A year of great music offers a reminder that more really can be more: more melodies, more breakthroughs, more art.
Narrowing the options down to a list of 10 favorite albums was, in 2023, a tougher task than ever. The music industry has been beset by concerns about market saturation, caused by an ever-rising flood of new songs onto streaming services, overwhelming artists and consumers alike. But looking back over a year of great albums offers a reminder that more really can be more: more melodies, more breakthroughs, more art.
This list could have been filled up with just rock and roll, an allegedly dying genre that coughs up triumphs of noise and heart every week (please check out Bully, Chris Farren, and Ratboys). It could have overindexed on rappers who, in hip-hop’s 50th year, showed youthful promise (Veeze, Lola Brooke) and middle-aged vitality (billy woods, Aesop Rock). And in a year when divas drove the mainstream conversation, a crop of mini Madonnas offered smart takes on silly fun (Chappell Roan, Troye Sivan, Romy, Hannah Diamond).
Facing so much very, very goodness out there, I had to stick to what cut through the abundance, making me stop scrolling to listen.
Follow along on Spotify.
John Francis Flynn places classics of Irish folk music into the artificial now, shearing drinking songs of their merriness and burying fiddles under gray noise. The concept could make for a bad Ph.D. project, but his execution is all too humane. As Flynn repurposes the ballads of working people crunched by industrialization—such as “Dirty Old Town,” last popularized by the Pogues, the late Shane MacGowan’s band—he taps into cross-generational yearnings that modernity will never squelch.
This thrillingly tasteless album opens with a battle cry: “First off, fuck Elon Musk.” It’s rapped by JPEGMAFIA, a lovable crank who’s disturbingly preoccupied with social-media beef. Meanwhile, his partner, Danny Brown, yelps virtuosically about real problems—agoraphobia, addiction. Their complementary forms of alienation alchemize with breakneck, berserk beats to jolt you off the couch and away from the villains on your laptop.
On her second album, Fountain Baby, Amaarae offered a fresh fusion of clubby-cool hip-hop attitude and African rhythms, reflecting her upbringing split between the U.S. and Ghana. Her lyrics present her as a hard-partying badass, but when I met with her earlier this year, she emphasized that she’s fundamentally a music nerd who prefers the studio to the rave (so Cancer). This explains why Fountain Baby is such an addictive headphones experience; interlocking beats pan mesmerizingly in the ear. On loudspeakers, those same beats can get rooms of people moving—but in ways that, like fate, can’t really be predicted.
The 10 Best Albums of 2023
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13.12.2023
A year of great music offers a reminder that more really can be more: more melodies, more breakthroughs, more art.
Narrowing the options down to a list of 10 favorite albums was, in 2023, a tougher task than ever. The music industry has been beset by concerns about market saturation, caused by an ever-rising flood of new songs onto streaming services, overwhelming artists and consumers alike. But looking back over a year of great albums offers a reminder that more really can be more: more melodies, more breakthroughs, more art.
This list could have been filled up with just rock and roll, an allegedly dying genre that coughs up triumphs of noise and heart every week (please check out Bully, Chris Farren, and........
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