Despite being a year older and wiser, I’m going to open my year-end article the same way I did last year's because I’m still satisfied with the two things it has to say.
First and foremost, if you’re reading this I appreciate you. Regardless of whether you’re here because you want to support me or you’re here because you legitimately want to hear my thoughts on the music of the past year, the fact that you took the time out of your day to be here means a lot.
Second, I don’t consider this list to be a true “best of” list — rather, I’d encourage you to consider it as a list of favorites. There are albums that I have a great respect for, but I simply don’t enjoy that much. Similarly, there are albums that I love that I will freely admit aren’t doing anything groundbreaking. Of those two, the latter is way more fun, so that’s how I’m going to approach my list.1
Cool. Let’s have some fun :D
Best of 2023: Songs
I introduced a “Best of: Songs” category last year because there are plenty of great moments in music that can’t be captured in a top albums list. I don’t do any market research for this blog so I have no idea if anybody liked it. However, it doesn’t particularly matter because I liked it! So I’m going to do it again! Let me know any songs you think got snubbed, and as always, a link to a playlist containing all these songs can be found here.
Fav Opening Track
“Patio,” asia menor
Fav Closing Track
“Death is the Diamond,” Julie Byrne
Fav Title Track
“Good Lies,” Overmono
Fav Instrumental Track
“El Cielo,” Bokoya & Gianni Brezo
Fav Local Track (DMV)
“Run, Run, Run,” McKinley Dixon
Fav Local Track (PGH)
“Garden of Eden,” Funky Lamp
Fav Track from an Album Everybody Except Me Loved
“Chosen to Deserve,” Wednesday
Fav Track on a Bad Album
“Thug Tear,” IDK feat. Fat Trel
Fav Track Recommended by a Friend
“FAMJAM4000,” Jordan Ward
Fav Track I Saw Live
“Ambrosia,” Abby Morgan
Fav Track That Was Also One of Obama’s Fav Tracks
“VAMPIROS,” Rosalía & Rauw Alejandro
Fav Track That Was Also Obama
“Obamatron,” freshbeatsnoah
Fav Track by a Band I Got Kicked Out Of
“Snake Bite,” Sunny Daze & The Weathermen
Fav Track That Really Makes You Feel Like Spider-Man
“Am I Dreaming,” Metro Boomin feat. A$AP Rocky and Roisee
Fav Track to Drive Recklessly To
“Speed Drive,” Charli XCX
Fav ɛɛǟɦ
“fukumean,” Gunna
Fav Government-Mandated 21 Feature
“One Mic, One Gun,” Nas feat. 21 Savage
Fav Face-Melting EDM Drop
“Supersonic (my existence),” Skrillex, Noisier, josh pan, & Dylan Brady
Fav From the Vault Track
“Is It Over Now?,” Taylor Swift
Fav From the Vault Track (Non-Taylor Swift Category)
“The Star Room (OG Version),” Mac Miller feat. Earl Sweatshirt
Fav Track to Get Your Aux Privileges Revoked
“Indiana Jones,” Yuno Miles
I had the idea to do a favorite underground track award last year, but ultimately I couldn’t decide what the right level of obscurity was. This year, that’s your problem! Below are five options separated into tiers of Spotify monthly listeners; I leave it up to you to choose which one you want to give the award to.
Fav Underground Track
“Housefly,” Cory Hanson (Sub-100k)
“Untether,” Sophie Truax (Sub-25k)
“time crisis,” aftrr. (Sub-10k)
“Billy,” The Jellies (Sub-1k)
“I HATE YOU LIKE EL-P HATES THE HOUSTON ROCKETS,” soo do koo (Not even on Spotify)
And finally, the return of the grab bag category.
Fav Tracks on Albums That Didn’t Make the Cut
“Boy’s a liar Pt. 2,” PinkPantheress & Ice Spice
“Rebuke,” KAYTRAMINE
“Sake of My Kids,” Young Thug
“Days Move Slow,” Bully
“What Was I Made For?,” Billie Eilish
Best of 2023: Albums
While I would like to think my pick of Kenny Beat’s LOUIE for 2022 AOTY was controversial, the reality is that I don’t have any haters. I’m simply too lovable.2 Given the delusional level of self-assuredness resulting from said lovability, I’m very excited to share a new batch of albums from this past year. I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent with them, and I hope you can find one to fall in love with. A playlist containing my favorite song from each album can be found here.
As always, these are all terrific albums and the ranking is not that deep. If you feel like I ranked something too low, I encourage you to hype it up in the comments, and if you feel like I ranked something too high, I encourage you to be a hater in the comments! As we’ve established, I’m severely lacking in that department and I think it would be nice to have somebody praying on my downfall.
Honorable Mentions
But Here We Are, Foo Fighters
Cartwheel, Hotline TNT
HELLMODE, Jeff Rosenstock
trip9love…???, Tirzah
Weathervanes, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Top 25 Albums of 2023
25. Faith Is A Rock, The Alchemist, MIKE, & Wiki
There were rumors that The Alchemist wasn’t gonna make the top 25. Those rumors were wildly unsubstantiated. My glorious king dropped 3 albums and 2 EPs this year and I listened to all of them. He’s still him. The samples are immaculate. The drums are dusty. MIKE and Wiki play off each other incredibly well. Last year’s screenshot still applies.
24. Super Snõõper, Snõõper
Snõõper slap you across the face with herky-jerky guitar riffs and layers of grainy synths to better draw attention to lyrics that are fittingly bizarre and abstract. And while there are the deeper layers of social commentary befitting of a punk album if you want to get into them, there’s plenty of value to be had even in the readily apparent irony and quirk.
23. Goodnight Summerland, Helena Deland
The struggle in creating a record as atmospheric as Goodnight Summerland is deciding how much rhythmic structure you want the sound to have. Too much structure strips the record of its weightless nature, but too little structure and you risk losing the listener. The record toys with this idea of how much structure is enough across its runtime, but it’s at its most immersive when Deland’s voice is backed by nothing but strings and acoustic guitar.
22. Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek
DE-SIREEEE (AH AH AH AH) I WANT TO TURN INTO YOU-UU3
21. False Lankum, Lankum
I’m not going to describe this as a guilty pleasure because I feel no guilt about it, but I recognize that an Irish folk album is maybe one of the less accessible picks on this list. That being said, I would still encourage you to give it a listen, and if you don’t want to, I would encourage you to check the undercarriage of your car before you next take a drive.
20. Alexandria, Izaya Tiji
Every year there is one trap record that I absolutely fall in love with for no discernible reason. Last year it was Yeat’s Lyfë, and this year it’s Alexandria. I hate bloated albums, but Alexandria is sonically cohesive and the vibe just rubs my brain the right way. It’s not even that the length isn’t an issue — don’t get me wrong, the record totally could’ve been trimmed down — but when you get to a high point in the tracklist, it’s just so worth it that you forget about all your complaints as you ascend into a hazy cloud of pads and 808s.
19. The Loveliest Time, Carly Rae Jepsen
The fact that this album is better than its predecessor4 leads me to conclude that CRJ needs to fire somebody. I’m not exactly sure who, but I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. If Loveliest was intended to be “we had a bunch of songs leftover from the Loneliest sessions, let’s put them out!” then she needs to fire whoever’s in charge of determining what songs got cut from Loneliest. And if Loveliest was intended to stand apart from Loneliest, then she needs to fire her PR team because I thought it was a leftovers album.
18. My Soft Machine, Arlo Parks
She parks on my machine til it’s soft5
17. We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, Armand Hammer
This is the album for white hip-hop fans to end all albums for white hip-hop fans FUCK I forgot about scaring the hoes
16. Javelin, Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens has always been hit or miss for me, but this is genuinely one of the most emotional albums I’ve ever heard. Coping with the loss of a life partner is not an experience that you can reasonably expect to be reduced into something as relatively small and insignificant as a single album, but this is damn close. The title track is particularly poignant, combining a fleeting, uncomfortable instrumental with a beautiful extended metaphor, but the album is beautiful yet devastating from top to bottom.
15. Yard, Slow Pulp
There are 5 female-fronted rock albums on this list, and with Yard being #15, that places all 5 in the top half of this list. Which, needless to say, goes SO incredibly hard. 2023 has been a great year to be a woman in rock. Yard specifically places this high because it’s a masterclass in execution. I would not describe this album as being cutting edge either sonically or topically, but in indie rock executing familiar concepts at an insanely high level means I’m going to compare you to The Strokes, and that’s a damn good band to be compared to.
14. And The Wind (Live and Loose!), MJ Lenderman
Some albums are meant to be experienced live. I haven’t listened to Boat Songs, the album that And The Wind is a recording of, but I feel very confident I would not enjoy it as much as I enjoy this live version. Everything from the timbre of MJ’s voice to the interplay of the the drums and guitars feels like it was meant to be heard in a sticky hole in the wall where you could tell your friends the next day about the crazy band you stumbled across playing some dive.
13. GUTS, Olivia Rodrigo
There were great things about SOUR, and there were bad things about SOUR. GUTS is like SOUR if SOUR didn’t have the bad things. The songwriting on GUTS remains scathing and pointed, but no longer strays into whiny territory. The marriage of radio sensibility and pop-punk aesthetics feel like a natural vessel for what Rodrigo has to say rather than a veneer created to stand out from traditional Disney-alum pop. GUTS is everything I could’ve asked — it matches the highs of SOUR but manages to avoid any of the shooting itself in the foot.
12. the record, boygenius
good album but unfortunately boygenius peaked with the release of “me and my dog” in 2018, should’ve quit while they were ahead
11. The Window, Ratboys
“is this that band from parks and rec?” – my dad 30 minutes ago when I read him this list
10. Post-American, MSPAINT
Listening to Post-American is the musical equivalent of Mike Tyson saying, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” No matter how out there your music taste is, there will be at least one element of MSPAINT’s sound that will absolutely throw you for a loop. The band doesn’t have a guitarist (W), and between that and the screwball mashup of hardcore, electronic, and hip-hop they throw together to create an absolute wall of sound, this album is unlike anything else I’ve heard before.
9. Zach Bryan, Zach Bryan
A lot of artists self-title their debut album because at the start of a career, that first album is who they are. But for an artist as established as Zach Bryan to make that same statement? It’s not unheard of, but “this is who I am” creates expectations coming from a guy who debuted with a triple album and has already racked up Grammy nominations and Billboard awards. But not only does he deliver, Zach Bryan exceeds expectations. Dramatically. Every piece of this album is his and his alone: the songwriting, the production, the vocal performance, down to the very name, and every piece of this album is excellent.
8. Wallsocket, underscores
If you have mental illness (shoutout mental illness6) you know there’s a line where it moves out of “silly goofy” territory and into “everybody gets kinda quiet and looks at you all concerned” territory. This album wildly oscillates back and forth across that boundary, delivering emotionally devastating depictions of childhood trauma with the cheeriness and comedic timing of an early-career John Mulaney set.
7. Scaring the Hoes, JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown
The tracks are named shit like “Lean Beef Patty,” “Steppa Pig,” and “Jack Harlow Combo Meal.” The whole thing was recorded on an SP-404. The samples include commercials for Nintendo and ramen. Redveil is the only feature. It’s unbelievably loud. Despite that, you can’t even hear Danny Brown half the time. Consensus opinion on the album looks like this.
In other words, this is the album for white hip-hop fans to end all albums for white hip-hop fans.
6. 12, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Written over the final stages of his battle with cancer, 12 is a beautiful sendoff for a composer as accomplished and revered as Ryuichi Sakamoto. Primarily composed of Sakamoto playing sparse bits of piano and synthesizer, the record lands with a weight far greater than the sum of its parts. To describe it as an unspoken meditation on mortality is a bit much for the general tone of my writing, but it wouldn’t be inaccurate.
5. Census Designated, Jane Remover
The underground shoegaze revival is genuinely one of the coolest things to happen in music recently, and Census Designated is genuinely the most cathartic album I’ve heard this year. It makes me want to cry, scream, and generally explode into a million tiny pieces. The shoegaze scene is better for this album, and this album is better because of the shoegaze scene.
4. 10,000 gecs, 100 gecs
in lieu of legitimate commentary on 10,000 gecs, i would instead like to share an album of the memes i was airdropped at the 100 gecs concert i attended this past may.
please enjoy!
3. Girl with Fish, feeble little horse
Girl with Fish is the culmination of the “great year to be a woman in rock” narrative I have steadily been pushing across the entries of Slow Pulp, Olivia Rodrigo, boygenius, and Ratboys. feeble little horse is special — they remind me of how I felt about a certain band when they released their debut album Projector two years ago.7
Geese deserve to be huge. If they don’t blow up, I’ll understand it—rock ain’t really the biggest genre right now—but I’ll be so disappointed. They’re raw, sure, but their debut was incredibly exciting and one of my favorite listens in a genre that’s been stale as of late.
In all the same ways that Projector was, Girl with Fish is an absolutely electrifying record. It’s gritty, fast-paced, cleverly written, tight, and catchier than it has any right to be.
PITTSBURGH IS BACK STILLERS GAHNTA DA SUPER BOWL BABY
2. Maps, Billy Woods & Kenny Segal
Despite the fact that it sits at number two on this list, Maps is and always has been album of the year material. Billy Woods continues the absolute heater he’s been on over the past few years (note that he’s the only artist to appear on this list twice, earlier as one half of Armand Hammer) as Kenny Segal makes a terrific first impression as backbone of this project. This is an outstanding record, and it is the highest praise for me to honestly say that it was the only one that ever in the conversation alongside my eventual AOTY.
1. 3D Country, Geese
Last year, I felt the need to explain my choice for album of the year because it was truly just as much of a surprise to me as it was to you. I grappled with everything from how much I liked the record, to whether my liking it constituted it being number one, to if beat tapes even deserve to contend for AOTY. This year, that is not the case.
If you and I are friends, I have mentioned Geese to you. If you look at my Instagram stories, I have posted Geese at you. If you are in my band, I have played Geese for you. And if you read my Bill Clinton Swag article, I have Bill Clinton’d Geese to you Swag’d Geese to you. I love this band to the point of delusion, and until they give me any reason to do otherwise, I will continue to do so. 3D Country is a transcendent album, and you should listen to it. Thanks for reading <3
I’ve decided to take the radical stance of “talking about things you like should be fun”
This is not an invitation to be a hater!
Haters will say this isn’t a real review. Haters clearly haven’t listened to “Welcome to My Island” by Caroline Polachek off her new hit record Desire, I Want To Turn Into You.
The Loneliest Time, released last year. I gave it an honorable mention :)
If you’re wondering where this article is, it was written before I knew Substack existed… which is to say it exists only in the notes app on my phone lmao
He strings his words together almost as well as he strings together the most musical of bass lines.