the top 50 best songs of 2023

When you’ve been making these lists long enough, and you’ve acknowledged that this list in particular is often the most personal, and you’ve also said this has been a complicated year for you, you would think a list like this might be paradoxically easy to put together, in gravitating to the work that provides the most direct relief even if you know you’ll never be able to fully explain all of it.

And yet with 2023, while the top of the list fell out very quickly - say, the top 20 - the rest of this was surprisingly difficult to assemble and I think I’m still processing why that is. I said last year that 2022 had a set of transcendent songs that just leapt off the page in comparison with albums - it’s less true this year, I think the album list is as a whole stronger in 2023, we’ll get to that soon - but moreover, the songs list feels less consistent because at certain atomized moments, these cuts individually would have owned my attention but not in aggregate. In other words, it was really hard for me to have a consistent 2023 playlist I could put on and just unabashedly enjoy front-to-back without acknowledging that chunks of it are associated with tough times, tied to very specific memories than I can’t leave off in good faith but can be difficult to revisit. And of course this was complicated by a few albums that had so many great songs but I still kept to my rule of only three per album, and that’s consistent across my entire personal top 100 - if you want to see 100-51, check my social media. I dunno, maybe in 2024 I just need to run more, get a few more tracks full of blood-pumping endorphins that get the people going than the slapdash mess this is, but I’d prefer to be honest than have whatever bad societal approximation attempting a veneer of cool that passes for taste anyway… which is ironic in its own way because we’re starting with…

billy woods had a banner year in 2023, and this was probably the solo cut I liked the most - although there’s at least five songs on Maps that could have qualified, it was one of those albums! And Kenny Segal’s production is top notch - the dreary keys ever so slightly offkilter as the drums have such incredible crisp texture - but woods’ wry observations really put this one over the top, as his travelogue takes him to Los Angeles as he observes what’s getting sold, because it’s not just weed that’s getting overhyped in flashy packaging to reveal trash underneath, with the markup because he’s a rapper… especially as he also knows that all of it gets smoked in the end anyway. The wry dark humour and double meanings lends the song such a texture that as someone who doesn’t even smoke, I can still pick up on the subtle scorch marks.

God, this song is ridiculous in all of the best ways - Chappell Roan is getting a lot of credit for a long-awaited starmaking pop debut in 2023 mostly because she unabashedly embraces pop camp in a gloriously queer bedroom romp. The acoustic gallop around the ragged wiry synths already build into a deliriously horny energy, but it doesn’t play coy or sultry or intense - this is unabashedly joyful, the sort of song where the sex is wild, kinky, and goddamn fun, running on pure theatre kid energy and that for once that’s a compliment! Chappell Roan does have her serious side - you’ll see that soon enough - but when the debauchery sounds this playful, you have to indulge!

Yes, I can nitpick the production on this - it seems to sound better the worse your system is, car-tested to an absolute fault - but this is the most I’ve enjoyed a song by the Foo Fighters in more than a decade and it has only grown on me since I reviewed it solo. In confronting the grief of Taylor Hawkins’ death, this is a cut that is struggling to move forward but captures the communal release in attempting to swing for the fences once again, as Grohl just hollers his lungs out here. Without that context, it’d just be classic Foo Fighters delivering an anthem… but maybe that’s all it needs to be for grief to burn away.

The part of me that’s in awe of this song, featuring the sort of collaboration that might as well be a YouTube music nerd’s dream by adding billy woods and Backxwash to an Algiers song… I mean, that would be enough to qualify for this list, but this is a posse cut that aims higher even beyond letting Franklin James Fisher showcase his own rapping skills. And when I say that, I mean more than just the stalking trap beat that switches into a crushing, explosive shudder for Backxwash’s verse, to say nothing of the operatic swell behind the hook - I mean thematically, because it is explicitly a critique of systemic oppression, not just of the well-meaning white liberals that’ll never challenge it, but also one’s desire to buy in and cooperate, the poison against which you have to bite back; and while billy woods’ verse is the warning, the nightmare that your existence is within someone else’s dream, Backxwash’s is the brutal reality for those so ostracized for being on the fringe that violence is the only answer. It’s a monster of a song that honestly can be difficult to revisit… but let’s be real, it has to be.

I’ll admit it’s utter whiplash from that song to this, but Angel Electronics capture queer lovestruck yearning so effectively with the blur of happy hardcore and synthpop, especially tinged with the regret that it blew up in their face the first time and they can reconcile. But I think it’s that wheedling synth hook blurred into the pulsating tremolo guitar riffs, that bouncy bassline, and how the percussion even picks up some clanking presence to accent that prechorus - it’s damn near pop punk in how goddamn catchy it is, especially with the subtle vocal interplay, it’s euphoric! I got to Angel Electronics way too late in 2023 - a total gem and so much fun!

And speaking of great underrated surprises, Dierks Bentley’s album this year was way better than it had any right to be and got slept on by mainstream and indie country fans alike. I went with this as my favourite deep cut and I’ll admit it had an uphill battle - songs about coming together and finding common ground get pushed by Nashville all the time and most often they feel like pablum, but Bentley gets that differences in background, life, and path should be acknowledged - the misadventures are going to happen, but they’re better with someone along the way, and the detailed, homespun optimism is a really nice touch especially with the references to Jack Kerouac and Shel Silverstein - the latter who, fun fact, wrote country songs! Backed with terrifically warm acoustics and a big hook, this one got under my skin early and wound up one of my biggest comfort listens of the year.

Look, I really wanted Unreal, Unearth to work for me as a whole, it’s certainly ambitious enough in retelling Dante’s Inferno, but the atmosphere just never fully coalesced to nail that darkness… except for a few moments, and ‘First Light’ is the sort of closer that goes for broke and feels biblical. The arrangement of acoustics, strings, and choral vocals swing for the fences, Hozier belts like he’s erupted from the other side of hell, and even the touches of synth and woodwinds work to create that ethereal explosion. Hozier has described this song as a reconciliation, and if it is, it’s the sort where the heart sings its freedom upon the sunrise. I might prefer Hozier’s snarled and sleazier side, but this… it’s glorious.

I don’t know what it is with Ed Sheeran showing up on these gently synthetic pop ballads that work for me way better than they should, but here he shows up on the earnest closer of Sam Smith’s woefully uneven album this year and delivers a truly gorgeous song that does feel like Sheeran had more of a hand in the writing process. But it also feels very queer and lived in despite the formalism, borderline normal but they shouldn’t be excluded from that beauty. But really, the reason I love this song are the oblique harmonies and frankly a shocking amount of chemistry between Smith and Sheeran - they sound terrific together against the padded keys, it’s utterly beautiful. On the flipside…

For everyone’s sake, I’m not going to go into too much detail with this one, beyond the fact that Jason Isbell writing so explicitly about being in love with someone with depression and self-destructive instincts is made to feel so damn raw and personal with the jagged rattle of the groove and guitars; it can feel damn near post-punk or treading near goth. And for Isbell to open the album with such a mingled blur of exhausted frustration and genuine terror is daring as hell. The second I heard this song this spring, I knew it was making this list because… if you know, you know.

Alright, a bit of a breather for a bit - thank God - and we have probably the most gloriously silly song on this list as Mesarthim delivering a towering spacey black metal opus as a sequel to the EP Type III. Does it have multiple parts on its nearly seventeen minute runtime with a killer melodic motif at its core, shrouded in swells of organ, grand symphonic orchestration, wiry synths that nearly hit dance territory with drum machine breakdowns, hellish howls, multiple wild crescendos, and then when it feels like it can’t get anymore epic, there’s a goddamn key change? You better damn believe it. I’m not sure if this is the longest song on one of my year-end lists, but when you have ear candy that will take you between the stars… hell yeah, kickass!

This is going to be my most contentious inclusion on this list… and I’ll be blunt, it’s not here because of Noname at all - she doesn’t want a platform in 2023, for everyone’s sake I can oblige her that. And truth be told, she’s barely here beyond the first verse as she speaks for revolution and decolonization - where $ilkmoney is more than happy to push as well with his freewheeling provocation - that line about the Fugees is just amazing, especially given the respectability politics implications, and I just love how STOUT provides a gorgeous hook with the pianos and bassy scratch of the groove. But I think billy woods steals the show here, with his verse providing a strikingly detailed picture of a rally during the Zimbabwe War of Independence, where the socialist revolution was initially successful… but ends his verse observing the child soldiers holding guns amidst all that Black joy, highlighting the very real human cost of such liberation movements that tends to get lost, especially online in the West, especially if you know what followed in Zimbabwe in the decades to come. It’s not a refutation of the movement so much as acknowledgement of realpolitik - the reason the song title has a question mark is because it can’t just be blind adherence to doctrine, or avoidance of consequence. Wish the rest of Noname’s album held up as well as this did, or that more folks grasped the nuance.

This might be the closest Lori McKenna has gotten to heartland rock in years, if not her career - the sharper acoustics, that gritty electric guitar, the more aggressive tempo, even her delivery… and that makes sense for a song where she was left behind in the dilapidated small town by someone who took off to chase their dreams or run from their demons, where she prays that at least a part of her stuck with them because for her, they’ll always be there but just out of reach. She’s wise enough to know that we never fully escape, but just prays that there’s enough of her presence that might help beat back the nightmare, and whether it’s an ex-lover or one of her kids leaving home, the anxiety rings forth so strong. I’ve been telling y’all that Lori McKenna is criminally underrated since 2016, and I’m not going to stop saying it.

Would that this had been a proper hit - and if Asylum and Atlantic had gotten their shit together for radio promotion, it very well could have been, Luke Combs was having his best year to date and him showing up for a note perfect guest remix with Ed Sheeran could have ruled adult alternative radio for years! Sadly, that did that not happen, but not for lack of a great song - on an album struggling with grief and trying to move forward, ‘Life Goes On’ gets the angst and anger but also the tired sigh that we have to keep going, and Combs’ more weathered delivery adds a camaraderie that knocks this into a different tier. Yes, this means Ed Sheeran made this list multiple times in 2023, and I’m not about to apologize for that!

And speaking of no apologies, I know Janelle Monae isn’t going to get any for their loosest, brightest, and most playful project of their career, but at least for this song they absolutely should - a glorious trap inflected R&B cut that’s freewheeling, confident, unabashedly queer and kinky to boot - the shibari line came out of left field but makes so much sense, I love it! And it still has some of those spacey, psychedelic synth touches to support the rich horns, but it’s the translation of what was subtext on previous albums into organic text for so much humid swing! If there’s an artist who earned their summer ego trip, it’s Janelle Monae, and my god, ‘Float’ is just joyous.

I’m still a little stunned how well underscores worked for me this year, but I think ‘old money bitch’ was the moment that really crystallized the demented noise pop appeal, in what might be one of the most shockingly nuanced explorations of a class divide you’ll see this year… pressed through the nightmare fuel of teenage melodrama. The twang of the banjo ricocheting off the choppy synths and distortion, the snide attitude taking potshots at the girl who grew up with old money and hates how it has ostracized her given… well, late capitalism and warping values towards the ultra-wealthy, which play both obsequious and menacing, especially as that class status appears to be precarious - you’re just like us now, and as much as you tried to fit in, newfound class solidarity doesn’t penetrate monstrous teenage melodrama. The inclusion of that ‘good luck!’ producer tag has never felt so nightmarish, and when you know in the context of the album the girl doing the mocking also comes from money - none of which either of them made themselves, for the record - I’m kind of left in awe of how goddamn twisted it all is. underscores did a phenomenal job painting a world this year on Wallsocket, this was my favourite song, and if this got under your skin… y’all don’t even know how close ‘Johnny johnny johnny’ was to landing here as well.

A very late arrival, but one I did not want to miss, that probably reminds me the most of 'Living Each Day’ by Kirin J Callinan, where you hit rock bottom but that provides its own perverse freedom to look on the bright side - choosing to live despite the odds, and when it’s this irrepressibly catchy, it’s really damn hard to complain. And I love how the texture of this song grows: the watery synths that build against the cymbals and drums ramping up, Nourished By Time’s smoother soulful vocals layering his askew harmonies that remind me of the kookiest of mid-to-late 80s R&B, and then that hook where it doesn’t quite soar, but in the reality of this circumstance, it probably wouldn’t even before the humid sound collage of the outro - it’s the little victories, you know? So goddamn charming, and the moment in which I knew Nourished By Time had tapped into something special.

Look, I’m not going to say that Model/Actriz made the horniest album this year, but with this quaking fusion of noise rock and dance punk with the discordant jangle of keys behind that pummelling groove, Cole Haden doing his best breathy Jamie Stewart impression, especially around the bridge as those deeper drums pick up and leave the mix shuddering in a soaking blur of bodily fluids. In my list of my favourite hits of 2023, I said that SZA’s ‘Low’ is not a song that makes love, it fucks, but this is on a different level - queer, kinky, where every elegant quiver is juxtaposed with fleshy impact, someone needs to connect these guys with Perfume Genius, I think they’d find a lot of common ground!

And speaking of songs that feel incredibly sexual to the point of discomfort, Chappell Roan takes this in a different direction, with a different kind of emotionality - because this is not just a casual hookup for her and as much as her partner is eating her out in the backseat of a car alongside getting introduced to friends and family, she recognizes there’s more stakes now at play and wants that recognition. Honestly it’s just heartbreaking against the gentle elegance of the glittery synth arrangements with some really nice drumwork - on some level she knows she’s getting strung along as she imagines what their future could be, but in the mean time she might as well get the saddest orgasm…. on this list.

And on the topic of coincidentally ordered sex songs… I know folks have critiqued Jessie Ware for not having the same wild flair as a lot of disco divas - she’s a little too prim and elegant, a little too composed to get too wild - but if you want the gleaming refutation to that, it’s ‘Shake The Bottle’. I love how she just runs through the guys she’s nailed by name and makes it clear she’s hungry for more, I love how she just commits to the vamping to lean into pure camp especially with those backing vocals, I love the coursing rollick of that groove and the horns that remind me of the Bee Gees in the best way possible, and the sensual swing of that prechorus just goes off! If there’s a song where Ware earns her disco diva leopard print coat, it’s this - fantastic!

Okay, taking a break from the sex songs for a bit… for a stalking slow burn in the deep south where a man maimed in a sawmill accident contemplates revenge on the wealthy land baron who has taken over so much of the surrounding area that even if he’s got some money, it does not buy freedom… well, at least not for him at the very bottom. The guitars are spare, the atmosphere is pitch-dark, the subtle threat is palpable, and even if Eady turns away from his character committing the crime in the end, the implication lingers. I don’t know if it’s the darkest song he’s ever written - there’s a certain, lived-in humanity to all of Eady’s writing that picks up a heaviness that can feel way more real than you expect - but it certainly has the greatest menace. Again, the implication.

Kind of ironic to then follow with a song that I don’t find scary at all - and indeed, that’s what makes ‘SCARING THE HOES’ awesome, because it’s less fear than alienation of a status quo that prioritizes accessible commodification which neither JPEGMAFIA nor Danny Brown are interested in delivering - they’re not playing for the cheap scam, they’re going to make their money, but they’re doing it their way! The filthy saxophone and clapping are sampled from Dirty Beaches to produce that offkilter sleazy vibe - that clap could easily sound like one’s hand touching something else, if you get my drift - and by extension it highlights just how much they’d be getting fucked by playing that game before getting discarded. Thankfully they found a better way, and having seen Peggy do this live this year…. I reckon he’ll be just fine.

I remember seeing folks getting annoyed with this song, saying ‘ugh, the New Pornographers are getting political’, and I had to tilt my head sideways and wonder if anyone has been picking up on the subtext of this band the past decade plus! But the funny thing about this song is that they know the audience that’s just looking to be entertained will be alienated by this - part of this comes from a place of exhaustion, where you’ve spent so much time seeking respite but your art can’t help but reflect an increasingly grim reality, and when modern social media discourse surrounds and distorts what you put forward, it can feel even more bleak. Granted, this is also the New Pornographers and AC Newman and Neko Case put on a clinic with this - the wailing horns, the ominous bass, that booming double kick behind the acoustics - I had issues with a lot of songs the group self-produced this year, but this was undoubtedly a standout. Especially, you know, when it’s really not ‘too soon’.

If you know this song, you probably know that it was originally written by Tyler Childers, but he never was able to get an arrangement that fully worked for him outside of a brief window when he wrote it ten years ago, so he let Elle King cut it… and she worked wonders! This is the sort of song Elle King fits amazingly well, almost deliberately underplaying that gentle acoustic rollick with the occasional electric guitar flourish, full of mandolin and touches of accordion and fiddle and pedal steel, the sort of reminiscence over reckless days that is drenched in texture and detail with so much charm, the sort of song that feels like a staple in the making. Probably my favourite thing Elle King has ever made, where Childers himself has said the song is hers… and wow, it’s something special.

And speaking of songs written a decade ago but now finally brought to life… yeah, I’ve already talked about this one on my list of the best songs of 2023, with a cowriting assist from Dan Wilson that let Chris Stapleton deliver his best southern rock since his days with the SteelDrivers. Roaring, anthemic, with a guitar solo that gets me every time, it should be no surprise this is here. But for a song that might surprise y’all…

Hey, when you know, you know - and no, this song is not just making my list because of Jack Antonoff’s presence, singing about his now wife for which this song is named, where if he has to keep asking whether someone is the one, they aren’t that person. And yes, I love the touches of horns and gentle orchestration, but the emotional core of this song is with Lana Del Rey - I think there’s genuine nuance in her delivery, both in real joy for a dear friend getting married to someone who isn’t Lena Dunham, but there’s a sense of loneliness and genuine ache beneath this song as someone who hasn’t found that special someone just yet… and from what I’ve read in interviews this year, she’s really tried. I’ve always thought this song is one of her best, but when you yourself are single in your thirties and you go to two wedding back to back… well, again, if you know, you know.

Discovering Hamish Hawk in 2023 was a truly great pleasure, and this deep cut duet with Samantha Crain was such a delight, mostly because of how tired and exasperated it is. It’s a love song for sure, but it’s no grand romantic gesture so much as a deeply insecure artist trying to find some solace with a long-suffering partner who is being probably too patient in helping him get his shit together. It reminds me of how someone like Alex Cameron writes relationships in all of their distinctly flawed humanity and when the pedal steel keens over the gentle soft rock groove that would normally play things with a bit more firm control, there’s a threadbare charm to this deep cut that only knocked it up higher in my rotation, absolutely adore it!

At this point Dessa has spent years dodging the conversation and failing to move on from one of the loves of her life - the conflict was central in the themes and subtext of Chime, and her grossly underrated album this year was all about deflection, burying the lede. This song takes her more towards pop than rap and it suits how her voice can play to moments that feel deliberately smaller as she keeps trying to avoid this ex… and yet she keeps seeing him and realizing not only will she have to come to grips with that eventual reality, but also how this stress is leaving her on the edge of a breakdown. And it’s the sort of realization that doesn’t feel climatic but it is - the subtle bassy patter, reverbed guitars, gauzy synths, the sleigh bells on the bridge, that subtle piano flourish on the second verse… or hell, maybe it’s just the line ‘oreos and bourbon / I rent a movie and I watch it in bed’ - a woman after my own heart.

Yeah, I’m as exasperated that this song is this high on my list as anyone, but I had to be honest with myself. I’ve already gone into this at length in my list of the best hits of 2023, I’m still nearly convinced this will be the best song either man will ever make, and I’m gonna stand by the karaoke staple that proved to be the cleanse I needed. Again, not to get into detail., but I didn’t dial drunk this year, and man, I’m grateful for it.

Frankly, I knew this was going to make my list off that piano line alone, the sort of utterly uncomplicated disco dance jam where Jessie Ware allows herself to cut loose and my god, she can sell this! But when you add in that gentle rollick of percussion around the bassline that knows how to precisely ramp the drums, the swells of backing vocals where you can hear the occasional joyous laugh cut through, the bridge change up, even the sharper synths that add some blaring presence around the arranged horns, it’s where the elegance gets a little wilder and I found it utterly infectious. Still not the last time we’ll see Jessie Ware on this list, but when it’s this much fun, I can’t complain!

No joke, as of a few days ago, my favourite karaoke DJ got this in his system - I’m not saying that guaranteed Evan Felker’s band would notch an entry off their long awaited new album that frankly didn’t quite live up to everyone’s expectations, but ‘Brought Me’ is one of their best singles by a mile. Some have highlighted that this song could easily stand for the Troubadours fanbase given their tumultuous last few years, but it’s more likely this is intended for Felker’s wife Stacy, to whom he remarried after conflict and his addictions drove them apart. But in both cases the song picks up the weight of that history with one of their best ever hooks - I love the fiddle and accordion having the room to breathe with terrific interplay with the lead guitar and pedal steel, I love that Shooter Jennings gives the mix tangible warmth, and again, that chorus is built to belted over a crowded bar. About damn time they’re back, and they brought one of their best.

Look, I know there’s been a lot of discourse about the nascent shoegaze revival the past few years that I don’t feel equipped to fully contextualize, I know there’s also discourse around Slowdive and their album venturing even further away from the sounds that made them, especially as someone who got to them very late when they came back. Quite frankly, none of that matters because when I was driving to the airport in Connecticut to come home from a wedding, all through the drizzly haze of that humid morning, this was the song that captured a certain misty mystique off the reverbed guitars and gentle hook that before I noticed I had replayed a dozen times, capturing a note-perfect lovesick melancholy in which this band has always nailed. I did not expect that slowdive would have made one of my favourite pop songs of 2023… but it’s damn near undeniable.

So… again, for everyone’s sake, I cannot go into a lot of detail around why for a very specific segment of my year this was a song I clung to - the sort of long, meditative indie country track with spare atmospheric guitars and the cajon and Sundy Best proving once again they have an underrated skill for ballads, all about fighting against that little voice in your head that second guesses a good thing or a good person in your life, where you wind up catastrophizing for all the wrong reasons. Now there are times when that little voice is absolutely right for different reasons, which is why after a certain point this year this got less play, but in confronting one’s own complicated insecurity in a relationship… I’m not sure there’s much better.

I think Jason Isbell realized at some point in the late 2010s that while his political material was righteous, it wasn’t always connecting as strongly as he would want with the audience he wanted, so not only does the curdling boil of the organ and electric guitar lead to a masterclass of desperate tension, the framing of this song shifts as well - it’s a song about gun violence that doesn’t speak from the pulpit or could be seen as exploiting it for a platform, but from a parent on edge when he thinks about his kids, the police system that’s increasingly failing to protect them, the fact that he has the privilege to provide some protection but that’s not really the answer either, and finally to the next generation that they’ll be able to fix everything where his generation has categorically, unmistakably, damn near criminally failed, praying that if they can’t ‘regulate evil’, they can at least provide a bit more relief than those who only think in absolutes. Also the guitar solo is absolutely stellar - not the primary point, but it needs to be said anyway!

This was my introduction to Kesha’s Gag Order, produced by Rick Rubin… and I’m still a little in awe of this song, reminiscent of old psychedelic music where both the darker edge and the cosmic expanse were both in frame, centered in the warning from her mother to never take acid because it will irrevocably change your brain chemistry and you’ll see things you’ll never be able to forget. And the sound palette is unlike few things I’ve ever heard - the filmy touches of acoustics, the mournful synth, the shifting vocal fidelities and harmonies, just how haunted it all feels… and if you knew what Kesha had been through, you can tell she’s seeking an answer and the temptation to find something in that mind-expanding face that might help… well, anything. Put this on a playlist with ‘Enlacing’ by clipping. as songs that might make you curious to do a tab while listening, but may break your brain the process.

Yeah, probably the easiest choice for a Jessie Ware song this high, it’s already received plenty of acclaim for its lush opulent mix, calling back to the golden age of disco in its yearning to start over and find something that’s better than a dry reality filtered through machines. Apparently this song originated in the pandemic and I believe it, Ware sounds like she wants to just cut loose and as the gentle patter of percussion and acoustic rollick that translates into a loose funky guitar lick ramps up behind the layered vocals, pianos, and swells of strings and horns that hit climax after climax, especially given the otherworldly swell building into that outro. Utterly stunning song, the easy centerpiece of the album, and by far my favourite to date!

So I’ve been open about the fact that despite her experimentation and impact, I never ‘got’ SOPHIE the way so many people did - I never loved the mixing and mastering of her production, it only ever clicked for me sporadically, and her tragic passing way too soon left me at a distance to fully get it. And then Caroline Polachek made a tribute song to her that continues to blow my goddamn mind, and even if I never fully grasp SOPHIE’s sound, this helped me get the emotional weight and impact. The song soars with so much ethereal presence that the reference to Celine Dion makes all the sense in the world, but the texture here is different - the orchestra hits, the whistle notes, the dramatic climax, it’s calling a diva presence that feels out of this world that both Polachek and SOPHIE understood. I will always love Polachek’s ridiculous vocal presence - reminds me of Imogen Heap with the volume cranked to eleven - and when you pair that with the shuffling drum’n’bass groove and sheer yearning swell… I get it, I finally get it.

‘Stay alive out of spite’ might be one of the most searing lyrics of 2023 - rooted in the pandemic years, but I don’t think it’s going out of style any time soon, as Dylan Slocum bellows over waves of guitar and ragged synth and galloping drums as he sees someone discover the roots of their own self-loathing but not succumb to it - he cares and it all hurts, but fuck it, even if everything’s collapsing both internally and externally, he’s going to give it all the double bird and keep fucking living. He doesn’t live in blissful ignorance or the self-help irony because he can’t - and goddamn, if that dread doesn’t wear heavy - but if pure punk spite keeps him moving at least for a while, it’s worth it. Ethereal but kinetic and a rager all the same - and I unabashedly adore that double clap on the second verse… yea, I can marvel at that.

How dare you. How fucking dare you do this, actually give the beauty a foundation of tangible organic weight that doesn’t feel overarranged and whinging and oversold and all the other reasons Javelin felt twee and cloying and drippy and drowning in worship music pageantry. And I tried to be generous talking about Javelin when I reviewed it but it only got worse with every listen since, the electronics and maximalist aesthetic doesn’t remotely work as well as it should and don’t get me started on how this album approaches its subtext and coding… but for that penultimate song it works… fucking shit, the gentle framing only highlights the very human strife and heartache and a desire to desperately cling to someone who is slipping away, where as the bells and drums and backing vocals leave you wanting to curse every God on every plane. And it’s not when the choral vocals that came through the first time that leaves me swearing violently every time, it’s when the acoustics and horns pile in as the orchestration builds its deeper swell before fading into heavenly ambience. Fuck you, Sufjan Stevens… this is fucking beautiful, and I’m so sorry for your loss - the depth of that emotion created this.

You know, this might be a love song closer to my speed right now - easily my favourite Jason Isbell song this year, mostly because it feels like a culmination piece of his story with Amanda Shires, tracing the growth of infatuation and love to growing to live with each other, and it’s not going to be easy, especially given there’s plenty of wild, stubborn pride to go around! And it’s clear that this is following in the wake of ‘Death Wish’ and feels as personal - Isbell has described this as the closest thing to nostalgia, something he wanted to shun, but there’s a tempered, lived-in dynamic that breaks the rose coloured glasses - or hell, just the image of her dancing on the bar after it had closed with blood streaming from her nose having just done a line. Pair that with some great balance between the warm acoustics and the bass and accordion, and that stellar acoustic passage that ends the song… yeah, wouldn’t want it any other way.

Okay, let’s move onto something considerably lighter on the docket… oh hey, Dessa decided to open her album with a swaggering rap banger that sounds like it was delivered from the end of the world - getting her SHREDDERS on, I can see! And I think that’s an apt comparison - Lazerbeak’s production is pulsating and lean, every line pops with detail as she wryly observes a world careening out of control, where you might as well find a bit of escape… but there’s also more that can be conducted amidst the encroaching chaos and disasters. I love the Wizard Of Oz reference which works best if you’ve read the original books, I love how the political framing is decidedly outsider in recognizing how systems will attempt to preserve normalcy and finger-point rather than solve anything, and how the pop culture references fear impeccably modern and for the kids who know what needs to be done. Yes, there’s a part of me that wishes there was more of that hip-hop attitude on Bury The Lede, but I’ll take what I can get!

This was the song that convinced me Amaarae could work for me, even with the baby voiced cooing that’s never been my thing - credit to such a great R&B jam that it blew past all of that bias! It works for a lot of similar reasons ‘Float’ did, but Amaarae’s taste in finer things has a purpose beyond a flex - she’s in her own space trying to party, revel in that opulence, but there’s someone so enticing to her that she’s severely tempted to throw all of it away and chase that person. And what’s interesting is that this person does not love Amaarae at all but is trying to play into her ego - and it’s working, and Amaarae knows it’s working, which is why the back and forth of the flirt is so effective. And with the humid roiling flutter paired with the afrobeat percussion where the drama is only ramped up with that strings arrangement that comes out of nowhere and a truly stellar hook… yeah, this one hits.

This was the first sign that the new Spanish Love Songs album would be different than Brave Faces Everyone… and it did not take long to convince me that their pivot towards indie rock was worth it in spades. The jangling grooves, the gauzy synth textures, Slocum’s delivery that’s just as powerful when he’s singing compared to shouting, but it was the content that stuck with me so powerfully, where he’s trying to help someone struggling deep in the throes of depression in the very real, mundane way, where the debilitating suicidal ideation is just a fact of life in a world where he feels he won’t be missed, all the harder when the big earnest dreams don’t play off, with the explicit callback to the last album showing that’s more likely than not. But then someone does call, and there’s a worry he won’t pick up… and the outpouring of grief and relief at the end is truly stark. There are other songs on this list in which this feels thematically apropos - make of that what you will.

The ironic thing about this song is just how deceptively simple it is…. until it’s not. McKinley Dixon starts off making what could be the most opulent banger not made by Maybach Music with the horns and the incredibly sharp trap percussion, complete with a hook memorializing his late friend and a verse that’s as cutting as anything else this year, including bars at everyone who does this sort of gangland posturing, kids with death on their lips - the metal references here are inspired. But then the song swerves into a gorgeous, slow-burning changeup, because McKinley Dixon knows this isn’t him either, and his friend wouldn’t want that - his friend knew that poets lied too, and Dixon pulls back into metacommentary about the mixed value of these stories, to him and everyone, where he knows the grim consequences but he hopes for a bit of escape… or hell, just his friend to be there and share with him. And if you want the song to introduce anyone to McKinley Dixon, I reckon it’s this.

And here we have even more horns, a hook just as bombastic, and plenty of metacommentary to boot - only this time, Hamish Hawk is placing himself near the annals of grand performers like Elvis and feeling incredibly inadequate in his execution for the trouble, where it’s not so much failure that wounds him but disinterest puncturing his ego… and yet there are still glimpses of half-formed glory that leads to a melodic hook that’s frankly more anthemic than it deserves to be! It’s not the first time that Elvis has been used more as a hazy symbol of personal idolatry than focus on the man himself - PJ Harvey did a lot of it this year too - but I like how it’s left ambiguous how much of it might just be self-delusion… and how much of that is different than confidence anyway?

I don’t think I can detach this song from when I was in Barbados for Valentine’s Day this year and was able to hit that soaring tropic vibe instantaneously, where if you needed a shot of raw ego straight to the base of the spine, this delivered, where Polachek’s clarion vocals begin breaking into a much more raw state even before hitting whistle notes and near orgasmic vocal calls - and that’s not me saying it, that’s Polachek herself talking about the hook! The guitars pulse and roar, the gleaming synths and vocoder on the verse burble to build into that crescendo - but then comes the bridge, where she’s trying to contextualize a messy relationship with her late father that never liked her pop music for feeling revolutionary enough, but also couldn’t live up to his own standards, where even if there’s a warning against ego, it’s coaxed through hypocrisy, and what you need to hold yourself together. If there was a song of the summer for me, it was this one - spellbinding shit!

Kesha’s Gag Order does a lot of things in seeking release and control and clarity or even just happiness, but this is the moment where a slow-burn album has to burn hot and fast. She returns to the sing-talking of her early work against the crushing bass and typewriter whirs and drum machines, but there’s a different, darker edge to this - it’s knowing you’ve given it all and you’ve reached the end of your rope, where you know what you’re supposed to say but you’re done playing nice, where you’d kill to keep a secret but at this point freedom is all that really matters; and God damn anything that stands in your way, paid off by a hook that’s soaked in southern Baptist gospel which pulverizes everything in its path. It’s overwhelming but in the way it needs to be, where only a higher power can save anything, where even if Kesha will never get another proper mainstream hit, this is a banger among her best.

If there was a song that I could play at any point in 2023 to draw a big smile on my face, it was this one. That fiddle, those acoustic guitars and what could either be a mandolin or banjo, impeccably warm and gentle and playing into the loose, wry humour that’s always been Gabe Lee’s standout with so many melodic hooks stacked high - my god, the mix on this song is fantastic! But what I love even more Lee’s writing - he tends to write folks on the outskirts of society with not just humanity but flavour and humour, where the girl dragging Lee for a ride might as well have been from Ian Noe’s ‘Irene (Ravin’ Bomb)’ in both her angst and but also wild desire to provoke and run free. And I love the central conceit of how this woman just scandalizes everyone in church, but Lee knows that Jesus ate and drank among the sinners and would probably find more in common with her than anyone else there - between this and ‘30 Seconds At A Time’, I think Gabe Lee might write Jesus Christ better than anyone else working in indie country! But this was so warm, so comforting, an incredibly easy listen, damn near my favourite country song this year…

Whereas this is a bruiser, the jock jam complete with crowd cheers, massive horns, and Biblical samples that ESPN wouldn’t dare license because it’s named after one of the most controversial and dirty players in modern NFL history! But that’s the point: it’s provocation, it’s Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA flexing on everything in their path, gleefully unpredictable, punishingly raw, and also one of the most clear songs on the album so you can make out everything they’re spitting! And for JPEGMAFIA that means a lot of very loaded political lines as it rolls on pure filthy bravado and bombast - I saw him do it live this year, it was bonkers - and that’s before you get all the utterly hilarious bars where you’re left wondering what boundaries they’ll incinerate next. This was my workout anthem in 2023, easily my favourite rap song, damn close to being the most easy to enjoy this year…

It wasn’t a breakup album, not really - if anything, it was built for recovery, piecing your own mess back together and continuing to move forward, and if there was an anthemic moment in that disaster, it was ‘Michael Keaton’, of which I have not seen on karaoke yet and that’s a problem! Easily Ruston Kelly’s catchiest song to date, it shows him a little high and trying to console someone else going through a breakup to pull his shit together while contemplating if Michael Keaton killed himself in the 1996 movie Multiplicity, would that be genocide? Now to answer the rhetorical question… no, it wouldn’t be, but it’s also not the point because you realize that whoever is crying might just be another version of Kelly and he’s seeing different aspects of himself because that’s what happens when you’re unexpectedly high! And it’s funny and sad and righteously pissed off at having a bad trip spoiled… and yet there was a late afternoon in late April this year where walking away from the waterfront I put on this song, and it was everything I needed to process the pain. It was a shaky, half-formed step in the right direction. And to pair with it…

I said last year talking about ‘the kingdom is within you’ by Gang Of Youths that sometimes you hear a song and you’ll listen to it another five to ten times in rapid succession because it’s so special, so transcendent, that every time you hear it you find something new to love. ‘Tropic Morning News’ is not that, but it is so deeply personal to things that occurred in my life in 2023 that it couldn’t be anything else, even beyond when I saw The National live at Osheaga and midway through the song I got hit in the face with the water cannon. In terms of its sound, it’s what The National has done for years - the unstable slowburn cresacendos, Beringer’s smoldering vocals that lead to a hook that just sticks and finds new ways to build on itself, the roaring guitar solo - but here, it’s the content that stuck. It’s a song mid-breakup, where there’s an ocean of emotion that just beneath the surface and you’re trying to push it all out, but you’re not quick enough on the draw to pull it forth and it doesn’t come out how you think and you feel lost and gaslit in a war of words you didn’t want to fight - conversation doesn’t have to be a competition. The title of the song alludes to social media doomscrolling but that’s perfunctory overall compared to the breakdown of communication, the loss of control and chemistry, feeling like you’re becoming a passenger in your life and relationship suddenly unable to find common ground, and the line that’s always stuck with me is ‘you can stop and start an athlete’s heart / how do I feel about it’ - for a while, given The National is from Cincinnati and the song was officially released after, I thought it was a reference to the Bills/Bengals game that got cancelled in January due to the Damar Hamlin accident, but they had been performing the song on tour earlier in 2022, that’s just a heartbreaking coincidence, which makes all the more sense in a song that’s highlights incidental moments that are disposable to one person in a partnership, but could have a profound impact to the other. It’s discombobulated, it’s painful, it’s where the resolution is left ambiguous, and I think Berninger had more luck than I did. I’ve already said too much, and I know that there’ll be folks who write this off as just another National song, or maybe just a high quality one in their catalog but not special; I won’t be doing that - to me this wasn’t just the best song of 2023, and not particularly close, but one I desperately needed. And thankfully, some way, somehow, things are rapidly improving.