My Top 50 EPs of 2022
I put every EP on the playlist that's on Spotify in a playlist, you could listen to the whole thing in a day if you wanted to.
1. Coco Jones - What I Didn't Tell You
Coco Jones has been kicking around show business for a long time, starring in the 2011 Disney Channel musical Let It Shine as a teenager and then releasing music independently for a decade. And when she signed to Def Jam and released the What I Didn't Tell You EP this year, and appeared on Babyface's latest album, it sounded like all that time she's put in paid off and she's ready to hit the ground running as a top shelf R&B vocalist. It would surprise me if "ICU" or "Caliber" or something else from this EP didn't hit the charts in 2023.
2. Ted Leo - For Coit And Killie
Ted Leo is one of the best singer/songwriters of his generation. But for whatever stupid reason, he never quite made it to comfortable headliner status like so many of his 2000s indie rock contemporaries, and I get the sense it's just not feasible for him to release albums and tour regularly like he used to. But 5 years after his last album, he started to post some enjoyably lo-fi music on Bandcamp regularly. His three EPs in 2022 included seven new originals, one remix of an obscure previously released track, and three covers reflecting his far ranging influences (The Bee Gees, Traffic, and Stereolab).
3. Doechii - She / Her / Black Bitch
The Tampa rapper Doechii had a big year in 2022, becoming the first female rapper on TDE and releasing an EP with a minor radio hit, the SZA remix of her single "Persuasive." She / Her / Black Bitch doesn't even feature the most memorable song Doechii released this year, "Crazy," but it does a great job of showcasing the enormous potential of what she could do with a major label budget.
4. Em Beihold - Egg In The Backseat
One thing I don't like about EPs becoming more fashionable in the major label world in recent years is that it's become a way for the industry to soft-pedal a newer artist's career and keep a debut album always just out of reach (like Saweetie, who released her 4th EP this year despite being more famous than a lot of rappers with albums). Occasionally that works, as when Lil Nas X followed one of the most successful EPs of all time with a very successful album a couple years later, but often, I think it becomes a way of squandering the momentum of a career-making hit. Gayle absolutely should have released an album on the back of "abcdefu" this year instead of two EPs, and Em Beihold absolutely should have a whole album to go with "Numb Little Bug," because the 6 other clever, catchy, densely layered piano pop confections on Egg In The Backseat are right up to the same standard.
5. GloRilla - Anyways, Life's Great...
It feels like every year hip hop gives us at least one feelgood story of a rapper going from completely unknown outside their hometown to the talk of the industry, and in 2022 that person was inarguably the Memphis 23-year-old Gloria Hallelujah Woods. Her first EP for Yo Gotti's CMG label confirms, if there was any doubt, that she's got plenty more songs in the vein of her breakout hit "F.N.F. (Let's Go)." But it's bookended by two more introspective tracks, "No More Love" and "Out Loud Thinking," that hint that there's a little more depth and emotion for her to explore in her writing than people may expect.
6. Jonathan Richman - Cold Pizza & Other Hot Stuff
50 years after achieving mortality with his early Modern Lovers work, Jonathan Richman is still out there writing and performing songs in his distinctive and inimitable style, although his work from the past decade or so is on Bandcamp and not the big streaming services. And just three months after his last full-length, he released 6 more tracks, including instant classic odes to cold pizza and Dolly Parton, plus a cover of "La Bamba."
7. Ganser - Nothing You Do Matters
I hadn't heard the Chicago post-punk Ganser before this year but I really dig their latest EP. The two main songs "People Watching" and "What Me Worry?" are both excellent but sound almost like completely different bands. And then a remix of the former takes things in yet another direction, so it feels like a lot of ground is covered in 10 minutes.
8. Sonder - Too Late To Die Young
In addition to his solo career, Brent Faiyaz is also a member of the group Sonder with two producers, Dpat and Atu. In terms of branding, I don't really understand it, because Sonder songs are musically indistinguishable from Faiyaz songs, and both Dpat and Atu have contributed to some of his solo tracks. But the Sonder EP released a few months after Faiyaz's big breakthrough Wasteland is really excellent, with none of that album's ponderous interludes, and "Indonesian Fantasies" and "Break You Off" are as good as anything he's ever made.
9. Maddie & Tae - Through The Madness Vol. 1
Each of Maddie Font and Tae Kerr's two full-length albums has spun off a #1 country radio hit. But their place in the competitive Nashville marketplace is still tentative enough that they released two EPs this year instead of an album. But they've really grown into strong songwriters, and collaborated with one of modern country's songwriting greats, Lori McKenna, on "The Other Side."
10. DJ Premier - Hip Hop 50: Vol. 1
If I had to pick one producer as my #1 the entire history of hip hop, it would probably be DJ Premier. And he decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the genre's birth by kicking off a series of all star EPs, featuring some inspired intergenerational pairings of Slick Rick with Lil Wayne and Remy Ma with Rapsody.
11. Zach Bryan - Summertime Blues
Zach Bryan released a 34-song major label debut, American Heartbreak, this year, and then just kept going with additional singles and a nearly album-length EP until his 2022 output reached, by my count, 47 songs. I really like "Motorcycle Drive By" on this EP, but he should've called it something else, that title belongs to Third Eye Blind.
12. Ari Lennox - Away Message
EPs can and often do function as an album preview, and some of the EPs on this list inevitably will be expanded into albums in 2023. But I generally avoided including EPs on this list that I know have been or will be absorbed into albums (Weezer, Young The Giant, Christina Aguilera, Caroline Polachek). Ari Lennox released the Away Message EP less than 2 weeks before her long-awaited second album, but it was sort of a bonus thing, with only one song on the album and four tracks exclusive to the EP, including the pretty great "Gummy" and "Bitter."
13. Tomato Flower - Gold Arc
Tomato Flower are probably the most promising new Baltimore band I heard this year, with two EPs comprised of short, tightly arranged songs that manage to take a few twists in turns in the space of a couple minutes.
14. YTK - As Polite, As Possible
Last year the Baltimore rapper YTK went viral with a remix of the Mariah Carey hit "Shake It Off." But it really feels like he's building serious career momentum now without the aid of big recognizable samples, his charisma is through the roof and his bars are full of sly little turns of phrase and revealing, insightful moments of introspection.
15. Renee Rapp - Everything To Everyone
A couple weeks ago I saw a music video for Renee Rapp's "Too Well" and thought huh, this new pop singer looks so much like the girl who plays Leighton on "The Sex Lives of College Girls." But it actually is the same person, apparently Rapp played Regina George in the Mean Girls musical on Broadway, and will reprise the role in the upcoming film adaptation, so she's working on a pretty nice actor/singer dual career.
16. Tom Skinner - Voices of Bishara
The British jazz drummer Tom Skinner got a huge boost in name recognition this year when The Smile, his band with the two most famous members of Radiohead, released its debut album. And Skinner followed that up with his first release under his own name, leading a beautiful ensemble featuring cello, saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet.
17. JSOUL & B. Jamelle - Mellowdisiac
JSOUL has been forging parallel careers as a hip hop producer and an R&B singer in Baltimore for over decade. And this year he teamed up with Washing, D.C. singer B. Jamelle for a potent collaboration project featuring his woozy sample-driven beats and her jazzy vocals and clever lyrics, really hope they continue to make more music together.
18. Billie Eilish - Guitar Songs
In between Billie Eilish's first two albums, she released a string of some of her most radio-friendly singles to date to keep her profile high. But after Happier Than Ever's promo cycle wound down, Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell released a pair of quietly intense acoustic songs that give an indication that the last album's handful of guitar-driven songs on the last album may point the way towards their next record.
19. Dr. Dre - The Contract
After Dr. Dre surprise released his third album Compton in 2015, he indicated that it may be his last album and that the long-promised Detox will never see the light of day, and then went back to high profile studio sessions with superstar rappers for some mysterious future project. About a year ago, six new Dre songs, including collaborations with Eminem, Snoop, and the late Nipsey Hussle, debuted in the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, and in February those songs made it to streaming services as an EP. And honestly, I hope Dre just keeps finding weird little projects like this to release some of his mountain of unreleased music through, it's fun to hear this stuff in a low stakes context instead of doing the overblown Detox hype thing.
20. Juliett Class - Juliett Class
The New York-based punk trio Juliett Class's debut release, 4 songs produced by Jawbox legend J. Robbins, is great stuff. I really look forward to hearing more from them, hopefully with more of the fun noisy theremin from "Shut Off" in the mix.
21. The Answers In Between - Self-Talk
Hannah Jocelyn is a talented music writer, musician, and mixing engineer that I'm friendly with through the music critic twittersphere, and The Answers In Between is I guess the new iteration of her electronic indie pop project previously known as Fell From The Tree. "OK (Individually Speaking)" is my favorite from this one, a very unusual and distinctive combination of different instrumental and vocal textures.
22. Jack Irons - Koi Fish In Space
I'm a drummer, but I don't necessarily want to hear a lot of solo records by drummers that are mostly percussion. But I think Jack Irons is an absolute genius and that his work on Pearl Jam's No Code is a high watermark for rock drumming. He released two solo EPs in 2022 that mainly consist of him playing these insane polyrhythms with some cool effects and reverb and minimal synth washes, and I enjoyed March's Koi Fish In Space a little more than October's Dreamer's Ball.
23. Olivia O'Brien - A Means To An End
Olivia O'Brien rose to fame after appearing on Gnash's enormous and very tiresome 2016 hit "I Hate U, I Love U," and I kind of forgot she existed for a few years after that. But then I heard one of her new songs and checked out her recent EP and "What Are We" is fantastic, really rooting for her as a solo artist now.
24. Ringo Starr - EP3
With EPs largely being the provenance of new or rising artists, it's a little surprising when rock legends decide to funnel their studio output into EPs instead of albums. But Ringo Starr seems like the kind of guy who just wants to make music and give it to his fans as simply as possible, and it seems to fit where he is these days that he's released three EPs since 2021. The latest one is kind of all over the place stylistically, with the Linda Perry-written "Everyone And Everything" getting the closest to the vibe of a classic Ringo Starr solo track.
25. Kirk Hammett - Portals
Kirk Hammett has always been the member of Metallica with the most diverse and interesting taste, namechecking all kinds of bands from outside the metal scene in interviews. So it was cool to finally hear him go solo with the four proggy instrumentals on Portals. That said, I feel annoyed on behalf of Jason Newsted, who left Metallica 20 years ago because the band refused to let him have a side project.
26. Mahalia - Letter To Ur Ex
27. The Soft Pink Truth - Was It Ever Real?
28. Key Glock - PRE5L
29. Stephen Sanchez - Easy On My Eyes
30. Ted Leo - Andy, Come Out
31. Ted Leo - The Old 200
32. Joyce Wrice - Motive
33. Rusty - The Resurrection of Rust
34. Primus - Conspiranoid
35. Tiana Major9 - Fool Me Once
36. IDK - Simple.
37. Tropical Fuck Storm / King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Satanic Slumber Party
38. Busta Rhymes - The Fuse Is Lit
39. Tenille Townes - Masquerades
40. Pink Sweat$ - Pink Moon
41. Tomato Flower - Construction
42. Maddie & Tae - Through The Madness Vol. 2
43. Billy Idol - The Cage
44. Travis Denning - Might As Well Be Me
45. OTR Chaz - Longwood Legends
46. Dave Fell - Do You Like Email?
47. Pussy Riot - Matriarchy Now
48. Charlotte Sands - Love And Other Lies
49. Mariah The Scientist - Buckles Laboratories Presents: The Intermission
50. Bas - [BUMP] Pick Me Up
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