Most Anticipated Albums of 2016, part 3

Bruno Mars

Album: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Beyond working on "All I Ask" off Adele's blockbuster 25, Bruno Mars has been focused on creating his third album, the follow-up to 2012's double platinum Unorthodox Jukebox. Despite the wait in between albums, Mars has never really exactly left the spotlight, playing the Super Bowl Half Time show and appearing on 2015's biggest single, Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk," which spent 14 weeks at Number One.

Nine Inch Nails

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

It all started with a rare tweet from Trent Reznor's official account: "New NIN coming in 2016. Other stuff, too." This follows the positive reception of Nine Inch Nails' otherwise understated, synth-heavy 2013 album Hesitation Marks – as well as its corresponding art book, Cargo in the Blood, released last December. "It's not an album I'm trying to finish in a month," Reznor told Rolling Stone last June, "It's more just feeling around in the dark and seeing what sounds interesting. It's nice to do that every few years to try and reinvent and discover and try to learn about yourself and what feels exciting to you as an artist."

David Bowie

Album: ★

Release Date: January 8th

You probably didn't get tickets to Lazarus, the New York Theatre Workshop musical which David Bowie co-wrote with Enda Walsh. (That is unless you could scrape up about $800 for scalpers; otherwise, tickets sold out for the entire run within minutes.) Luckily for the rest of us, there's his 25th studio album, ★ (pronounced "Blackstar"). The early singles — the title track, and, yes, "Lazarus," — have somber brass and textured production that hint at spacey, jazz-inflected, mid-to-late-1970s Bowie. "The goal," producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone this past November, "in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll."

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

Maybe Macklemore and Ryan Lewis recognized they were facing an uphill battle or backlash going into the sequel to the duo's enormously successful debut The Heist. "Downtown," the yet-untitled follow-up LP's lead single, was a long-overdue celebration of hip-hop's early days, corralling hip-hop originators Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Caz, and Melle Mel. The song didn't perform on the Billboard charts for very long, but its reverence was hard to see cynically. Still, it's tough to imagine The Heist's yet-unnamed follow-up will see the same level of success as its prequel, without a "Thrift Shop" lighting the way. Still, a newly-clean-and-sober Macklemore has promised to take on the influence of Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles in an ambitious attempt to break the sophomore slump.

Sia

Album: This Is Acting

Release Date: January 29th

This Is Acting, Sia's seventh album, pays tribute to the bewigged Australian's other gig – writing songs for the likes of Rihanna, Beyoncé and other chart-toppers. Acting will consist entirely of songs that have been rejected by bigger names, and the match between song and intended target will, at times, be apparent on first listen. "One of them is a Shakira reject, which there's no doubt when you hear it. You'll know that it was a Shakira reject because I sound like Shakira," she told Rolling Stone in December. "Alive," the album's lead single, was intended for Adele and written alongside the British belter and the hotly tipped Canadian troubadour Tobias Jesso Jr. "I chose the people that we worked with and I choose those people because they're so incredibly talented and they check their egos at the door too and allow me to be the artist. Then when I want to bring another artist, I try to check my ego at the door and be of service to them and allow them to be the artist."  

Beck

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

A few months after Morning Phase's surprise win for Album of the Year at the 2015 Grammys, Beck released the hugely catchy single "Dreams." Produced by Greg Kurstin, who was a member of Beck's backing band ages before he was helming chart-topping hits by Adele and Kelly Clarkson, "Dreams" was Beck's biggest radio hit in more than a decade, reaching Number Two on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and Number 23 on Rolling Stone's list of the best songs of 2015. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," Beck said in a radio interview last summer. However, six months after the single's release, there are still scant details about the album's title or release date. 

Elton John

Album: Wonderful Crazy Night

Release Date: February 5th

At 68, Elton John is still devoted to writing new songs with longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin. And Wonderful Crazy Night, which reunites him with longtime sidemen Davey Johnstone and Nigel Olsson, is his rowdiest and most upbeat album in decades. Mercury/Capitol, who released his downtempo 2013 album The Diving Board, will issue the album in February, although John says the label wasn't thrilled with the rocking new record and would rather him just settle down and record a Christmas album or Motown covers. "I want this record to feel joyous from beginning to end," John told Rolling Stone in November.

Ed Sheeran

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

In a pop landscape driven mostly by EDM and hip-hop, Ed Sheeran made being an acoustic guitar-wielding singer-songwriter cool again thanks to tender ballads written for himself, Taylor Swift, One Direction and Justin Bieber. This year, he's planning on releasing his as-yet-untitled third album and quit social media in early December to focus on his music. Back in September, Sheeran confirmed to Rolling Stone that he was hard at work on his fourth album as well and would soon travel to Africa to look for new sounds. "I know a load of Ghanaian musicians in London, and they've always told me to go over there," Sheeran said. "I feel like I'd go there and be revitalized."

Haim

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

The Haim sisters have experienced a roller-coaster ride since their 2013 debut, Days Are Gone — including collaborations with Calvin Harris and M83, a show on Beats 1 and an opening slot on Taylor Swift's 1989 Tour. In October, they told Beats 1's Zane Lowe that their long-in-the-works second album was almost finished. "Essentially the oven has been pre-heated and the oven door is open. … Fish fingers in the tray," they quipped. While their signature harmonies will likely remain intact, there are a lot of wild cards at play: "We're always writing and figuring out new vibes and trying to get our inner Kanyes out," Alana Haim told Rolling Stone in 2014.

Charli XCX

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

Charli XCX kept busy in 2015, guesting on tracks like the Ty Dolla $ign single "Drop That Kitty," launching a fashion line, and releasing a documentary about pop and feminism. Later in the year, she focused on music, canceling her fall 2015 tour with Bleachers to work on her follow-up to 2014's Sucker. In September, she offered a few details about the still-untitled album to the U.K. newspaper The Mirror: "It's definitely the most electronic pop sound I've done," she said. "I've been really inspired by Paris Hilton, small dogs and a glitter, luxe lifestyle." In October she bore out that prediction when she released the dark, pounding "Vroom Vroom," produced by future-shocked electro artist Sophie.

Source : http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/45-most-anticipated-albums-of-2016-20160106/haim-20160105