Japandroids, 'Near to the Wild Heart of Life' Courtesy Photo Not like the stars totally let us down, either - from commercial breakthroughs to solo bows to artistic rebirths to however the hell weвЂ™re referring to More Life these days, our best and brightest certainly still made an impact, just without sucking up all the oxygen in the pop universe around them. But that was fine: It just meant that we had more of a chance to search for personal favorites, and more time to spend with those we found. There were event albums, sure, but fewer without warning - to the point where one of the few legitimately big surprises was literally titled Without Warning (and still announced the day before) - and not so many that seemed to stop the world on its axis, the way releases from Kanye, Beyonce, Rihanna and more didВ in вЂ™16. It was overwhelming enough to make us wonder if this was what every year was going to be like as a music fan: eleven months of hopping from major release to major release, with one month at the end to scramble to sort through it all. You probably remember 2016 as the year of the Event Album, a seemingly endless stream of huge artists unleashing monolithic statements - often from out of nowhere, and usually while you were still trying to digest the album dropped by a different megastar just weeks earlier.

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