This list is the whole reason I do any of these features. This is the big event, the Academy Award for Best Picture. Yet I usually don’t have a ton to say by the time I have to introduce these. I thought 2023 was a bit of a down year, but not that down. There was no Renaissance to carry the year, and that’s fine, there isn’t always. There were about seven or eight consensus album of the year contenders, and the ones from that group that went all the way with me are my #1 and #2 here, so it’s not really like I’ve rejected consensus (other than that extremely boring Lana album).
Anyway, 2023? Fine. It was fine. Here are 100 albums from 2023 (plus one that doesn’t count).
Oh, a final note, Speak Now and 1989 are top ten albums of their respective years, but I don’t need to highlight them again, especially because the Vault tracks this year were pretty disappointing and I thought both didn’t do that hot at replicating the originals closely enough to render them irrelevant. I’m frankly already talking about them too much! Anyway.
Ineligible But Worthy
Tim: Let It Bleed Edition
by The Replacements
I haven’t really ever seen people so bowled over by a remaster of a great rock album. The last time was maybe 2003’s remaster of Iggy Pop’s Raw Power, which I wasn’t really around to witness. And while The Stooges are around as interesting as The Replacements, Raw Power was never close to as good as Tim, so it really says something that everyone has collectively thrown Tommy Ramone’s original mix in the trash in favor of this Ed Stasium mix that just came out this year. They’ve actually tried this before, a few years back the similarly botched production job Don’t Tell A Soul was given another try, and while that was interesting enough, it’s another thing entirely to do it with an already-beloved collection of songs. The guitars just hit way better here, and it’s great to not feel like each song is drowning in a shallow puddle. It does have a sole misstep, its “Here Comes A Regular” is massively overproduced to the point where I think I strongly prefer the original closer. But though 1984’s Let It Be remains strongly superior, this Tim becomes an even strong contender for the finest album of 1985.
Listen: “Left of the Dial (Ed Stasium Mix)”
Top Ten
10. Water Made Us
by Jamila Woods
LEGACY! LEGACY! was a pretty insane sophomore album. It was a meticulously crafted tribute to a number of Woods’ Black heroes. It was a pretty heavy text, and the problem with doing something like that (and doing it very well) for your second album is that you probably have to dial it back for your third.
And for Jamila Woods, that’s actually fine. Her debut Heavn was just as good as LEGACY! LEGACY! anyway. This actually renders Water Made Us as her weakest album thus far despite it also being completely awesome. Water Made Us dives into intimacy, with sex and romance usually discussed with the same approach and care. Woods’ sound has always sounded so cleansing, so this subject matter is natural for her.
The album’s most fun song: “Practice” featuring Saba, which would be a funny postscript to LEGACY! LEGACY! if you renamed it “IVERSON.”
Listen: “Tiny Garden” (ft. duendita)
9. 1988
by Lori McKenna
It’s hard to deny that Lori McKenna is trotting out a few of the same old horses. The first two tracks on 1988 are called “The Old Woman In Me” and (I hope you have) “Happy Children.” Her most common trope has certainly been that of looking at generations past and future and noting how that perspective changes just a little bit all the time, and that was probably most successfully explored on 2021’s Christmas Is Right Here, actually. But gosh, her arrangements have never sounded prettier, her heart has never sounded quite so full (and it wasn’t much wanting for fullness in the first place). By the time you hit the happy-anniversary title track, McKenna’s relentless positivity might be a little suffocating. A decent tonic: “The Town In Your Heart,” a song about a lover who’s passed on. It’s still warm and loving in the way everything she touches is, yeah, but it helps anchor the album, and it’s probably the song here that I’ve reached for the most often.
Listen: “The Town In Your Heart”
8. Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor
by Emperor X
We really should have seen this coming. Something about last year’s “Freeway in Heaven” really teed up this six song dive into six separate hyperspecific transit ideas in the Northeast US. The finest is an incredulous look into a Philadelphia megamall whose entrance is elevated away from the street that provides public transportation to it. By the time Chad Matheny gets to the bit about the grocery store only accessible through the parking garage on the highest floor, he’s ready to launch into the guitar solo of the year (possibly excepting “Black Earth, WI”), and the EP’s lo-fi approach makes it sound just that much more awesome. Two other favorites are a journey through time refracted through poorly planned train routes in Maryland and DC and another that daydreams, well, a bullet train to Worcester. In case you’re wondering what kind of transit guy Matheny is, on another song he simply reads the Wikipedia page for the Passaic–Bergen–Hudson Transit Project in New Jersey and frustratedly concludes, “occasionally it is useful to vote.”
Listen: “Bullet Train to Worcester (for MBATA)”
7. Everyone’s Crushed
by Water From Your Eyes
This blurb is a bit of a challenge. It feels too much to call Water From Your Eyes truly experimental, but their songs aren’t about anything in particular and their music isn’t much like anyone else’s. I sort of hear a cooler, more serious Moldy Peaches thing going on with “True Life.” That’s about all I got. But I haven’t received many kicks in the ass this year as powerful as “Barley,” its “I count mountains” line taking up permanent residence in my brain. I love the new way each song digs into me: the way “Out There” scoots around, the way the title track stumbles about, the way “14” just floats in space. Then the guitars send these basic setups to some wild places. Everyone’s Crushed scratches an itch I didn’t even realize was there.
Listen: “True Life”
6. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess
by Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan likes women now, and her big gay album about it is the most fun collection of music this year. While her coming out isn’t entirely a party – the excellent “Casual” shows the flipside of “Red Wine Supernova,” and on “Pink Pony Club” her mom is tortured to see her daughter is a pink pony girl – this still somehow outmuscles GUTS in the fun category, probably thanks to the girl on the opener screaming in Roan’s ear to “PLAY THE FUCKING BEAAAAAT.”
It’s just infectious how excited Roan is to be who she is and do the things she’s doing: “Touch me, baby, put your lips on mine/Could go to Hell, but we’ll probably be fine,” “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot/She showed me things I didn’t know,” “I kinda wanna kiss your girlfriend if you don’t mind.” The opening half is phenomenal, and while I think the latter isn’t quite as good, it still gets memorably silly and peculiar, and “Pink Pony Club” is pretty iconic. A massive debut, and she feels so self-assured. Here’s hoping she becomes as big a deal as she believes she will be.
Listen: “Red Wine Supernova”
5. Lucky
by Megan Moroney
Despite its abysmal representation at the top of the song charts this year, this was probably the most plentiful year for great country music in a long while. And while Ashley McBryde, Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Kelsea Ballerini, Jelly Roll, and of course Lori McKenna all made great albums, it was Megan Moroney’s debut that sat best with me. And indeed, the approach is pretty reminiscent of my recent country favorites like Miranda Lambert or Carly Pearce, never more apparent than on the title track. But often there’s a lack of edge that makes this different. It’s obviously ideal for titanic love ballad “Tennessee Orange” but also perfect for something more introspective and lonely like “Girl in the Mirror.” There are a few concepts later on I’m not sure about, pretty sure I could leave “God Plays A Gibson,” but Moroney’s more gentle vocal and thematic approach is a great slight variant on the type of country album that goes furthest for me.
Listen: “Lucky”
4. Sundial
by Noname
A Noname album is a pretty low risk prospect. Both Telefono and Room 25 were great, but what made Noname III especially tantalizing was that she’s spent the last five years hard pivoting to socialist politics, and what little she’s given us since Room 25, like “Rainforest” or the brief but eviscerating J. Cole diss track “Song 33,” has been awesome. The vibes were nearly ruined by a pointless decision to include a verse by Jay Electronica – who’s been dogged by antisemitism allegations since his 2020 An Unwritten Testimony – and a pretty bad response from Noname about the whole thing.
But a few months removed from all that, I can recognize that while the Jay Elec verse is there and it’s bad, Sundial has become my favorite Noname album. Something about the hard-edged crown jewel “namesake” ties down the pleasantly soulful music familiar to Noname’s albums. A favorite moment is “gospel?,” which features $ilkmoney and billy woods, and Noname’s usual sound forces billy into sounding about as optimistic as I’ve ever heard him.
Listen: “black mirror”
3. 10,000 gecs
by 100 gecs
Debut full length 1,000 gecs was the more complete sonic tour, a revelation more squarely of its time. After a nearly four year wait for 27 more minutes of music, 100 gecs may have missed striking again while the iron was truly hot, but they’ve returned as more remarkable tunesmiths. The last album was, outside of its obvious standouts, simply not as deliriously infectious and overall lighter in effect. But herein lies a funhouse of heavy guitar sound, from the butt rock schlock of “Hollywood Baby” to the ska encore “I Got My Tooth Removed” all the way to whatever is happening on “One Million Dollars.” The gecs remain as menacing as ever, striking anxiety and dread into us all the way the Animaniacs do to those in the Warner Bros. studio. Their next foray outside the tower can’t come a moment too soon.
Listen: “Hollywood Baby“
2. Rat Saw God
by Wednesday
In retrospect, it’s pretty weird how sure I felt that Wednesday was about to radically ascend the indie rock echelon in 2023. 2021’s Twin Plagues was greeted with a warm but muted reception, and last year only featured a solo album from guitarist MJ Lenderman and a covers album. Both mighty fine albums, but on their own not really a sign of what Wednesday was about to do. So the first taste last December, the swirling vortex “Bull Believer,” showed that Wednesday was about to show off. The eight minute titan sends the band nearly teetering into shoegaze before the band shakes things so hard it nearly shatters. My god. Contrast that with “Quarry,” a relatively easygoing song whose verses remind me an awful lot of “Waterloo Sunset.”
Even aside from “Chosen To Deserve,” Hartzman litters Rat Saw God with gnarly images that reflect her upbringing: “There’s a sex shop off the highway with a biblical name,” “guns and cocaine from the drywall wrapped in newspaper,” “someone died in the Planet Fitness parking lot.” Hartzman sings and stitches these stories together and makes them sound especially strange and dreamlike, and the band’s muscle makes them come off as demented and dangerous as they really are. With Rat Saw God, Wednesday have immediately launched themselves from lovable underdogs to the absolute benchmark for indie rock in the 2020s.
Listen: “Bath County”
1. Guts
by Olivia Rodrigo
I wondered how Olivia’s second outing would be. Maybe she wouldn’t find anything as interesting or compelling as the breakup in SOUR. Had it been that she just had the one pouring of her guts?
I appreciated “vampire,” but it was “bad idea, right?” and “get him back!” that made me really thrilled about Rodrigo’s new era. She’s opened up her sophomore album with an incredibly loud Avril-type chorus. An awesome dream pop guitar sound supports “pretty isn’t pretty.” And “love is embarrassing” is a sugar rush of frantic electric guitar. Olivia Rodrigo has broken free of being a great Tayloresque singer-songwriter and has pushed “brutal” a step further to become the next great rock star. If the ballads ever feel like they drag the album down, it’s really only because the faster songs are really just that good. And the slow ones do have their place. Both “the grudge” and “logical” could sit alongside similar SOUR tracks, and the other two paint a pretty bleak picture about Rodrigo’s feelings about her life.
It’s unfortunate that GUTS largely points to Rodrigo being pretty unhappy. Other than “all-american bitch,” the most fun moments on the album all involve assholes or feeling out of place or making bad decisions. “making the bed” and “teenage dream” in particular sound like she is really struggling with her place in life.
Largely, it sounds like she’s asking questions of herself that don’t need to be answered by twenty-years-old, but it’s good that she’s asking these questions this early and seeing clearly enough to consider remaking her bed. But with GUTS, Olivia Rodrigo avoids the sophomore slump and then some. Maybe she’s having a bad time, but GUTS has given us a great one.
Listen: “ballad of a homeschooled girl”
The Next 15
11. Corinne Bailey Rae: Black Rainbows (Listen: “New York Transit Queen”)
12. Spiritual Cramp: Spiritual Cramp (Listen: “Talkin’ on the Internet”)
13. billy woods & Kenny Segal: Maps (Listen: “Soft Landing”)
14. Sufjan Stevens: Javelin (Listen: “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”)
15. Ratboys: The Window (Listen: “It’s Alive!”)
16. Ashley McBryde: The Devil I Know (Listen: “Light On In The Kitchen”)
17. Alex Lahey: The Answer Is Always Yes (Listen: “Congratulations”)
18. boygenius: the record (Listen: “$20”)
19. JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown: SCARING THE HOES (Listen: “SCARING THE HOES”)
20. Morgan Wade: Psychopath (Listen: “Phantom Feelings”)
21. NewJeans: Get Up (Listen: “OMG”)
22. Militarie Gun: Life Under The Gun (Listen: “Do It Faster”)
23. Blondshell: Blondshell (Listen: “Joiner”)
24. Victoria Monét: JAGUAR II (Listen: “Good Bye”)
25. Tyler Childers: Rustlin’ in the Rain (Listen: “Rustlin’ in the Rain”)
Further Top 50
Armand Hammer: We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Listen: “Woke Up and Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die” (ft. JPEGMAFIA))
A. Savage: Several Songs About Fire (Listen: “Elvis In The Army”)
Avalon Emerson: & the Charm (Listen: “Astrology Poisoning”)
Bully: Lucky For You (Listen: “All I Do”)
Carly Rae Jepsen: The Loveliest Time (Listen: “Shy Boy”)
Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (Listen: “Pretty In Possible”)
DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ: Destiny (Listen: “Honey”)
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics (Listen: “Shiver”)
Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure (Listen: “Phenomenal” (ft. Doechii))
Jeff Rosenstock: HELLMODE (Listen: “LIKED U BETTER”)
Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good! (Listen: “Pearls”)
Jess Williamson: Time Ain’t Accidental (Listen: “Time Ain’t Accidental”)
Joanna Sternberg: I’ve Got Me (Listen: “I’ve Got Me”)
Kelsea Ballerini: Rolling up the Welcome Mat (Listen: “Penthouse”)
Liv.e: Girl in the Half Pearl (Listen: “Find Out”)
Lydia Loveless: Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way (Listen: “Sex And Money”)
Maisie Peters: The Good Witch (Listen: “Body Better”)
Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We (Listen: “Bug Like An Angel”)
Paramore: This Is Why (Listen: “Running Out Of Time”)
Romy: Mid Air (Listen: “She’s On My Mind”)
Sexxy Red: Hood Hottest Princess (Listen: “SkeeYee”)
Speedy Ortiz: Rabbit Rabbit (Listen: “Cry Cry Cry”)
The Tubs: Dead Meat (Listen: “Wretched Lie”)
Troye Sivan: Something To Give Each Other (Listen: “Got Me Started”)
Zach Bryan: Zach Bryan (Listen: “Overtime”)
Honorable Mentions
Aesop Rock: Integrated Tech Solutions (Listen: “Mindful Solutionism”)
Algiers: Shook (Listen: “Irreversible Damage” (ft. Zack De La Rocha))
Baby Queen: Quarter Life Crisis (Listen: “We Can Be Anything”)
Bethany Cosentino: Natural Disaster (Listen: “My Own City”)
Be Your Own Pet: Mommy (Listen: “Worship The Whip”)
Billy Nomates: CACTI (Listen: “vertigo”)
Danny Brown: Quaranta (Listen: “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation” (ft. Kassa Overall))
Earl Sweatshirt & Alchemist: Voir Dire (Listen: “Vin Skully”)
Empty Country: Empty Country II (Listen: “David”)
feeble little horse: Girl With Fish (Listen: “Freak”)
Genesis Owusu: STRUGGLER (Listen: “Stay Blessed”)
Gloss Up: Before The Gloss Up (Listen: “Bestfrenn” (ft. GloRilla))
Home Is Where: the whaler (Listen: “everyday feels like 9/11”)
Hotline TNT: Cartwheel (Listen: “I Thought You’d Change”)
Hudson Mohawke & Nikki Nair: Set The Roof (Listen: “Set The Roof” (ft. Tayla Parx))
Ice Spice: Like…? (Listen: “In Ha Mood”)
Indigo De Souza: All Of This Will End (Listen: “Younger & Dumber”)
Iris DeMent: Workin’ on a World (Listen: “Workin’ on a World”)
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: Weathervanes (Listen: “Death Wish”)
Jelly Roll: Whitsitt Chapel (Listen: “Halfway To Hell”)
Jlin: Perspective (Listen: “Fourth Perspective”)
Kelela: Raven (Listen: “Contact”)
K. Michelle: I’M THE PROBLEM (Listen: “YOU”)
Kylie Minogue: Tension (Listen: “Tension”)
McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (Listen: “Run, Run, Run”)
MIKE: Burning Desire (Listen: “Burning Desire”)
MIKE, Wiki & The Alchemist: Faith Is A Rock (Listen: “Mayors A Cop”)
No-No Boy: Electric Empire (Listen: “Little Monk”)
Nourished By Time: Erotic Probiotic 2 (Listen: “The Fields”)
Overmono: Good Lies (Listen: “Good Lies”)
Palehound: Eye on the Bat (Listen: “Independence Day”)
Pangaea: Changing Channels (Listen: “Installation”)
Parannoul: After The Magic (Listen: “북극성 (Polaris)”)
Penelope Scott: Girl’s Night (Listen: “Gross”)
Rid of Me: Access To The Lonely (Listen: “Rid of Me”)
Robert Forster: The Candle and the Flame (Listen: “Tender Years”)
Ruth Garbus: Alive People (Listen: “Mono No Aware”)
Sampha: Lahai (Listen: “Spirit 2.0”)
Screaming Females: Desire Pathway (Listen: “Mourning Dove”)
Samia: Honey (Listen: “Kill Her Freak Out”)
Snõõper: Super Snõõper (Listen: “Powerball”)
Sofia Kourtesis: Madres (Listen: “Madres”)
The Hold Steady: The Price of Progress (Listen: “Sideways Skull”)
Veeze: Ganger (Listen: “GOMD”)
Withered Hand: All Of This Will End (Listen: “Crippled Love”)
Yaeji: With A Hammer (Listen: “For Granted”)
yeule: softscars (Listen: “sulky baby”)
Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World (Listen: “Aselestine”)
Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy (Listen: “Rice”)
Yumi Zouma: EP IV (Listen: “KPR”)
As always, here are two Spotify playlists. The first has my highlighted track from this article for each album mentioned (except Emperor X). The second has the top ten albums in their entirety (except Emperor X).
Joey Daniewicz 