All right. They’re finally here.
For the record, a couple years ago I told myself I was going to make big changes about how I put these lists together with the theme of taking less time, being less precious, and giving myself less of a hard time about getting them done. And that seemed to work for like, one or two years, but this year I somehow fell way far behind “giving myself grace” and got myself stressed out by the last few weeks of January knowing how much left there was to do. So, back to the drawing board basically. I failed in not stressing out about these lists this year, and I’m recommitting here to telling myself to cut more corners and find more ways to spend less time putting these together.
But that’s just for me, friends. The music this year was great. That’s one of the hard parts of giving up on this silly process I put myself through every year — I listen to a record like PinkPantheress’s and think about easy it could have been for me to have completely missed it if I wasn’t doing something like this. I discovered a lot of great music this year and I’m excited to share it with my itty bitty audience, you lucky motherfuckers you.
It was a strong music year for sure, particularly for art pop weirdos, who make up most of the top 10 this year. It was a fairly deep year, but also top heavy. I really fell in love with some records this year, and haven’t loved a Top Ten this much since 2020. Just a bunch of incredible artists at the peak of their games making albums that don’t sound like anything else.
It was also a strong year, and it truly pains me to say this, for disco. Millenials love to make memes about all the great crises and global traumatic events we’ve been alive to witness, but what of the disco revivals? This is at least the sixth disco revival I’ve lived through, and you can blame Beyonce if you want, but I might blame Australia, where seemingly through the sheer force of Kylie Minogue alone, disco has never died. And yet, it was the UK that produced two of the best disco records of the 21st century in 2023 (see SG Lewis and Jessie Ware at #16 and #17).
To be honest, this is one of my least controversial lists ever, at least if you’re comparing it to the aggregate. I came around in a big way to boygenius, and everyone else suddenly caught up on Caroline Polachek and is giving her well-deserved flowers. I don’t really have too many hot takes for the year, depressingly. Kali Uchis continues to be underrated. 100 gecs record was a bummer and seems to be a confirmation that the magic is over there, but I’m honestly thrilled with all the eclectic varieties of hyperpop that continue to crop up all over the place, particularly some of the Spanish artists featured in this year’s lists. No one can explain to me how Skrillex and Diplo made one of the greatest dance records of all time together in 2015, and since then Diplo has refused to make anything but boring country and deep house music, while Skrillex hasn’t lost a step (both of the albums he put out this year can be found below).
My suspicion is that the incarcerated Young Thug had to pull more than a few dustier old tracks out of the vault to put together the 17 tracks that make up Metro Boomin’s (superior) version of this year’s BUSINESS IS BUSINESS, but as a result its his best release in at least six years (and my favorite rap album of the year). I would pay hundreds of dollars to learn the story of how this record was put together, but whatever the story is, tracks like “Mad Dog” and “Sake of My Kids” bring me back to the Slime Season glory days. #FreeThug, obviously.
I was indifferent to this year’s Lana record for the most part, but she’s in the Top 10 for Songs. I’m not going to spend another year complaining about Mitski’s mind-numbingly boring direction or how representative she may or may not be in a trend of formerly incredible female indie rockers who abandon the guitar and everything that made them weird/interesting as soon as they get Interview magazine famous. But if Caroline Polachek announces she’s doing her next record with Jack Antonoff, so help me, so help me people. I will fucking lose it.
That’s all I got for 2023. I hope you enjoy the tunes! Please tell me what I forgot and what I got wrong. As always list is below and you can also find on Spotify.
- Caroline Polachek – Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
- PinkPantheress – Heaven knows
- Kali Uchis – Red Moon In Venus
- boygenius – the record
- KAROL G – MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO
- Alice Longyu Gao – Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire
- Frost Children – Hearth Room
- Yaeji – With A Hammer
- Yameii Online – CANDY
- Young Thug – BUSINESS IS BUSINESS (Metro’s Version)
- Skrillex – Don’t Get Too Close
- Young Nudy – Gumbo
- daine – shapeless
- Ice Spice – Like..? (Deluxe)
- Tennis – Pollen
- SG Lewis – AudioLust & HigherLove
- Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good!
- Slow Pulp – Yard
- Wednesday – Rat Saw God
- Babyface Ray – Summer’s Mine
- Burna Boy – I Told Them…
- María Escarmiento & Fran Laoren – SENSACIÓN DE CALOR (EP)
- Deko – nu genesis
- feeble little horse – Girl with Fish
- JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES
- Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday 2
- Slayyyter – STARFUCKER
- Preditah – Preditah Decade
- BETWEEN FRIENDS – I Love My Girl, She’s My Boy
- Doja Cat – Scarlet
- Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation
- City Girls – RAW
- Jessy Lanza – Love Hallucination
- Eladio Carrion – 3MEN2 KBRN
- saturdays at your place – always cloudy (EP)
- Skrillex – Quest For Fire
- Pi’erre Bourne – Grails
- Frost Children – SPEED RUN
- Computerwife – Computerwife
- Don Toliver – Love Sick
- Overpade – wiZZard
- Sufjan Stevens – Javelin
- Bad Bunny – nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana
- Tainy – DATA
- BIA – REALLY HER (INTL DELUXE)
- Sik-K – POP A LOT
- jonatan leandoer96 – Sugar World
- Gloss Up – Before The Gloss Up
- Samantha Urbani – Showing Up
- Lil Wayne – Tha Fix Before Tha VI
Honorable Mentions:
Andy Shauf – Norm
KAYTRAMINÉ – KAYTRAMINÉ
Rels B – AfroLOVA’ 23
Emilia – .mp3
underscores – Wallsocket
CHAI – CHAI
Biig Piig – Bubblegum
Key Glock – Glockoma 2
Rick Ross & Meek Mill – Too Good To Be True
George Clanton – Ooh Rap I Ya
feed the dog. 