10 Greatest Albums Of 2016

Released in January 2016, Blackstar is David Bowie's twenty-fifth and final album, coming just two days before his tragic death to liver cancer. Not only is Blackstar 2016's first great album, its also the year's masterpiece.

Blackstar follows Bowie's 2013 release The Next Day, a traditional-sounding art rock album that marked the man's return to music following a ten year absence. As fantastic as The Next Day is, it's not particularly experimental, which is one of the things that made the release of Blackstar so monumental.

Not only is Blackstar delightfully weird - incorporating cryptic imagery and lyrics as well as a relentless barrage of horned instrumentation - it's also deeply emotional, as songs like Lazarus and I Can't Give Everything Away deal with Bowie's stark knowledge of his own mortality, and the knowledge of the disease which was slowly killing him.