Joey’s Top Ten Albums of 2024

Honestly, can’t complain about 2024’s music. In fact, at times I toyed with all of my top five albums below as being the #1 album of 2024. Every year as I’m crunching this feature together, I’m reminded that music is about as good as ever, there is just more of it, and thus we have fewer shared experiences that allow works to solidify into classics. Even with this year’s return of the monoculture, this remains pretty true. Only one album here (you know which one) is guaranteed a strong cultural memory in, say, twenty years. When I released those lists, I noted that consensus in the 2010s was partly stabilized by four auteuristic solo artists, with agreement on the indie canon growing looser and looser. It’ll be fascinating to check back decades from now and see what people are putting forward from the 2020s. The Pitchfork half-decade lists already don’t feel very certain.

Anyhow, this is it for the music of 2024. Come back next Thursday and Friday for features on the best TV episodes and TV shows of 2024. Two weeks from now, I’ll count down the 25 best songs of the half-decade so far.

By the way, I think the first Spotify playlist below is a pretty good time.

10. GNX
by Kendrick Lamar


As far as I can tell, the last rappers to wander through an album in awe of their own power and contemplating their place in history Ozymandias-style were Jay-Z and Kanye West. So the self-aggrandizing that runs through GNX is a little terrifying given that no one has really followed through after assuming that sort of greatness. But I’m not going to turn my nose at Kendrick’s version of the mission-accomplished The Black Album just because hyping yourself up like that is cringe or whatever. Only on “man at the garden” does that really threaten to subsume the project musically, because Kendrick has finally given us the album of bangers we’ve been waiting for. The production here is cleaner than he’s ever worked with, and while that obviously bolsters “Not Like Us” follow-ups “squabble up” and “tv off” along with ascendant R&B hit “luther,” it especially serves the “How Much A Dollar Cost”-esque swoop of “reincarnated,” where Kendrick channels John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday before putting himself forward as the continuity of those artists.

More than him putting out bangers or thinking about his place in the rap pantheon, GNX is a pleasure because it’s the best rapper on the planet putting out work he’s really confident in, something we haven’t heard for the better part of a decade.

Listen: “tv off” (ft. Lefty Gunplay)

9. Tigers Blood
by Waxahatchee


It’s no surprise that on the other side of sobriety album Saint Cloud, Katie Crutchfield sounds totally unbothered. Her previous indie rock albums about corrosive substance abuse and explosive heartbreak? She’s not right back to it. Here she pulls off the complicated trick of making music about the uncomplicated. Even when she falls out with her friend, she’s simply “bored.” “My life’s been mapped out to a T, but I’m always a little lost,” she sings on standout “Lone Star Lake,” but she sounds fine with that. Maybe that little lostness provides enough turbulence at this stage of life. This is the final act of her good old days.

Crutchfield has now put out five (arguably six!) straight albums worthy of top ten lists. That might be the most impressive active streak in music. She is wildly dependable, and yet again her gift for melody cuts through everything, and she’s still putting out compelling music now that she’s left behind the friction.

Another great Waxahatchee album has come out. Set your watches.

Listen: “Evil Spawn”

8. Am I Okay?
by Megan Moroney


I loved last year’s debut Lucky, but I confess that I don’t mind that she’s too preoccupied to stick another “God Plays A Gibson” or similar on here. Despite the titular opener about how things might finally work out (they did not), Am I Okay? is stuffed with songs of dead love, be they straight up breakup songs, celebrations of newfound freedom, or even the one about the guy who can’t get a clue. The only successes herein are to be found in the failures. The best song here, “Noah,” is about an old flame she still thinks about, and while it doesn’t get her down, it’s still something she’s let pass her by.

Moroney does “Noah” in the style of classic Taylor Swift, she can invoke the wry humor of Kacey Musgraves at the drop of a hat, and she can lean into the more dramatic, traditional, or fiery – think Miranda Lambert or Ashley McBryde – when she really wants to. She’s not doing anything new or astounding here, but Moroney – on this list two years straight for two out of two albums – is making the very most of the basics.

Listen: “Miss Universe”

7. Manning Fireworks
by MJ Lenderman


“He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns.” “Kahlua shooter/DUI scooter.” “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.”

The remarkable thing about MJ Lenderman’s writing, especially here on Manning Fireworks, is his bizarre way with words. Thumb through his Genius page and you’ll be struck by how brief he is on just about every song here, so it must take effort knocking things out of his head and onto the page in his particular, peculiar way. This gives these songs some of the power you might find in a very old blues standard. We know he probably has something in mind, but we’ll probably never find out quite what.

Manning Fireworks takes a step back from the fuzzy lo-fi sound of Boat Songs, and though there are a few rock-out moments, especially during solos, the album is quiet and even a little slower than you’d expect from the next move of indie’s emerging guitar god. You’ll still get a few moments of guitar heroics, but this is a very restrained album.

A current of sadness runs through Manning Fireworks: there’s the longing in “Wristwatch,” the chin-up pose of “She’s Leaving You,” and “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In,” a great song that’s far more vulnerable than anything else here. It’s no secret that this is a breakup album, and though plenty of songs likely don’t touch on that, the cumulative effect is rather somber. But unlike a lot of breakup albums, he doesn’t really get into it, and the effect is that of a night out drinking with a sad friend where you learn a lot more about them and their sense of humor than you do about what actually went down. He will be better in the morning.

Listen: “Wristwatch”

6. hummingbird
by Carly Pearce


I was initially a little let down by the fact that, alas, this is not quite scorching divorce album 29: Unwritten In Stone, but what opened hummingbird up to me was that the arrangements make these song sound classic. My favorite is the fiddle on “heels over head” and “fault line,” and “truck on fire” recalls the old “Gunpowder & Lead” format. Pearce also sounds more comfortable varying her style on hummingbird than she did three years back.

It sounds like she’s still processing her divorce, though. Which is normal. This time, though, the sky isn’t falling. She’s processing his infidelity (and her capacity for arson). She’s getting over things and going out on the town. She’s forgetting who gave her all of these trust issues (this one’s my favorite). Nothing crazy is going on with hummingbird, just an artist who caught fire last time out turning into a more sustainable songwriting master. She’s got a great thing going.

Listen: “trust issues”

5. Utopia Now!
by Rosie Tucker


Rosie Tucker joins Emperor X as the only music artist that can really show how dumb the world is getting. “The lightbulb is updating!” is how the first song begins. That most basic of consumer electronics now needs your wi-fi password. But more than just the Hank-Hill-bwah inanity of that, Tucker continues that “light bulbs only die to maximize demand.” This is an obvious deficiency in our world, and absolutely no one has the power to stop it even when it’s pointed out. The demands of capital have imposed themselves, and that’s why we need to keep buying lightbulbs, it’s why your two-day-shipping comes with a bunch of single-use plastic that goes in the garbage immediately, and it’s why they want to build a sweatshop on the moon (“like none of these fuckers ever even heard of Gil Scott-Heron”).

Tucker takes these hyper-topical morsels about a dying society and world and ties them to other messages. “All My Exes Live In Vortexes” is about a failing relationship. “Lightbulb” is about their music career and their recent adventures in changing labels. “Gil Scott Albatross,” which opens so spitefully, turns into a declaration of love. “Paperclip Maximizer,” well, just read the press release. It continues like this. Songs also begin with stunning couplets like “The farther off the celestial body/The better glimpsed by the edge of the eye.”

Tucker dunks their face into the wretchedness and stupidity of 2024 and comes out of it hopeful and loving. Hopefully they still have that energy, I could use some proof that we’re capable of summoning it.

Listen: “Gil Scott Albatross”

4. Alligator Bites Never Heal
by Doechii


Since storming on the scene with “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” – the best breakthrough rap single in a long time – four whole years back, Doechii has mostly fallen off my radar. So it was a great surprise when I turned on Alligator Bites Never Heal, her first ever release that tops twenty-five minutes, and found that it was the most compelling hip hop of the young decade. Hearing “DENIAL IS A RIVER” for the first time is a revelation, a bit of rap vaudeville worthy of Eminem. The scorcher “NISSAN ALTIMA” is a stunning display of rap dexterity that goes super hard. Right out of the gate she evokes Top Dawg labelmate Kendrick Lamar, with “STANKA POOH” ominously humming just like the first moments of “Sherane,” then referencing him more explicitly with her own “get Top on the phone!” on the stuttering, dizzying “BOOM BAP.” She sings her own (great) hook on “WAIT.” Honestly, the only thing that keeps this from being album of the year outright is that there’s definitely a dropoff after “NISSAN ALTIMA.” Makes sense considering she’s branded this a “mixtape.” We’ll see how she navigates the breakout mixtape to first studio album jump, it’s a tough one.

After a long period of hip hop fracturing, Doechii feels poised to be the next big thing, helping herself with a full court media press to close out the year. I haven’t heard anyone so ready to take over hip hop since, well…

Listen: “BOILED PEANUTS”

3. Short n’ Sweet
by Sabrina Carpenter


I figured Sabrina Carpenter was out of gas. After promoting “Feather” for the deluxe version of her very underrated emails i can’t send album, I thought “Espresso” was a one-off. When she announced Short n’ Sweet, I assumed the title was managing expectations.

Quickly, I discovered that the first ten songs of the new album are incredible. I still can’t find my way into the slower final tracks, but aside from the singles, she dips her toes into country on “Slim Pickins,” she picks up some K-pop zip for “Good Graces,” she goes full Rilo Kiley (!) for “Coincidence.” Every hook hits. She’s fucking hilarious, and pretty dirty: the big emotional climax is a song where she asks a guy to get her pregnant (“make me Juno,” yes, like the Diablo Cody film).

Most songs are about an idiot guy, probably mostly the same idiot guy, with the songs warning her man to not fuck this up likely being related to the songs about a guy who’s fucked it up. A few songs sound troubled, but more often she’s confident and cracking wise, almost above it. In “Slim Pickins” she admits she’s only really with him for lack of a better options. In “Taste,” she finds easy solace in what revenge against her rival she can find.

emails i can’t send was great, but that leap in confidence was all she needed. If this is how things are going forward, that’s crazy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she joined fated rival Olivia Rodrigo as a likely suspect for this list going forward.

Listen: “Juno”

2. Brat
by Charli xcx


The difficult charge at this point in the list is explaining why Brat, and not any other Charli album to this point, became Charli’s critical and commercial step up. Was this really such an improvement?

Charli has been putting out great music for well over a decade now, but every album to this point has felt like a half-measure. Her best ’til now, 2017’s Pop 2, was her clearest aesthetic statement, an uncompromising piece of forward-thinking pop, and while she’s made two clear mainstream-move albums since then (Charli and Crash), her ultimate breakthrough has come in another moment when she has insisted on a fully realized vision.

BRAT turns itself into a meme before you even get the chance to. Obviously a perversion of “360” already ends the album, “bumping that” having already been refracted through an entire house of mirrors. There’s the iconic, ironic album art. There are a few dead-serious songs here, yeah, but there is a peculiar tone about the proceedings. In what tone of voice will your friends say that they’re so Julia, that they’re a 3-6-5 party girl, that it’s so obvious they’re your number one, fall in love again and again? Your mind expands, perceiving that anything could be brat. Lanky tennis rascal Daniil Medvedev, is he brat? The defining songs here disappear up their own ass, in the best sort of way.

This is how a Charli XCX album almost ruined what became an impossibly long summer.

God, I wish we had it back.

Listen: “365”

1. Bright Future
by Adrianne Lenker


It’s easy to see Big Thief as the last top tier indie band that’s still in its heyday. Their two great 2019 albums significantly rose their profile, and 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You was not only their finest album, but the sort of album whose adventurousness in the studio raised their regard as a unit.

But Adrianne Lenker is prolific enough to give us solo offerings too, and unfortunately for that narrative, her album Bright Future is the best thing she’s ever been involved with. This is the fifth album on this list dominated by breakup songs (whoa, that’s a lot), and the uncomfortable intimacy of her solo process makes it impossible to run from how devastated her songwriting is here. Opener “Real House” plods along with the most minimal of instrumentation for six entire minutes, never varying its melody as it drifts through heartbreakingly vivid images of childhood. In one verse she interrupts to turn and face her mother, in the present, before returning to memories. By the end, she’s recalling key moments from her childhood about her mom. “I never saw you cry/Not until our dog died.” It’s not clear what Lenker wants to communicate to her mother. But the context alone is overwhelming.

The whole album is not as barren and startling as “Real House.” “Vampire Empire” has already gotten the full band treatment from Big Thief, but she re-releases it here as a more fun ditty. The fiddle on standout “Sadness As A Gift” is the most beautiful musical element of the entire year. Even the more minimal songs give you something. The piano on “Evol” is hypnotic and each guitar note of “Fool” hits like a drop of rain. “Ruined” hovers and shakes, not allowing us to leave the experience with much relief.

“I thought of this whole world ending/I thought of dying unprepared.” “Maybe the question was too much to ask.” She changes “time and attention” to “the eleventh dimension” for a final chorus. Her lyricism is simultaneously plain (“I never thought we’d go this long/Now I’m thirty-one and I don’t feel strong”) and metaphysical. This is the moment where if you asked me who the greatest songwriter working is, Adrianne Lenker is probably the first name that pops into my mind. It feels like she will really just keep doing this forever, too. She has no creative fire she needs to keep alight, this is just how she is. Her gifts for melody, arrangement, and lyrics are just too considerable, and her singing and playing being great on top of that feels unfair.

It’s strange to call it the best album of 2024. Lenker and Big Thief are entirely unaffected by trends and narratives, and this is Lenker’s most timeless work yet.

Listen: “Free Treasure”

The Next 15

11. Hurray For The Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive (Listen: “Hawkmoon”)
12. Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk (Listen: “Image”)
13. Beyoncé: COWBOY CARTER (Listen: “YA YA”)
14. This Is Lorelei: Box For Buddy, Box For Star (Listen: “Dancing In The Club”)
15. The Paranoid Style: The Interrogator (Listen: “Last Night In Chickentown”)
16. Pouty: Forgot About Me (Listen: “Salty”)
17. Gouge Away: Deep Sage (Listen: “Stuck In A Dream”)
18. Tucker Zimmerman: Dance of Love (Listen: “Burial At Sea”)
19. LL Cool J: THE FORCE (Listen: “Murdergram Deux” (ft. Eminem))
20. Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me (Listen: “Sick Of Dreaming”)
21. Los Campesinos!: All Hell (Listen: “kms”)
22. Tyla: Tyla (Listen: “Truth Or Dare”)
23. Ekko Astral: pink balloons (Listen: “baethoven”)
24. Wishy: Triple Seven (Listen: “Triple Seven”)
25. Morgan Wade: Obsessed (Listen: “Total Control”)

Further Top 50

Allega Krieger: Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine (Listen: “Never Arriving”)
Billie Eilish: HIT ME HARD AND SOFT (Listen: “LUNCH”)
Carsie Blanton: After The Revolution (Listen: “After The Revolution”)
Charli xcx: Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat (Listen: “Talk talk” (ft. Troye Sivan))
English Teacher: This Could Be Texas (Listen: “Not Everybody Gets To Go To Space”)
FLO: Access All Areas (Listen: “Walk Like This”)
Fontaines D.C.: Romance (Listen: “Favourite”)
GloRilla: Ehhthang Ehhthang (Listen: “Yeah Glo!”)
GloRilla: GLORIOUS (Listen: “TGIF”)
Jlin: Akoma (Listen: “The Precision Of Infinity” (with Philip Glass))
Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More (Listen: “Coast”)
Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven (Listen: “Loud Bark”)
Mdou Moctar: Funeral For Justice (Listen: “Funeral For Justice”)
Miranda Lambert: Postcards From Texas (Listen: “Dammit Randy”)
Mount Eerie: Night Palace (Listen: “I Saw Another Bird”)
Nilüfer Yanya: My Method Actor (Listen: “Like I Say (I runaway)”)
Pissed Jeans: Half Divorced (Listen: “Everywhere Is Bad”)
Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites (Listen: “Moonstruck”)
Tems: Born In The Wild (Listen: “Love Me JeJe”)
The Buoys: Lustre (Listen: “Ahead Of Myself”)
The Chisel: What A Fucking Nightmare (Listen: “Cry Your Eyes Out”)
Tierra Whack: WORLD WIDE WHACK (Listen: “CHANEL PIT”)
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: Challengers (Original Score) (Listen: “Yeah x10”)
Tyler, The Creator: CHROMAKOPIA (Listen: “Balloon” (ft. Doechii)
Wussy: Cincinnati Ohio (Listen: “Inhaler”)

Honorable Mentions

Adrianne Lenker: i won’t let go of your hand (Purchase)
ALAN SPARHAWK: White Roses, My God (Listen: “Get Still”)
Allie X: Girl With No Face (Listen: “Weird World”)
Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness (Listen: “U Should Not Be Doing That”)
Brittany Howard: What Now (Listen: “Prove It To You”)
Burial: Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above (Listen: “Dreamfear”)
Camera Obscura: Look To The East, Look To The West (Listen: “Big Love”)
Charly Bliss: Forever (Listen: “Waiting For You”)
Cheekface: It’s Sorted (Listen: “Popular 2”)
Christopher Owens: I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair (Listen: “I Think About Heaven”)
Clairo: Charm (Listen: “Juna”)
Drug Church: PRUDE (Listen: “Myopic”)
Father John Misty: Mahashmashana (Listen: “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All”)
glass beach: plastic death (Listen: “rare animal”)
Greg Mendez: First Time / Alone (Listen: “Alone”)
Heems & Lapgan: LAFANDAR (Listen: “Sri Lanka” (ft. Your Old Droog))
Hinds: VIVA HINDS (Listen: “Boom Boom Back” (ft. Beck))
illuminati hotties: POWER (Listen: “Falling In Love With Somebody Better”)
Jack White: No Name (Listen: “Old Scratch Blues”)
Jamie xx: In Waves (Listen: “Baddy On The Floor” (ft. Honey Dijon))
Ka: The Thief Next To Jesus (Listen: “Bread Wine Body Blood”)
Kali Uchis: ORQUÍDEAS (Listen: “Igual Que Un Ángel” (with Peso Pluma))
Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate (Listen: “Love You Got”)
Kim Gordon: The Collective (Listen: “BYE BYE”)
Liquid Mike: Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot (Listen: “K2”)
Mk.gee: Two Stars & The Dream Police (Listen: “Are You Looking Up”)
Nourished By Time: Catching Chickens (Listen: “Hand On Me”)
Origami Angel: Feeling Not Found (Listen: “Dirty Mirror Selfie”)
Porridge Radio: Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me (Listen: “Sick Of The Blues”)
Porter Robinson: SMILE! 😀 (Listen: “Knock Yourself Out XD”)
Ruby Bell: Greatest Hits (Listen: “Internet bf”)
Shakira: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Listen: “(Entre Paréntesis)” (with Grupo Frontera))
Shellac: To All Trains (Listen: “I Don’t Fear Hell”)
Shygirl: Club Shy (Listen: “mr useless”)
Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope (Listen: “Say It Like You Mean It”)
Soccer Mommy: Evergreen (Listen: “Driver”)
SPRINTS: Letter To Self (Listen: “Heavy”)
The Cure: Songs of a Lost World (Listen: “Alone”)
The Hard Quartet: The Hard Quartet (Listen: “Rio’s Song”)
The Last Dinner Party: Prelude To Ecstasy (Listen: “Nothing Matters”)
The Smile: Cutouts (Listen: “Zero Sum”)
The Smile: Wall of Eyes (Listen: “Wall Of Eyes”)
Tinashe: Quantum Baby (Listen: “No Broke Boys”)
Tom Noble: House of Spirits (Listen: “Diamond Eyes” (ft. dreamcastmoe))
TORRES: What an enormous room (Listen: “Collect”)
Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us (Listen: “Capricorn”)
Various Artists: I Saw The TV Glow (Original Soundtrack) (Listen: “Starburned And Unkissed”)
Vince Staples: Dark Times (Listen: “Shame On The Devil”)
X: Smoke & Fiction (Listen: “Big Black X”)
Zach Bryan: The Great American Bar Scene (Listen: “Pink Skies” (ft. Watchhouse))

And finally, as always, here are some playlists. The first includes one track from every album listed above. The second includes the top ten albums in their entirety.

Joey’s Top Ten Songs of 2024

Music became a warzone in 2024. Not one but two diss tracks hit #1 on the Hot 100 (Megan actually has the most scorching line between them: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan/These hoes mad at Megan’s Law”). Chappell Roan’s demands for basic personal liberties traumatized droves of entitled fans. K-pop’s ascendant NewJeans ground to a halt to fight with management. Beyoncé’s country album is largely about her experience at the CMAs. Anna Wintour gutted Pitchfork, perhaps the preeminent driver of consensus in popular music today. Camila Cabello attempted a style shift so baffling and inept that I had to respect its power.

2024’s music will always be remembered by its big stories. Kendrick vs. Drake. Brat Summer. Sabrina Carpenter making the jump to superstardom. Chappell Roan rocketing impossibly fast to superstardom. Shaboozey taking over the Hot 100 and challenging the record held by “Old Town Road.” Monoculture has felt more alive this year than it has in a while, and it’s honestly felt kind of refreshing. In a year that otherwise made no sense, popular music finally stabilized for a second.

As always, I’ve prepared Spotify playlists at the bottom of this article. I’ve always felt that listening to the first one without shuffle is the best way to enjoy this feature. Thanks, folks. Tomorrow is the albums list.

10. “euphoria”
by Kendrick Lamar

Okay, first off, I don’t cosign all of this. Kendrick says some weird stuff here. I won’t take up your time picking them out, just preemptively noting that, yeah, I know this and that line don’t need to be there.

But despite all that, “euphoria” is just a blast, maybe the most fun diss track I’ve ever heard. A chill goes down my spine when, after Kendrick rejects that their beef is about pride, the church bell tolls as Kendrick hits “hater” in “now let me say I’m the biggest hater.” You wonder how Drake can keep up with Kendrick’s buttery flow on that “I hate when a rapper talk about guns” stanza. You hear “I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough” and realize that might be the final word on his body of work.

Shit’s fucking funny, too. There’s the weird Joel Osteen/Haley Joel Osment mixup, there’s the music stopping before he goes “some shit just cringeworthy, it ain’t even gotta be deep I guess,” and there’s the Push-invoking nothing ’bout thaaaaat.

Not everything holds up under scrutiny, but “euphoria” is an absolute clinic, a dizzying demonstration of technical prowess over a fun Sounwave beat that earns its way into the Hall of Fame of hatred.

Don’t bring back Puff, though. Don’t do that!

9. “She’s Leaving You”
by MJ Lenderman

“We all got work to do.”

It’s hard to think of a more mature, productive takeaway from the end of a relationship (although my #13 song of the year certainly competes), but MJ Lenderman is doing his best to move on with grace. Is he deluding himself and holding back emotionally? On verse two, he tells himself that he’s not in Vegas to gamble only to rationalize himself into it. The rest of Manning Fireworks contains some of the devastation he doesn’t indulge in here, but here he’s matter-of-fact. It falls apart. It does get dark. We all got work to do. You can’t disagree.

And then there’s the haunting background vocal that’s all by itself at the end, provided by ex-girlfriend and still-bandmate Karly Hartzman. That vocal leaves the song in a very troubled place even while it manages to keep its head up.

8. “MILLION DOLLAR BABY”
by Tommy Richman

I’m sorry, who?

“MILLION DOLLAR BABY” is one of the most out-of-nowhere hits in a while, and it sounds like a slightly twisted and wrong version of today’s pop. It sounds like Tommy is singing this from underwater, yet it’s still loud enough to just about blow up your laptop speakers. Richman mumbles a whole bunch of nonsense in his falsetto. That’s “I ain’t ever rep a set, baby” at the start, and your ears don’t deceive you, he’s saying “don’t @ me.” Apparently this song was actually a rush-job, meaning that lightning really struck for Richman. His album followed this to absolutely zero fanfare, but that minimal, blown-out sound we get in “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” is both one of the most fun and most unique pop songs of the year, and though he hasn’t capitalized, maybe he’ll get another hit if he really wants it so badly.

7. “Espresso”
by Sabrina Carpenter

Some Sabrina Carpenter songs are melodically stronger (and resemble “Say So” a whole lot less), but “Espresso” is the one that just doesn’t let up. The backing track is too fun, the rap-style sex boasts go hard, and those backing vocals going “YES!” are just perfect.

And it’s just funny. “Mountain Dew it for ya” rhymes with “coffee, brewed it for ya.” “Switch it up like Nintendo” is the rare lyrical punchline about a contemporary gaming system. “My honeybee, come and get this pollen” still makes me blush.

Sabrina doesn’t seem all that interested in this guy, but she is having a great time with how thoroughly he’s hooked on her. “Espresso” isn’t really a song about sex, but the startling confidence and assuredness she finds therein.

6. “the girl, so confusing version with lorde”
by Charli xcx (ft. Lorde)

BRAT is a fantastic album, a deserving consensus album of 2024, but “the girl, so confusing version with lorde” (featuring Lorde) reveals one deficiency: Charli isn’t all that locked in lyrically. The first verse here, left intact from the album version, certainly gets the job done, but aside from “We talk about making music/But I don’t know if it’s honest” each line feels pretty functional.

Which is not really something you notice until Lorde shows up. Because ohhhhhhhhhh my god. The last time a feature verse blew me away more than this was Nicki’s spot on “Monster.”

It’s honestly a tough choice between this, “360,” and “Von dutch,” but there’s something so rare about the sound of two people working it out on the remix.

Take it away, Kyle.

@kyle_maclachlan

the girl, so confusing remix and it’s the same but i made a music video to it so it’s not

♬ original sound – Kyle MacLachlan

5. “Off With Her Tits”
by Allie X

“Off With Her Tits” is a lot of things at once. It’s overdramatic, it’s jokey, it’s a bop, it’s dead fucking serious. It’s a fun dancefloor jam that evokes The Knife, but it’s also a harrowing story that can be unpleasant to listen to and think about. “Off With Her Tits” sees comedy in these series of tragedies experienced by its gender dysphoric narrator, at least in a bang-your-head-against-the-table kind of way. Allie X makes sure to give this situation the proper weight, and makes sure to not present it as just another sad story.

4. “Angel Of My Dreams”
by JADE

After intro-ing with that big, bright chorus, “Angel Of My Dreams” quickly descends into Hell. Thirteen years after Little Mix was One-Directioned together on The X Factor, JADE feels cheated, and she expresses her feelings through a chaotic smorgasbord of pop elements. There’s the demonic, driving pulse and the contrasting versions of the chorus, the ones at the bookends hefty and brilliant, the ones between frantic and twisted. Pop songs abound about not getting everything you’re promised in the trade, but “Angel Of My Dreams” has a particularly sharp ire, as it seems specifically targeted. Can’t imagine a more satisfying resolution for Mixers everywhere.

Who needs Simon Le Cowell?

3. “Good Luck, Babe!”
by Chappell Roan

With a backing track sounding like it came out of Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” session, “Good Luck, Babe!” is the cherry on top of Chappell Roan’s ascent – the clear music story of 2024. And it isn’t characterized by a sort of magic the way “Pink Pony Club” is and it isn’t laced with pop crack the way “HOT TO GO!” is. It’s just her strongest piece of songwriting yet, bolstered by a skilled and restrained vocal. It’s perhaps the most horrifying sendoff to a failed love you might hear in a pop song (reminiscent of 2024’s cult hit I Saw The TV Glow): if you won’t get with me, what if you’re never yourself?

2. “All My Exes Live In Vortexes”
by Rosie Tucker

Did you know:

1. Amazon workers skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles in order to keep their jobs?
2. Packaging is the world’s largest source of plastic waste, comprising about 40% of all plastic waste?
3. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a mass of plastic in the North Pacific Ocean around the size of Alaska, and apparently a Dutch nonprofit has plans to clean it up within ten years, pending financial support?
4. The plastic industry basically lied to everyone, and very little plastic ever gets recycled?
5. Even in the case of plastic that does get recycled, it degrades with every turnover?

But we’re all just middle-sized fish. So it’s not really on us.

Anyway. This song is about a failing relationship.

1. “Not Like Us”
by Kendrick Lamar

It was game two of the Western Conference Semifinals between the Denver Nuggets and our Minnesota Timberwolves, and Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker had just done this to Jamal Murray. I looked at my phone for probably the fiftieth time already that game, and oh god. Oh shit.

Now deep into their beef, Drake and Kendrick had just traded sprawling and nauseatingly messy tracks late the night prior within half an hour of each other. Kendrick planned things so he’d have the last word of the night, but here he was back for more. The single’s “cover” was presumably an image of Drake’s house, lovingly marked in the way a sex offender registry map might be. Yet another thing you react to by widening your eyes, shaking your head, and moving your head slightly back as if you were taking a small amount of psychic damage on Drake’s behalf. We were all getting fairly used to that ritual.

DJ Mustard had taken Monk Higgins’ cover of Ray Charles’ “I Believe To My Soul” and used two samples to fairly opposite ends. The “Not Like Us” intro and pre-chorus sounds like a party. Kendrick Lamar is here to declare and celebrate victory. We are all invited to the party. The sample that runs throughout, meanwhile, sounds evil, like the song that plays when the villain unleashes his henchmen. The gleeful hatred of “Not Like Us” is a feeling that doesn’t leave you.

And Kendrick, giving us his best Drakeo the Ruler flow, expands our minds regarding what we might find in a diss track. You can just flat out call the guy a pedophile. You can deliver a 5/10 joke so well that the entire country will learn it. And most unexpectedly of all, Kendrick could give a brief history lesson before dressing down The Drake Effect – a bump Drake can give to a smaller artist often thought of as an act of benevolence – as an act of colonization.

“Not Like Us” is the song of the year not just for its power, although there is certainly that. The last time Drake got destroyed in an exchange of diss tracks, he immediately shrugged it off and spent fourteen of the next seventeen weeks at the top of the Hot 100. This time, I hear an apologetic tone in people’s voice whenever anyone says a positive word about his music. Perhaps this will stop after Kendrick ceases his parade of reminders: a livestreamed concert film, a music video, a surprise album, a Super Bowl Halftime performance, a stadium tour…I could say a lot about all of this, but I’ll spare you.

But “Not Like Us” is the song of the year because it viscerally taps into feelings of revenge, power, and hate. And finding joy therein. It’s pretty disgusting, but for four and a half minutes, it’s a pretty great time.

Not about who the greatest, it’s always been about love and hate.

WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP

Maybe you hated Simon Cowell. Maybe you hated the CMAs. Maybe you hated sex pests, be they alleged or convicted. Honestly? It was fun. The year of hate really served us well.

Well, until it didn’t.

The Next 15

11. Doechii: “NISSAN ALTIMA”
12. Charli xcx: “Von dutch”
13. Adrianne Lenker: “Sadness As A Gift”
14. Doechii: “DENIAL IS A RIVER”
15. Future, Metro Boomin & Kendrick Lamar: “Like That”
16. Charli xcx: “360”
17. Megan Thee Stallion: “HISS”
18. Maggie Rogers: “Don’t Forget Me”
19. Waxahatchee (ft. MJ Lenderman): “Right Back To It”
20. Sabrina Carpenter: “Taste”
21. Magdalena Bay: “Death & Romance”
22. Shaboozey: “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
23. Beyoncé & Shaboozey: “SWEET★HONEY★BUCKIIN'”
24. Tinashe: “Nasty”
25. Charly Bliss: “Back There Now”

Honorable Mentions

aespa: “Supernova”
Billie Eilish: “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”
Camila Cabello (ft. Playboi Carti): “I LUV IT”
Charli xcx: “Apple”
Charli xcx (ft. Billie Eilish): “Guess”
Charly Bliss: “Calling You Out”
Fontaines D.C.: “Starburster”
Los Campesinos!: “Holy Smoke (2005)”
Macklemore: “HIND’S HALL”
Megan Moroney: “Noah”
NewJeans: “How Sweet”
NLE Choppa: “SLUT ME OUT 2”
Porter Robinson: “Cheerleader”
The Lonely Island: “Sushi Glory Hole”
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: “Challengers: Match Point”
Tyler, The Creator (ft. GloRilla, Sexxy Red & Lil Wayne): “Sticky”
Wishy: “Love On The Outside”

And as always, here are Spotify playlists to go with this feature, first of all the songs listed and then of just the top ten.

Joey’s Top Twenty TV Shows of 2023

It’s strange to think the best year for TV in a damn while could have been even better. The WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes halted production for much of the year, but somehow we still had a completely unbelievable crop of shows.

In turn, I watched an ungodly amount of television in 2023, and I don’t feel all that silly about it! What I will say is that if I turn you onto something through this list, please tell me and let me know what you think. That’s a great reward to me for putting in as much time as I have.

This is it for the 2023 lists. I’ll see you all next year.

20. Silo
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Apple TV


In what sounds like it might almost be a parody of LOST-likes, 10,000 people live in a silo and no one really knows why. All institutional memory was wiped out over a century prior, and while it’s accepted that the silo protects the population from the deadly air of the outside world (after all, a common execution method is sending people outside with everyone watching), the veracity thereof has come into question. Each two years apart, IT worker Allison Becker (Rashida Jones), Sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo), and engineer Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) try to solve the mysteries of the Silo, but its authorities are committed to putting an end to such questions. Silo doesn’t exactly break new ground, but its mysteries are engrossing and it steadily rewards your attention. I promise the season pays off.

19. Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Max


It’s funny to see a show that got the ending so right the first time continue to tempt fate. When the Distant Lands series was announced, I bristled a little because I thought Adventure Time‘s finale, “Come Along With Me,” was pretty entirely perfect, and thought it would feel weird to spend more time with these characters after their arcs had been completed. But Adventure Time has navigated this problem well by making all of its epilogues so thoroughly cut off in time from the original series. The glory days are all long gone.

Twelve years after the events of the show proper, Simon Petrikov has accepted a life as a living science exhibit of humans from the distant past. He’s not exactly fulfilled by it, and spends his time trying to figure out a way to reunite with his lost-to-magic love Betty. Finn, now pushing thirty-years-old, recognizes that Simon needs an adventure, but Finn’s whole shtick seems too crazy now that he’s not a teenager.

Fionna and Cake, who have until this point just been fanfiction by the Ice King, become real due to some cosmic accident, and it’s their fresh eyes that end up taking Simon on the journey he needs. The multiverse media market is a little oversaturated at this point, but Adventure Time has often worked at a scale that deals with that sort of mess, and it makes the most of the detours it sends our new heroes on. The ending is a bit messy, but Simon in particular is given exactly the final note his character really needed.

18. Yellowjackets
season 2
9 episodes (19 total)
stream: Showtime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh5fn_YSfuA


Yellowjackets‘ first season – about a high school soccer team lost in the Canadian wilderness and the survivors dealing with the fallout decades later – was positively thrilling, and I called it my second favorite show of 2021. Season two loses a bit of luster. The present day storyline feels a bit less rewarding this time around, and the whole deal feels a bit less exhilarating. But the nineties storyline really keeps it up, richly paying off two moments we knew would have to come.

17. Oshi no Ko
season 1
11 episodes
stream: HIDIVE

Oshi no Ko, based on a manga written by the author of the also-great Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, is about the main character trying to solve a mystery (the nature of which would be a spoiler to my #3 episode of 2023). However, the mystery progresses at a glacial pace in this first season, instead serving as an excuse to tour us through the nooks and crannies of the Japanese entertainment industry. An entire arc revolves around a not-well-received streaming-only romcom series. Another is about a dating show, although think one with far less structure than the ones we watch. We see the dark underbelly of social media’s relationship with microcelebrities. We…meet a muscular physical fitness YouTuber who conceals his identity with a very strange bird mask. Even when it seems like it’s meandering away from the promise of that unbelievable first episode, Oshi no Ko‘s energy and production make it demand your attention, and the promise of more is tantalizing.

16. BEEF
limited series
10 episodes
stream: Netflix


Sometimes people just hate each other. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) start out with a near-accident in a parking lot, and they immediately chase each other around town in their cars. Somehow, things escalate from there throughout the series. They’re both from separate worlds: Danny is a working class contractor who is struggling to keep his customers so he can move his parents there from South Korea, while Amy is already somewhat wealthy and looking to cash out of her business.

BEEF surprises you every time the conflict escalates to the next level, and it’s especially interesting the way Danny and Amy worm their way into the others’ life, whether it’s a strategic choice in their war or it’s a complete accident.

15. Vinland Saga
season 2
24 episodes (48 total)
stream: Netflix


Vinland Saga‘s first season was stupendous, and there have been few seasons of anime as good since. Season two mostly falters because its first half features a lot of tablesetting. Season one’s story of a young viking kidnapped into war and nursing a revenge fantasy has fallen entirely away (not to mention arguably its best character is gone), and after a large timeskip between seasons, we find Thorfinn as a slave. It takes much of the season for him to regain agency in the story, but fortunately King Canute, another highlight of the first season, plans an attack on the farm as a solution to his political problems. While this season is less flashy, it’s still a very serious meditation on season one’s kinetic mess, with a satisfying resolution to Thorfinn’s revenge arc.

14. How To With John Wilson
season 3
6 episodes (18 total)
stream: Max


How To With John Wilson ends its glorious run of three seasons (only eighteen episodes!) with its approach essentially unchanged. How To mostly features Wilson wandering around New York City and lucking into interviews that are either beautifully mundane, painfully awkward, or, everyone’s favorite, memorably odd.

Wilson takes us to a wireless-less town filled with electromagnetic hypersensitivity sufferers. He goes to a vacuum convention. He finds an organization obsessed with freezing themselves so that they might live forever. And the series ends with the most personal and intense anecdote anyone has ever given him. I do implore you to make your way through this show if you still haven’t. It really emphasizes that even the oddest folks are hauntingly ordinary.

13. Poker Face
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Peacock


Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale doesn’t have any history as a mystery-solver. But she does have a history as a gambler, and it’s her power to flawlessly notice when someone is lying that gets the attention of the manager of the casino where she works. But when she solves the mystery of the murder of her friend and coworker, she makes too powerful an enemy and has to go on the lam.

So Cale travels across the country and keeps running into mysteries to unravel. That seems simple enough, but creator Rian Johnson gives Poker Face a strong sense of style, and each mystery Cale comes across is structurally distinct. Poker Face is one of the most charming shows of the year, and while it’s never really entirely stunning, it’s extremely reliable and likely will remain so when the next season rolls around.

12. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
season 1
28 episodes (16 in 2023)
stream: Crunchyroll

Elven mage Frieren returns with her party from the land’s definitive adventure. Having defeated the demon king following a ten year journey, Frieren celebrates but then quickly wanders off and travels the land. When she returns sixty years later (not much time at all for an elf with a lifespan of thousands of years), she’s shocked to find her companion Himmel the hero (who she has always been fascinated by) has aged. The typically emotionless Frieren breaks down in tears when he dies soon after: “Why didn’t I try to get to know him better?” And while Frieren initially waved off implications that her journey with Himmel and company had a great effect on her by shrugging, “My adventure with you wasn’t even one one-hundredth of my life,” another previous party member later retorts, “It’s funny, isn’t it? That one one-hundredth changed you.”

Frieren is changed by these realizations and attempts to change her attitude towards time, life, and how she relates to others. She sets out on a new journey with a young human mage under her wing.

Frieren is a quiet show about learning to value the moment you’re in, but so far it’s luckily already treated us to a big climax. But more importantly, it shows us a changing land, beautifully showing Frieren‘s natural world and, given that nearly 80 in-universe years have already passed since the show’s start, how things change and how we process that.

11. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix

Given the cult film was written only halfway into its run, it’s fantastic to finally see the original Scott Pilgrim comic properly adapted to the screen, and by anime industry wonder studio Science Saru, no less. The animation of this show is off the charts wonderful.

The entire cast of the film returns for the English dub, and it’s consistently disarming how a stacked-at-the-time cast has gotten immeasurably more famous. Michael Cera is still the same Michael Cera, but Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza are just a few names that have sprung much further into the public eye. So it’s great that everyone made time to revisit this 2010 moment. Further, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game composers Anamanaguchi take on the scoring duty, creating great original music alongside great licensed moments.

Just as an aside, this might have been a great opportunity to, I don’t know, disabuse certain fans of the comic and film of its regard for the main character and his love interest by instead sending Ramona through the tour of her own evil exes. After all, she might stand to grow more as a person by revisiting those people than Scott ever could, yeah?

But as it’s a direct adaptation of the comic, nothing of the sort happens. But still, you should go check. Just in case.

10. Reservation Dogs
season 3
10 episodes (28 total)
stream: Hulu


I’m a little alarmed that Reservation Dogs has been called off after three seasons, but its final season is a lovely sendoff to the most reliable show of the young decade.

Season two’s resolution to the Daniel story felt a bit final, but Reservation Dogs still has to deal with its central characters. Elora considers leaving again, but this time to college instead of California. Bear is finally sent on the journey his character needed. Willie Jack starts becoming an anchor in the community. Cheese, uh, doesn’t need glasses anymore.

Reservation Dogs still has plenty of good stuff saved for its final act. There’s a flashback episode, Bear’s run-in with Deer Lady brings an unexpected dive into the horrid legacy of Native American boarding schools, the gang initiates a heist, and finally Reservation Dogs throws a funeral for itself. Its offbeat sense of humor, its gentle but inspired departures from reality, and its unprecedented success as a show made for, by, and about Native people will all be sorely missed.

9. Barry
season 4
8 episodes (32 total)
stream: Max


Barry has somehow been one of the funniest shows on TV while taking a hard nosedive towards the sunken place. This has created an irresistible bit of tonal dissonance. Barry‘s fourth season is its strangest yet, with Sally processing the truth about Barry, Gene putting on a one man show about what he’s been through, and NoHo Hank going straight and building a sand empire. We have come a long way from the assassin who took an acting class.

The best part of the season, presumably necessary to execute the finale of a series like this, is its hard turn halfway through, further shaking its core characters up and filling the series with an unimaginable amount of dread. Barry eventually reaches the final outcome of its chaos, and while many of the facts of the finale have felt destined for a long time, ultimately the note it leaves on is about how these characters are remembered. To the very end, it’s tragic in a hilarious way.

8. The Last of Us
season 1
9 episodes
stream: Max


To be clear, it’s not exactly a shocker that this is one of the video game adaptations that has people saying that the practice is finally acceptable. The Last of Us (the game) was practically a movie anyway, so the adaptation is really a matter of not fucking it up. Sure enough, Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin and original game co-director Neil Druckmann (very annoying man, by the way, I just had to say) don’t let us down, thanks in part to casting Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie. The two knock their performances completely out of the park in a way that should have won them awards were this a non-Succession year.

What keeps me from putting this higher is that you do get hip to the rhythm after a while. Too many episodes end in gut-punches that it somewhat dulls the finale. The finale also is easily the shortest episode, and I think it could have had more room to breathe.

Still, The Last of Us not only successfully brings video game adaptations into the realm of prestige drama, it does so in a way that will be very, very hard to beat (sorry, Fallout).

7. Heavenly Delusion
season 1
13 episodes
stream: Hulu

It’s hard not to see a bit of The Last of Us in Heavenly Delusion. Both adaptations came out this year. Both feature duos traversing a post-apocalyptic land, and in each instance the younger one has something that makes them special and important. And though hopelessness does rear its head time and again, unlike with The Last of Us, Heavenly Delusion has a bit more variety to the stories told at each locale Kiruko and Maru visit. In one, they stumble on a woman convinced that a monster is actually her son. In another, they happen upon a cult-like activist group seeking to end human experiments at the local makeshift hospital. They’re also attacked by a bear.

There’s also a lot more to it. The urban landscapes of Heavenly Delusion are still filled with people, the threats of the monsters not quite dominating every waking moment. Meanwhile, there’s an entirely separate storyline about a small academy of children, including one who looks exactly like Maru. It’s fascinating to watch the two stories slowly have more to do with each other, and the slow drip of information keeps things interesting.

Heavenly Delusion is just about the finest new anime in years, sporting an intriguing storyline, an engaging central dynamic, a pleasing style of animation, and a surprising number of novel gender explorations.

Just a note, there is an instance of sexual assault later on in season one. It’s no small thing, so just a heads up in case you require that information.

6. The Curse
limited series
10 episodes (8 in 2023)
stream: Showtime


Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) are a couple making green-friendly homes in the small predominantly Mexican-American town of Española, New Mexico, and they set out with director Dougie (Benny Safdie) to create an HGTV show called Fliplanthropy. Whitney is obsessed with obscuring and undoing the gentrification her project creates for this small community, and Asher is basically her heartless henchman with an inadequacy complex, with Whitney slowly coming to resent Asher throughout the series. Whitney’s desires to be loved by all and her increasing desire to get this HGTV show on the air increasingly steer her moral compass towards chaos.

There is simply not a lot out there like The Curse. The editing and cinematography feel strikingly casual, the score by Oneohtrix Point Never makes it sound like Whitney and Asher are trapped inside of a dream, and Whitney and Asher’s penchant for behaving in just the wrong way will make your skin crawl. It’s also easily one of the funniest shows of the year. The Curse is well worth shelling out for Showtime, and in fact Benny Safdie tweeted out a code to get a free month trial. Use it by January 14 to watch The Curse, and maybe stick around to watch Yellowjackets. And hell, Twin Peaks: The Return while you’re at it.

5. The Other Two
season 3
10 episodes (30 total)
stream: Max

I’ve only gotten around to The Other Two as it reached its unfortunately justified end, but while this show was great the whole time – for my money, the funniest show since…30 Rock, maybe? – its third season is built from a certain mania that’s perhaps only possible from a show not long for this world. Cary’s method actor boyfriend keeps taking on roles that, in a new and unexpected way each time, entail not sleeping with him. Chase, fresh off turning eighteen, follows entertainment industry law and sports a “shitty little rat” look. Brooke leaves the entertainment industry and becomes literally invisible to her old colleagues. Brooke, in an episode titled “Brooke, and We Are Not Joking, Goes To Space,” goes to space.

As Cary’s career takes off, The Other Two leaves behind any semblance of realism, and the show goes down swinging. Don’t be too sad, the finale still works plenty.

4. Scavengers Reign
season 1
12 episodes
stream: Max


At this point it’s probably tedious to hear the visual influences, but here it is one last time: Scavengers Reign is the best looking show of the year thanks to its gorgeous, inventive environments with an easy-to-spot Moebius (think comics great Jean Giraud, not Green Hill Zone) influence. The wonder and variety of the flora and fauna, meanwhile, bring to mind Hayao Miyazaki (but with more of a wants-to-kill-you edge). There’s plenty more influence, but Scavengers Reign is much more than a demonstration of great taste.

An escaping crew is tossed across a seemingly livable moon, but as each team tries to make their way back to the wreckage of the mothership, natural horrors beyond comprehension throw our heroes into life and death duels that are not for the faint of heart. It frequently ventures into the creepy, disgusting, and just downright awful traits a mysterious animal might unfortunately have. Scavengers Reign also frequently plays with lack of dialogue or outright silence, further carving out a vibe entirely its own.

3. Pluto
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix


In a future where robots are in the process of being assimilated into society (although no robot has yet to be perfectly human), someone has begun killing both the world’s most powerful robots and many humans leading in robotic thought. We follow Europol’s Detective Gesicht, himself a robot. But Gesicht has been having strange dreams that he has to grapple with while trying to save the world by stopping the mysterious killer.

In 2020, I watched Monster, the anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s manga of the same name (you can also watch this on Netflix). I was shocked at Urasawa’s knack for writing a story, but even more importantly he was incredible at writing engaging dialogue – often just characters wondering or explaining what’s going on – that moves the ball forward.

Pluto, adapted from Urasawa’s manga of the same name (in turn based on Osamu Tezuka’s “The Greatest Robot on Earth” Astro Boy story), cranks that strength up even higher. There’s a bit of mystery to Monster, but it’s the whole ballgame in Pluto. And it’s rich with themes, leading to conversations about consciousness, robot rights, and the story’s stand-in for the Iraq War (Pluto began serialization in 2003).

2. Succession
season 4
10 episodes (39 total)
stream: Max


Somehow Succession has topped itself yet again. Perhaps this is because while earlier seasons were really just jostling for the kiss from daddy, this season has so many events approaching – Connor’s wedding, the presidential election, a major Church service, and finally the GoJo merger – that it’s so easy to appreciate the weight the palace intrigue actually has. The season has a bit of a weak opener – perhaps thanks to this season having rather different ideas for the Roys than “All The Bells Say” might have implied – but after that it is nine straight stunners.

Succession is also a contender for the most well-acted show. Ever. Period. Kieran Culkin and Sarah Snook are finally winning awards instead of just Jeremy Strong, and the entire supporting cast is dynamite.

Somehow, Succession has reached its peak for its grand finale. Thanks to that, it’s the best show of 2023.

Wait,

1. The Bear
season 2
10 episodes (18 total)
stream: Hulu


I thought well of The Bear‘s first season. In particular, I thought its final two episodes were incredibly strong, but I actually didn’t quite understand why so many had it as their show of the year.

The Bear‘s second season begins with the characters setting out to challenge the odds and make something of their own. They want to remake the The Original Beef of Chicagoland as The Bear, a high-end restaurant that can properly showcase the talents of Carmy Berzatto and Sydney Adamu. They barely have enough money, and they need to open unreasonably quickly. Marcus is sent to Copenhagen to study under a gifted pastry chef. Richie is sent to a fine-dining restaurant to learn how to host (and also how to stop being an asshole that ruins everything). Tina and Ebra even get to go to culinary school. Rather than keeping alive a dead man’s restaurant, we are watching our lead characters actually chase their dreams, and everyone else also gets to go on their little journeys of self-discovery. I was so much more invested this season, and, in turn, I was a whole lot more nervous. And season one is already famously nerve-wracking.

“Fishes” and “Forks” are already classic episodes of television, and “Honeydew” and the season finale are way up there, too. It’s purely academic whether The Bear or Succession was actually better this year. I think I’m a bit more wonderstruck by Succession, with the writing and acting being completely untouchable. But The Bear was what I found myself truly invested in because it just had that bit of magic this year. I will never forget the way I reacted to “Fishes” and “Forks,” or my stunned reaction after experiencing that season finale. The Bear had my heart, and I consider this the best season of television since at least Fleabag season two.

Honorable Mentions

Abbott Elementary, season 2
Blue Eye Samurai, season 1
BLUELOCK, season 1
Craig of the Creek, seasons 4 & 5
Dead Ringers, limited series
For All Mankind, season 4
Happy Valley, season 3
Heartstopper, season 2
Hilda, season 3
I’m A Virgo, limited series
Invincible, season 2
I Think You Should Leave, season 3
Mrs. Davis, limited series
Never Have I Ever, season 4
ONE PIECE (2023), season 1
Party Down, season 3
Somebody Somewhere, season 2
Telemarketers, limited series
Ten-Year-Old Tom, season 2
The Fall of the House of Usher, limited series
The Righteous Gemstones, season 3
Unicorn Warriors Eternal, season 1
What We Do In The Shadows, season 5

Joey’s Top Ten TV Episodes of 2023

This has been an absolutely stunning year for television, and in fact it has been especially stunning when it comes to individual episodes. This entire list, especially the top half, is full of deliriously great episodes that frankly dwarf the previous editions of this list.

10. “How To Clean Your Ears”
How To With John Wilson
season 3, episode 2
stream: Max


John Wilson dedicates this episode to the sounds of New York City. There’s an awful man with large cannonlike features on the back of his pickup truck who fires them off all day and sometimes at night (he also often shoots a massive flamethrower), and all of his neighbors despise him. There’s a couple who can’t conceive that other apartments might not appreciate the loud birthday party they’re throwing for their one-year-old (at one point John asks them to give them an example of what music they play, and the smash cut to the music kills me every single time). A lady claims to have dated a serial killer. You know, the usual How To fare. But then, John flees to Green Bank, West Virginia, a town with no wi-fi or cell phone service due to the nearby massive radio telescope. Here John meets a bunch of weirdos who think they have electromagnetic hypersensitivity, who all seem to hate each other and all have to deal with the same shitty slumlord. “How To Clean Your Ears,” unlike many How To episodes, is really pretty focused on its theme of sound, and it draws out some of the weirdest, most annoying people you’ve ever dreamt of. Peak How To.

9. “Jerry”
Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
season 1, episode 8
stream: Max


One of the great joys of Fionna and Cake‘s trip through the multiverse was finding other versions of Adventure Time‘s crazy cast of characters, and in “Jerry,” we stumble upon the motherlode. Fionna, Cake, and Simon end up in a version of Ooo not unlike the one we’re familiar with, except the Lich won and wiped out all life. Only BMO is left, and BMO spends the entire episode being extremely fucking weird and talking about their good friend Jerry. The vibes are cursed all episode, and everything goes haywire by the time BMO finally introduces us to Jerry. Fionna and Cake has a great core idea for each episode, but none is so striking as the apocalyptic wasteland of “Jerry.”

8. “Episode 1”
Pluto
episode 1
stream: Netflix


Pluto is wildly interesting out of the gate. Right away Europol Detective Gesicht learns of the deaths of renowned robot rights activist Bernard Lanke and the powerful but gentle and beloved robot Mont Blanc. Right away, Pluto is intensely psychological and enrossing.

However, this entry is here not just for the strong start but for its second half, where we follow another of the earth’s most powerful robots, North No. 2. North No. 2 lives a life as the butler of a famous blind musical composer Paul Duncan, and North No. 2’s attempts to understand and replicate creativity offend Duncan to no end. However, their relationship evolves as North No. 2 begins to genuinely catch on to not just Duncan’s music, but the inner workings of Duncan himself. And then it reaches a climax that finally ties back into the main story. Pluto, which is an unconventional anime that sports an hourlength runtime per episode, starts things off with a bang, and while there’s nothing else like this North No. 2 story, the show never relents.

Also considered: “Episode 6” (episode 6)

7. “The Fairy Isle”
Hilda
season 3, episode 8
stream: Netflix


Hilda’s father, recently back in the picture, has gotten trapped in the “fairy mound” that Hilda’s mother had a bad experience in as a child. By venturing into this dangerous territory, Hilda learns about her mother’s past and the true nature of the dangerous and mysterious “fairies” in her great aunt’s town.

In this era of Western all-ages cartoons, most shows are going the Gravity Falls and Steven Universe route of motivating the usual cartoon hijinks with a serialized story. Sure, Amphibia might have a bunch of episodes that don’t matter, but there’s always a pretty clear story goal. And shows like Amphibia, Infinity Train, and The Owl House are all great, but Hilda gives itself a distinct-in-this-era flavor by not going anywhere in particular. Its big moment episodes – “The Midnight Giant” in season one, “The Fifty Year Night” and “The Deerfox” in season two – have not really had implications on the way things are moving forward. Sure, Hilda still often builds to these things by gently inserting little beats in leadup episodes, but its greatest moments are stories that stand on their own.

This finale’s implications for Hilda and her family are enormous. It bowls you over like no other Hilda episode, including the one about Twig that makes you cry. But while Hilda‘s third season does tee up its wonderful series finale, this does not feel like a culmination of the series so far, nor does it need to. “The Fairy Isle,” like the great Hilda episodes before it, focuses squarely on telling a great story unto itself. It’s a refreshing approach we don’t see as often, and it’s always been a perfect vehicle to capture the protagonist’s sense of wonder in the natural world.

6. “Cary & Brooke Go To An AIDS Play”
The Other Two
season 3, episode 5
stream: Max


The moment you really fall in love with The Other Two is the gay brother song. Since then, its satire on the entertainment industry’s use of and regard for gay men has consistently been at the heart of its best material. “AIDS Play” is the apotheosis of this strength. I can’t comment on how successfully it satirizes Matthew Lopez’s similarly ambitious play The Inheritance, but watching the cast sit through 8 Gay Men With AIDS: A Poem in Many Hours, The Other Two‘s world has kind of a cynical reverence for gay prestige and mostly only has room for AIDS stories when it comes to that. There’s plenty going on in this episode – Chase is set up with Kiernan Shipka but falls in love with an ordinary teenager instead while Brooke tries to put a stop to it, Cary tries to set up his always-method actor boyfriend with a role that will finally allow the two of them to have sex – but the play itself is probably the funniest gag the show has done (tied with the gay brother song). As the curtain falls on the first day of 8 Gay Men, AIDS and HIV have not yet been named or even discovered, and a scientist declares, “We finally know what it is: a great big mystery!”

5. “Their Choices”
Heavenly Delusion
season 1, episode 8
stream: Hulu


In post-apocalyptic Japan, tensions come to a head between an activist group and the hospital they think is conducting human experiments. But inside, the doctor leads our heroes to the so-called experiment: a quadruple amputee woman only kept alive because in death she would become a monster. The doctor requests that Maru use his power to help her go peacefully. All the while, the protesters break into the hospital.

“Their Choices” is a wildly emotional gut-punch of an episode. It also gives us a brief glimpse into the Takahara Academy storyline that makes up the other half of Heavenly Delusion, which doesn’t curb the sadness of the episode but at least makes it emotionally satisfying.

Also considered: “Kiriko and Haruki” (season 1, episode 3)

4. “Connor’s Wedding”
Succession
season 4, episode 3
stream: Max


I’ve tried hard to ride for “America Decides” as the peak of this season of Succession, and while that is an incredible episode of television that deserves exactly this place on this list, I must concede that “Connor’s Wedding” is likely the defining moment of this entire show, a television event so epochal that, for a moment, we returned to that horrible 2019 atmosphere when Twitter ruined every new episode of Game of Thrones for you.

Unlike Succession‘s discourteous online fans, I will be vague and just say that this episode perfectly captured the way a bombshell piece of news travels and reverberates. This is also probably the most appropriate thing to ever happen to actually-eldest boy Connor Roy.

Also considered: “America Decides” (season 4, episode 8), “Church and State” (season 4, episode 9)

3. “Mother and Children”
Oshi no Ko
season 1, episode 1
stream: HIDIVE


It’s really hard to know how to write about a series premier when it’s a real home run (see my To Your Eternity write-up from the 2021 list), as that usually means there’s some incredible twist that comes with the entire premise of the series. “Mother and Children” has about five of those, so here’s my best attempt to set the stage without ruining anything: Gorou Amamiya is a young doctor specializing in gynecology, but he’s also a massive nerd, so he’s shocked when his favorite pop idol, Ai Hoshino, shows up at his hospital secretly pregnant. Gorou spends the next few months caring for Ai, but on the eve of her delivery, Gorou’s encounter with a stalker of Ai’s sends his life careening upside down.We are still several plot twists away from explaining the basic premise of the series.

This oversized premier, a whopping 90 minutes instead of the standard 22, is an ambitious approach to adapting the short opening arc of the manga, and while the general thrust of the series’ plot only solidifes by the episode’s end, “Mother and Children” is still an intense tour through the insanity and façade of the Japanese entertainment industry.

Also considered: “Egosurfing” (season 1, episode 6)

2. “Long, Long Time”
The Last of Us
season 1, episode 3
stream: Max


Despite the greatest strength of The Last of Us being Joel and Ellie and the performances behind them, they’re largely absent from what’s easily the show’s finest hour. Though Bill and Frank are present in the source material, “Long, Long Time” is a complete reinvention of their story, instead foregrounding the beautiful life these two manage to have in the very worst of conditions. Nick Offerman is obviously a natural at playing Bill’s survivalist weirdo, and Murray Bartlett gives an equally strong turn as Frank. It feels rare for gay men to be at the front of such an important moment in television, and even rarer for it to be in a video game-related series (indeed, check out which episodes didn’t sit as well with the gamers that tuned in). In that respect, “Long, Long Time” is probably easily the most important episode of 2023.

Also considered: “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” (season 1, episode 1), “Left Behind” (season 1, episode 7)

1. “Forks”
The Bear
season 2, episode 7
stream: Hulu


This could just as easily be “Fishes,” but while that pressure cooker of an episode could just as easily top this list, it’s “Forks” that really got me. Richie has been the confounding factor on The Bear, the one asshole who has not decided that he wants to become a happier person. So he exists as a walking tornado of anger management and volume control issues.

So when Carmy sends him off to refine his hosting duties at a very highbrow restaurant for a week, Richie perceives this as Carmy getting him out of his hair. He’s made to clean forks for the first several days, and he hits rock bottom when he calls his ex-wife to tell her he got an extra ticket to the Taylor Swift concert so that she could join him and their daughter only to find that she’s gotten engaged to her boyfriend.

Someone calls out Richey’s shit when he’s putting no effort in cleaning the forks, and from this point, he completely turns around and learns to love what he does through the power of self-respect. And then comes a needle drop so wild and perfect that I just didn’t know what to do with myself. Something about it just shifted me into another dimension.

Some of my other favorite TV moments involve assholes waking the fuck up. Tsuki’s big block in Haikyuu!! comes to mind. But The Bear built an entire transcendent episode of television around this previously slow-burning character development. In a bewilderingly great year for TV and an even greater year for TV episodes, “Forks” stands out as the finest.

Also considered: “Honeydew” (season 2, episode 4), “Fishes” (season 2, episode 6), “The Bear” (season 2, episode 10)

Honorable Mentions

“A Connected Bond: Daybreak and First Light,” Demon Slayer, season 3 episode 11
“A Powerful Mage,” Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, season 1 episode 10
“Elora’s Dad,” Reservation Dogs, season 3 episode 9
“Episode Six,” Happy Valley, season 3 episode 6
“Episode #1.3,” Telemarketers, episode 3
“Freedom Day,” Silo, season 1 episode 1
“I Am A Cage,” BEEF, episode 7
“It’s Been A While,” Invincible, season 2 episode 4
“Joan Is Awful,” Black Mirror, season 6 episode 1
“Local News,” What We Do In The Shadows, season 5 episode 5
“Oath,” Vinland Saga, season 2 episode 9
“Qui,” Yellowjackets, season 2 episode 6
“Rest In Metal,” Poker Face, season 1 episode 4
“Return of the Sword King,” Ranking of Kings: The Treasure Chest of Courage, episode 10
“Sunflowers,” Ted Lasso, season 3 episode 6
“The Fall,” Scavengers Reign, season 1 episode 6
“To Ed,” Somebody Somewhere, season 2 episode 7
“Watching and Dreaming,” The Owl House, season 3 episode 3
“Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed, Miracles That Cannot Be Counted,” The Righteous Gemstones, season 3 episode 9
“wow,” Barry, season 4 episode 8
“2 Scott 2 Pilgrim,” Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, episode 7

Joey’s Top Ten Albums of 2023

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: “북​극​성 (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).