Illustration by Alex MacAskill
2026 culture lookahead | | | | Classical and Opera | Concerts
The calendar for album releases doesn’t fill up as early each year as it does for visual and performing arts – but the earliest, darkest months of the year already hold some promising record launches. Here are five of them.
Lucinda Williams performs at Ace Theater on Oct. 19, 2018 in Los Angeles.Jesse Grant/Getty Images
World’s Gone Wrong – Lucinda Williams (Highway 20, Jan. 23): The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter from Louisiana is set to release and tour her 16th album this year, augmenting her decades-long run as one of the finest artists in American roots music.
Williams calls it “a wake-up call and a battle cry, finding beauty, grit and grace in a world on edge.” The title track, featuring country singer-songwriter Brittney Spencer, implores listeners to stay strong in a tough world. The album is a collaboration-friendly affair, featuring an appearance from Norah Jones and a cover duet of Bob Marley’s So Much Trouble In The World with Mavis Staples.
When a Flower Doesn’t Grow – Softcult (Easy Life, Jan. 30): One of the most exciting new Canadian bands this decade hasn’t released a debut full-length album – until now.
Softcult, the brainchild of Kitchener, Ont.-raised siblings Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn, has been releasing buzzy singles and EPs since 2021, brandishing a fresh take on the nineties-flavoured rock subgenre shoegaze as well as dream pop, goth and grunge. The early singles from When a Flower Doesn’t Grow are packed with enough reverb-drenched hooks to satisfy any fan of culture-moving rock music.
Daphni's Butterfly is releasing in February, 2026.
Butterfly – Daphni (Jiaolong, Feb. 6): The songwriter, producer and erstwhile Ontarian Dan Snaith has a penchant for moniker-hopping. Under the name Manitoba, and later as the Polaris Music Prize-winning act Caribou, his recording projects have dipped electronic music in psychedelia and, later, YouTube samples and AI-augmented dance music.
Snaith maintains the name Daphni, though, for his more club-oriented output – songs he wants to throw into his own DJ sets. Butterfly’s most fun single, Waiting So Long, is a merger of both of his worlds. It’s the first time he’s sung on a Daphni track – and thus, perhaps confusingly, it’s billed as a Daphni-Caribou collaboration.
Laughter in Summer – Beverly Glenn-Copeland with Elizabeth Copeland (Transgressive, Feb. 6): Beverly Glenn-Copeland is the quietly masterful songwriter and performer known by many Canadians as a Mr. Dressup mainstay – and also known by record collectors worldwide as the creator of one of the most-sought-after albums of synthesizer music ever self-released on tape.
After enjoying a renewed spotlight when that album resurfaced, illness struck: In late 2024, his wife, Elizabeth Copeland, shared that he had dementia. Rather than retreat, Glenn, with Elizabeth, has kept making music.
Laughter in Summer will feature both new and reworked songs from his back catalogue. It is a document of persistent creativity. “Sometimes he’ll hold my hands and say, ‘I have so much more to give. I’ve got so much to give these young people,’” Elizabeth said in a press release.
Charli XCX has Wuthering Heights coming out in February, and it's a sharp 180 from her usual poppy, club music.CHRIS DELMAS/AFP/Getty Images
Wuthering Heights – Charli XCX (Atlantic, Feb. 13): How do you follow up the most talked-about album – an album of summer-defining, pop-leaning club music – of your career? By making a full-album soundtrack to the screen adaptation of an Emily Brontë book, apparently.
“I wanted to dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar,” Charli wrote on Substack. “Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living.”
What may seem like artistic whiplash is really an extension of Charli’s inventive creativity: Sure, Wuthering Heights features a brooding duet with Velvet Underground alumni and avant-garde veteran John Cale, but it also features her indelibly catchy writing, as evidenced by early single Chains of Love.