10. David Bowie - Blackstar
It might be a little passé to say that anything David Bowie releases has a superior level of anticipation built into it. But after the regrettably straightforward rock album he put forward in 2013, Bowie fans are expecting something with a little more grandeur this time around. And if the descriptions coming from Mr. Bowie are to be believed, they have every reason to believe they'll get it. Blackstar will be Bowie's 25th studio album and will be released on his 69th birthday. If you don't think there will be ample amounts of pomp and grandiosity involved, then you clearly don't know the artist formerly known as Ziggy Stardust. Adding to the scope of what those aforementioned numbers could mean, one of the engineers working on the album has said that, in preparation for writing Blackstar, David Bowie was "listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar." Yep. You did indeed just read that beautifully ridiculous sentence. Bowie is being inspired by radical rapper Kendrick Lamar. Not that fans should expect to hear him attempting to spit rapid-fire rhymes over atmospheric beats, since the inspiration is strictly on an experimental level. Further describing the new album: "We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn't do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that's exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll.