Happy holidays everyone! Thanks for keeping abreast with the world of Alternative specialty radio through another year of the SubModern Reports. It’s been a year of fantastic tunes, well worthy of ending a decade with (and no, there will be no end-of-decade charts). What were the best of the best, according to specialty show airplay? Continue on to find out…

This might come as an unexpected #1, in a tortoise vs. the hare style twist, Local Natives have the #1 single of 2019, “When Am I Gonna Lose You,” which despite consistent airplay throught the year, never actually hit #1. I guess it’s true that slow and steady can indeed win the race.

On the other hand Vampire Weekend definitely spent some time at the top of the charts this year so it’s no surprise that Father of The Bride would be the #1 album of 2019… by a lot! The biggest single from the record, “This Life,” came in at #3(t).

Congratulations to both of those fine veteran bands, as well as the numerous other artists appearing in the top 25 of both charts, including Corridor, Fontaines D.C., The Get Up Kids, Hot Chip, Karen O & Danger Mouse, Moving Panoramas, The National, Sleater-Kinney, and Tame Impala. And there’s so much more to delve into as well. You can find the top 50 singles and top 25 albums of the year below.

At this time we also like to determine the top labels of the year who brought all of this music our way. With releases from Corridor, Marika Hackman, Kyle Craft, Tacocat, and gearing up for 2020 with Wolf Parade‘s new album forthcoming, congratulations on a three-peat to Scott P., Michelle F., and the gang at Sub Pop Records, SubModern‘s #1 label of 2019! Of course, the rest of the top ten labels were no slouches either. Congrats to the teams at Merge (#2), Warner (#3), Polyvinyl (#4), Domino (#5), Matador (#6), 4AD (#7), Interscope (#8), BMG (#9), and PIAS (#10).

Thanks as always to everyone who takes the time to read this every week (or at least most weeks). I’m going to plagiarize my 2018 self by once again saying whether you make music, promote music, play it on the radio, write about it, or just listen to it, we’re all part of this wonderful ecosystem of discovering what’s new and exciting. Here’s to an even better year and decade of music ahead of us! I’ll be back here with our first charts of 2020 on January 8th.

Now comes my favorite part, where I list my favorite songs and albums of 2019!

~ Josh T. Landow
Twitter: @JoshTLandow