The end of the year in Cambridge is slightly surreal. You blitz through a term of desperately attempting to pretend you know what you are doing, academically, social, mentally. But you’ve made it. And as everything begins to slow down as so-called ‘Bridgemas’ approaches, its time to return your books, do your laundry and force yourself into premature festivity. Time in Cambridge passes so incredibly quickly, and it is often difficult to remember further back than a week, let alone to look retrospectively back at the entire year.

But in terms of music, 2016 was a memorable year – and if you can stretch your mind back that far, you will find a diverse and exciting 12 months of releases and performances. It was the year of the digital album, of ‘Becky with the good hair’. Drake sang Taylor Swift, a meme gave Rae Sremmurd their first number one single. The return of Adele. And apparently, Rick Astley is still making music.

Musical releases this year have been a broad variety of returning veterans and exciting debuts. Iggy Pop released Post Pop Depression, which is the singer’s 17th album to date – an awe-inspiring feat considering the amount of drugs consumed by one person. Devonté Hynes, under his moniker of Blood Orange also released the poignant Freetown Sound, an album that combined new-wave with funk for his grooviest sound to date. The album was proudly uninhibited, and as Devonté Hynes stated it was, “for everyone told they’re not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way”. The album reflects this sense of liberation, and 2016 has seen music as a powerful channel for social message; Solange’s Seat at the Table created a poignant channel for discussion of race in America.

The death of David Bowie in early January marked a solemn return to Cambridge, where my friends and I had spent last term’s pre-drinks practicing a choreographed routine to ‘Life on Mars’. Bowie’s final album, released only a few days before his death, serves as a succinct and poignant indication of his unique talent. Blackstar is an undoubtedly iconic album of 2016.

Another pop icon was lost, in the form of Prince, another pioneer that pushed the boundary of gender, fashion and music. These figures paved the way for creativity in exciting unknown forms, performing as exciting, almost alien, figures. Much more recently, Leonard Cohen’s passing has brought ‘Hallelujah’ into the popular charts for the first time in its history. Cohen was a man who did not start writing music until his middle age, or start touring until his 60s. Charting for the first time posthumously, this is a poignant milestone for Cohen’s understated but incredible career.

Anyone who’s seen the classic 1990 TV show Twin Peaks will have noted that Angelo Badalamenti’s original score is one of the most unforgettable soundtracks of all time. Badalamenti’s delicate balance of darkness and beauty has been notoriously difficult to recapture. The California-based experimental pop group Xiu Xiu manages just this balance. Xiu Xiu captures the special duality of Badalamenti’s original score, while adding flair with blaring instrumentation and frontman Jamie Stewart’s haunting vocal performance. It’s the year’s best soundtrack, shoegaze, experimental pop and noise record.

It is a mystery how other alternative rock bands find the power to go on when they know Radiohead exists. There simply is no other group which so consistently produces albums that sound like nothing they’ve previously recorded, and still immediately reach classic status with fans, critics and newcomers alike. With A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead channel a more quiet and introspective spirit than before. The result is a record that isn’t immediately attention-grabbing or catchy, but which, with repeat listens, reveals its intricacies and simply doesn’t let you go. It’s an immersive and mature album about pain and heartbreak.

While officially a mixtape and not a commercial album, Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book should be enough to prove that that line, if it ever existed, is obsolete. Coloring Book is simply the best hip-hop project to come out all year. It draws from a disparate collection of sounds, from early Kanye to gospel, and Chance shows himself to be one of the most charismatic and positive voices in rap. It’s primarily about God, but that shouldn’t turn anyone off. The almost political joy Chance expresses through his Christianity in the face of hardship is something that should resonate with anyone, regardless of religion.

There might have been no other album with such meme-like hype around it than Frank Ocean’s second and endlessly delayed album. This makes it all the more surprising that the subdued and introspective Blond is quite universally considered to have redeemed this hype. What’s clear from the first song onwards is that Frank is not especially concerned with what people expect. The production is much more stripped down than on Channel Orange, providing more of a focus on his singing and lyrics – both of which show Frank as a new, mature and introspective artist. Meditating on race, love, sexuality and drugs, Blond is a poetic masterpiece.

Beyoncé’s Lemonade seems to command a rarely found critical and commercial consensus of its excellence. It’s hard to say anything new about an album that has already inspired a substantive literature analysing its personal, political and musical qualities. Suffice it to say that Lemonade is possibly one of the best albums of the decade so far, and a sign that the album as an art form is still a worthwhile convention. As a whole, it is an emotional gut-punch. It is the right thing for the right time – a personally political voice of protest against oppression from one of the most iconic artists of our time