I really dug Kiana Lede's 2020 debut Kiki and it feels like she and Mike Woods of the Rice N Peas production team built on what worked on that album for an even better follow up. It's a shame she hasn't really done well on the charts because I think she excels at that moody midtempo sound that's made major stars out of SZA and Summer Walker. I don't really like the first track at all but there's loads of good songs on here, particularly "Promise Me," "Gone" and "LMK." Here's the 2023 albums Spotify playlist that has most of the records I've listened to this year. 

Last year Christine And The Queens released Redcar les adorables etoiles (Prologue), which seemed to be pitched as a purposefully arty and experimental French language precursor to a more accessible English language album to follow. But the 96-minute Paranoia, Angels, True Love is, if anything, eve more dense and challenging. Chris was my favorite album of 2018, and Heloise Letissier hasn't made anything quite as good in the five years since, but barely anybody else has either, and I won't fault Letissier for abandoning the crisp synth pop and R&B grooves of Chris for slower, weirder territory. I don't know if legendary hip hop producer Mike Dean was the right collaborator for some of this material, though, some of his reverb-heavy drums and butt rock guitar solos kind of spoil the mood. And three songs feature Madonna, but they're all pretty much spoken word cameos that sound like they were knocked out in a 10-minute recording session, which is disappointing, one real duet would've been nice. I don't know if anything here will resonate on a wider level like 2020's "People, I've Been Sad," but there are some gorgeous songs worth combing through Paranoia to find, including "Tears Can Be So Soft" and "Flowery Days," as well as some I kind of cringe through, particularly "Let Me Touch You Once." 

Foo Fighters debuted just a year after Kurt Cobain's death and the end of Nirvana, and Dave Grohl navigated that PR minefield gracefully, even as people incessantly analyzed his lyrics and speculated on which songs may or may not be about Kurt (as far as I can tell, none of them ever were, except "Friend of a Friend," written in 1990 when Kurt was still alive and not yet enormously famous). Longtime Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and Grohl's mother Virginia both died last year, though, and it feels like a very different situation, one where it's more natural for Grohl to come out with a solemn, elegiac album that doesn't shy away from expressing grief. Hawkins being a tremendous drummer in his own right means that there's not even much of a substantial musical difference to Grohl playing all the drums on a Foo Fighters album for the first time in 25 years, but it's pretty enjoyable to hear him rip into that 7/8 groove on "But Here We Are" or the flashy fills on "Beyond Me." And his daughter Violet Grohl, who sounded incredible singing a couple Jeff Buckley songs at the Hawkins tribute concert last year, adds harmonies to "Show Me How" that help it sound a bit different from any previous melodic midtempo Foo Fighters song. 

The past year since Young Thug and a couple dozen associates were arrested on RICO charges have been surreal and depressing, and it's not really clear how it's gonna shake out for him, but it doesn't look good. Last year one of the other arrested YSL rappers, Gunna, plead guilty to one charge and was released on time served, and a narrative started to emerge that he snitched. So it was interesting when a year of relative silence was broken with a new album by Gunna, with no guests, and a new Young Thug album with many guests (but no Gunna). Thug's always been one of those frustrating rappers with a massive vault of unreleased music, so he was at least in a good position for someone to go through his archives and put together an album, and Business Is Business, exec produced by Metro Boomin, is really solid. Four days after the album's initial release, Business Is Business (Metro's Version) came out, I suppose in a nod to Taylor Swift's (Taylor's Version) albums, with a different running order and two additional songs. And I think it's way better, "Jonesboro" and "Sake of My Kids" are much better bookends than "Parade On Cleveland" and "Global Access." Gunna's album A Gift & A Curse is pretty good too, I'm not really taking any position on these snitching allegations, but I've never been as big a fan of Gunna as Thug. 

A pop singer hosting a daytime talk show feels like the kind of thing that signals that they've kind of fading from musical relevance and chart success, but "The Kelly Clarkson Show"'s daily 'Kellyoke' segments have really reaffirmed that Kelly Clarkson is still one of the greatest, most versatile vocalists American pop has and can sing practically anything as ably as in the "American Idol" days. I was still pleasantly surprised that Chemistry is one of the best albums Clarkson has ever made, definitely top 5 and possibly top 3. It's her first album since her divorce and has the most Clarkson writing credits since 2007's My December (the one where she battled Clive Davis for creative control). And the concept of tracing the arc of a relationship from beginning to end works pretty well and she sings the hell out of some pretty strong songs. 

As someone who loved a lot of One Direction's music, I appreciate that Niall Horan's albums are more of a continuation of 1D's catalog than any other member of the group's solo career. Part of that's because he still works regularly with One Direction writer/producers like John Ryan, Julian Bunetta, Mike Needle and Jamie Scott, all of whom contribute to The Show. It's also pretty funny that the most doe-eyed acoustic love song on the album is called "You Could Start A Cult." And I like "Save My Life," it's very The 1975. 

For a few years Moneybagg Yo was really dropping music consistently and became one of my favorite rappers in Memphis or in the south in general. And it felt like he really just kept building momentum up to 2021's A Gangsta's Pain, his first platinum album. Then, that momentum seemed to stall, and he didn't release a project for over two years, and none of his new singles really connected. Hard To Love was framed as a 'mixtape' (although there's really no difference between mixtapes and albums these days, it's all semantics), but it still feels notable that it debuted lower on Billboard than his last few project. Usher's Hard To Love did lousy numbers, too, maybe you're just tempting fate with that title. On the closing track "More Sick" he kind of opens up about what's been going on with him that has slowed down his musical output, though, deaths of loved ones and addiction issues, it's a really vulnerable moment. Moneybagg mostly sticks to his strengths on this tape, though, the flow he attempts on "No Show" doesn't really work but otherwise it's a solid project, "Still" and "They Say" are killer. 

I really enjoyed interviewing John Mellencamp last year about his album Strictly A One-Eyed Jack. It's kind of a cliche when aging artists say their new album is their best, but Mellencamp has always been unsentimental about his past and I could believe how proud he was of this grim, minimal folk album. Orpheus Descending has a similar stark sound and he sings it in the same craggy three-packs-a-day voice, but there's more of an oomph in the arrangements that I like, I knew from the opening snare drum whipcrack and apocalyptic slide guitar riff of "Hey God" that I was gonna dig this album. 

The Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has been so absurdly prolific, with over 20 albums in the space of a decade, that some of those records invariably start to blur together. So I'm kind of glad that some of the albums have a very particular sound that makes it stand out, and none stood out more than their 2019 metal album Infest The Rats' Nest, which was good enough that I don't mind them returning to that sound with a lesser sequel. 

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