Absolutely.
Revisit:
LAETITIA SADIER | Title TBD
Release Date: TBD
Photo: Marie Merlet
What We Know So Far: Though Stereolab toured in 2019, reissued a handful of their studio albums the same year, and delivered the fourth installment of their ‘Switched On’ compilation series (Electrically Possessed) earlier this year, their recording hiatus as a band is now set to enter its twelfth year. Following the arrival of their tenth and most recent studio album Not Music (2010), the group members agreed to take an indefinite sabbatical to focus their energies toward their own creative endeavors.
Widely revered co-founder Lætitia Sadier has taken full advantage of the opportunity by crafting four excellent solo albums and contributing guest vocals on projects by the likes of Deerhoof, Mercury Rev, Adrian Younge and Tyler, The Creator. Preceded by the multi-textured, shapeshifting lead single “New Moon” and destined to offer a glorious bevy of experimental, exquisitely constructed melodies, her fifth solo affair is expected sometime in the new year.
In an official statement, Sadier explains that “New Moon” explores “The nature of trauma—by going through a process of feeling the emotions of all of that has stricken or afflicted us, individually. By not avoiding these feelings, it's a way to evolve and cut the ties of the past, that are keeping us down and into the turmoil we are currently experiencing.”
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SALLY SHAPIRO | Sad Cities
Release Date: February 18th
Photo: Mika Stjärnglinder a.k.a. Mikael Ögren
What We Know So Far: “With this single we have decided to call our musical project a day, and we would like to thank everyone who followed us on this journey.” So said Sally Shapiro, the duo comprised of Swedish producer Johan Agebjörn and the vocalist known by the Sally Shapiro pseudonym, when they released what was purported to be their final single “If You Ever Wanna Change Your Mind” back in the spring of 2016.
Fortunately for discerning music heads, the pair did indeed change their minds, opting to reunite this year for their upcoming fourth studio album Sad Cities. With a penchant for exploring a multitude of sounds that straddle the convergence between various strains of electronic and pop, the group’s emotive and evocative songs may very well be best classified as music with an ever-beating heart and sympathetic soul. Two things that we’re in desperate need of these days.
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SHAMIR | Heterosexuality
Release Date: February 11th
What We Know So Far: “I think this album is me finally acknowledging my trauma,” Shamir Bailey says of his upcoming studio affair in an official statement. “Everyone knows I’ve been through so much shit and I kind of just rammed through, without really acknowledging the actual trauma that I do feel on almost a daily basis.” Ever the consummate pop music adventurist, Shamir is also a creative workhorse—Heterosexuality marks his eighth album in just seven years, dating back to his breakout 2015 debut Ratchet.
Lead single “Cisgender” augurs more of Shamir’s signature incisive and introspective lyricism to come, as he bravely examines the complexities of reconciling external perceptions of gender identity with one’s own self-awareness, as best encapsulated in the song’s chorus (“I'm not cisgender / I'm not binary trans / I don't wanna be a girl / I don't wanna be a man / I'm just existing on this god forsaken land / And you can take it or leave it / Or you can just stay back”).
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SPIRITUALIZED | Everything Was Beautiful
Release Date: February 25th | Pre-Order
What We Know So Far: In 2022, we’ll have much to celebrate with respect to Spiritualized, including the 30th anniversary of their debut album Lazer Guided Melodies (1992) and the 25-year milestone of their acclaimed third LP Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (1997). Yet amidst the understandable nostalgia sure to swell for the group’s classic, timeless recordings, the most notable event of the year will surely be the unveiling of their ninth studio jaunt, which, as its title suggests, promises an abundance of the beautiful, intricately devised melodies that the band has perfected across its three-decades-deep career. Lead offering “Always Together With You” offers a compelling, exquisitely crafted taste of what’s to come.
A notoriously and meticulously devoted songsmith, Spiritualized mastermind J Spaceman (a.k.a. Jason Pierce) played no less than 16 different instruments on the ambitiously conceived album, which was recorded in 11 different studios. “There was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me,” Spaceman explains in an official statement. “Not like you’re spiraling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of… achieve. Well, you get there.”
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TEARS FOR FEARS | The Tipping Point
Release Date: February 25th | Pre-Order
Photo: Frank Ockenfels
What We Know So Far: After a remarkable six-year run in the ‘80s marked by the back-to-back-to-back brilliance of debut LP The Hurting (1983), global breakthrough Songs From The Big Chair (1985) and the dynamic, decade-ending The Seeds Of Love (1989), Tears For Fears have subsequently released just three albums in the ensuing 32 years.
Hence why it comes as such a welcome revelation that Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have completed their long-awaited seventh studio effort, nearly eighteen years after their most recent album (2004’s Everybody Loves A Happy Ending) arrived. Initiated in the recording studio in early 2020 just prior to pandemic-induced lockdown, The Tipping Point is preceded by the haunting, titular lead single and anthemic second single “No Small Thing.” Additionally, the duo will hit the road in May for a two-month tour across the US and UK.
“The songs that we recorded are, in a sense, a resolution of all the pain that was being experienced at the beginning of the (recording of the) album,” Orzabal explains during a recent interview with The Current. “There is a sense of release and a sense of relief and a sense of moving on and actually coming to terms with all of that. And that’s what I think makes this album so special.”
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EDDIE VEDDER | Earthling
Release Date: February 11th | Pre-Order
Photo: Danny Clinch
What We Know So Far: Though Eddie Vedder will forever remain synonymous with Pearl Jam, whose debut album Ten (1991) celebrated its 30th anniversary this past summer, his solo output over the past few decades has only reinforced his songwriting prowess and bolstered his impressive musical legacy. Dating back to his pair of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan collaborations featured on the Dead Man Walking (1995) soundtrack to his more extensive contributions to the music curated for the 2007 film Into the Wild—which functioned as his debut solo album—to his second LP Ukulele Songs (2011), Vedder’s predominantly acoustic-driven solo fare is largely more subdued than Pearl Jam’s oeuvre to date.
In advance of his third album’s arrival, Vedder has unveiled two tracks (“The Haves” and “Long Way”), both of which possess a palpably intimate, timeless and anthemic feel to them. Accompanied by a short eight-date US tour slated to bookend Earthling’s release and produced by the GRAMMY Award-winning Andrew Watt (Dua Lipa, Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone), the album promises to remind us that while luminaries like Cobain, Dylan, Mitchell, Prince, Simon, Springsteen, Wonder and Young are still—and rightfully—considered among the elite ranks of American songwriters, Vedder increasingly warrants inclusion among this rarefied group.
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PETE YORN | Hawaii
Release Date: TBD
What We Know So Far: “It doesn't really matter, but I need to be alone,” Pete Yorn once explained to The Baltimore Sun, when asked about the optimal environments for his writing. “If I get in a flow and someone distracts me, it pulls me back into the current time and I'll get sucked out of the flow. I'll tell people I'm going to Hawaii for a month, and they'll say, ‘You're going to write some great songs hanging out on the beach!’ And I'm like, ‘I don't think so.’ I don't even think of it like that.”
Two decades and change since Yorn formally arrived by way of his accomplished debut album musicforthemorningafter (2001), the prolific singer-songwriter has announced that his ninth studio album will make landfall in early 2022. And, coincidentally enough, it’s called…Hawaii. Whether his connection with the islands provided the creative fodder for the new songs or not remains to be heard, but if the lovely lead single “Elizabeth Taylor” is an accurate reflection of what’s on the horizon, then we can expect another sterling set of tunes from the gifted singer-songwriter.
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