My Top 50 Albums of 2023
The annual Uproxx music critics poll was published the other day, and as usual I sent in a ballot. And as usual, two or three albums I voted for did pretty well, and the others did not, which is cool. I like to participate in these consensus-measuring processes, but I also think it's great that most of us have our own taste and I can tell you about all these great albums I heard this year that, for the most part, nobody else is going to tell you about, or at least not elevate to the level of "best of the year." Here's my Spotify playlist with one track from each album, I hope you give it a listen and find something that you love as much as I did:
1. Victoria Monet - Jaguar II
Victoria Monet is a mom in her mid-thirties who's kicked around the music industry for over a decade, writing hits for Ariana Grande and Chloe x Halle and singing hooks for T.I. and Nas songs. And she continued to build her solo career brick by brick, making excellent records with high production values, and videos and live shows with costumes and choreography, for years before major labels or media outlets gave her the time of day. So Monet getting a #1 radio hit and seven Grammy nominations is the feelgood music story of the year. And Jaguar II totally lives up to that story, with Monet and R&B's current greatest producer D'Mile making an opulent record that has room for Earth, Wind & Fire and Buju Banton guest spots as well as a Chalie Boy sample.
2. Sparklehorse - Bird Machine
This year, Paul McCartney realized his ambitions of pulling one last "new" Beatles song together from an old John Lennon demo, and it was a perfect example of how posthumously completed work by dead musicians is an ethical and emotional minefield that rarely seems to live up to its potential. A few months earlier, however, it was revealed that Mark Linkous had done a substantial amount of recording for an unfinished 5th Sparklehorse album before his 2009 suicide, and his brother Matt had lovingly completed the album. Bird Machine is a fractured patchwork of high and low fidelity, of big hooks and strange experiments, of fully composed songs and fragile little fragments -- that is to say, it's a Sparklehorse album, one that feels wonderfully consistent with Linkous's catalog, a stirring final message I never thought we'd get from him.
3. Olivia Rodrigo - Guts
Sour is the kind of massive debut album that become very hard for an artist to top or live up to for the rest of their career, and Olivia Rodrigo wrestles with the anxiety about peaking early on the closing track to her second album, "Teenage Dream." By that point, though, it's obvious that regardless of how Guts sells compared to its predecessor, she's knocked it out of the park artistically, one of those sophomore albums that proves the debut wasn't a fluke and indicates some exciting new directions, in the tradition of classics like This Years Model or The Low End Theory (and listen, there aren't more flattering things I could compare an album to, in my personal canon). Emboldened by "Good 4 U" being even bigger than "Drivers License," Rodrigo goes full bore into tightly wound rockers, and "Love Is Embarrassing" and "Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl" are as blaring and funny as the singles.
4. Madeline Kenney - A New Reality Mind
These days, comparing a young art rocker to Kate Bush feels both too obvious and like you're giving them big shoes to fill. But I couldn't help but think of Bush's The Dreaming when listening to Madeline Kenney's A New Reality Mind -- in both cases, the artist's fourth album but their first fully self-produced album, and in both cases, incredibly dense headphone albums that move away from rock instrumentation and towards more abstract sounds while still remaining viscerally emotional. It's hard to sometimes to really understand what Bush's lyrics are about, but Kenney's album is a breakup album full of vivid, visceral emotions grounding all the psychedelic ear candy.
5. Amine & Kaytranada - Kaytramine
The first thing you hear on Kaytramine is a sample of Diddy's voice, and unfortunate reminder that even if Sean Combs somehow experiences serious consequences for his actions, you can barely go anywhere in hip-hop without feeling his influence. Fortunately, though, the rest of the album is Amine and Kaytranada in their own lane, conversational flows over weird little grooves, a place where even superstars like Pharrell and Snoop seem to adopt to their surroundings instead of standing out or changing the atmosphere. Amine is the first nationally successful rapper from Portland, Oregon and his only crossover hit is six years in the rearview, but he just seems to keep improving as a rapper with every release, I really anticipate everything he drops now.
6. Chase Rice - I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell
Chase Rice is an also-ran of the bro country era who co-wrote Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise" and has a few platinum singles of his own. But all but one of his albums have been released independently, and he had the creative freedom to sit in his home studio during the COVID-19 lockdown and make an idiosyncratic and intensely personal record after the death of his father, and it's one of the best country albums I've heard this decade, a total wonderful surprise.
7. Illiterate Light - Sunburned
I heard the lead single "Light Me Up" on the radio a couple times last year and instantly fell in love with this Virginia duo, and the rest of their second album has the same kind of explosive neo-psych rock sound. As a drummer I just love hearing how Jake Cochran locks into these big Bonhamesque grooves with cavernous reverb, but Jeff Gorman has a lot of tricks up his sleeve too, like the very Peter Buck guitars on "Closer" and the twangy harmonies on "Automatic."
8. El Michels Affair & Black Thought - Glorious Game
Hip-hop famously had it's 50th "birthday" this year, and at least a couple of rappers also born in 1973, Nas and Black Thought, made great albums in 2023 (Twista and Mos Def were also born in 1973, if you guys feel like showing off right now). Black Thought shouldn't have needed to step outside The Roots to get his props as one of the greatest MCs of all time. But I'm glad he's gotten this time in the spotlight. The New York band El Michels Affair is tied with Salaam Remi as my favorite collaborators that Black Thought has made albums with in the last few years, but this is the one record I can picture ?uestlove listening to with a little twinge of jealousy.
9. Gloss Up - Before The Gloss Up
I was really happy to see Gloss Up included in the BET Hip Hop Awards cypher a couple months ago, I think she's really the most slept on rapper of 2023. While her more famous friend GloRilla has just released an EP and a lot of singles, Gloss Up released two 30-minute projects on Quality Control this year, and the 'prequel' one Before The Gloss Up is actually my favorite of the two, she really kills those classic Memphis crunk piano beats.
10. Fall Out Boy - So Much (For) Stardust
I don't know how many people consider 2008's Folie A Deux to be Fall Out Boy's crowning achievement, but I adore that album so much that I kind of felt like the band had a right to do whatever the hell they wanted in the 2010s and didn't mind that they might not ever sound like my favorite iteration of Fall Out Boy again. So I was delighted and surprised to hear the band reunite with producer Neal Avron and hit that Infinity On High/Folie A Deux sweet spot of glossy arena rock again. Even the band slapping that stupid "We Didn't Start The Fire" cover on here as a bonus track couldn't knock the album out of my top 10.
11. Caitlyn Smith - High & Low
Like Victoria Monet, Caitlyn Smith is a veteran songwriter for established stars who deserves a little time in the spotlight herself. One of the most beautiful songs Miley Cyrus has ever sung was "High" on 2020's Plastic Hearts, and Smith's own rendition that kicks off High & Low is even more grand and soaring. Smith's boss at Monument Records is one of the best producers in mainstream country for the last decade, but he told Smith she should produced High & Low herself. And she totally rises to the occasion, giving her songs the right mix of grit and gloss, and "I Think of You" has probably the best string arrangement of any song I heard in 2023.
12. Chris Stapleton - Higher
I have mixed feelings about artists who are such overt throwbacks to another era, but I like when they back up their old-fashioned aesthetics with an album that flows like something from the vinyl era. And Higher works beautifully in that regard, I love how the first half of the album is a slow burn before "White Horse" kicks off the second half.
13. Mast Year - Knife
I've been pretty unreliable about getting out to see live music for the last, oh, 14 years since I became a dad, and I'm annoyed that I keep missing shows by Mast Year, a newish Baltimore quartet featuring members of Thought Eater, Genevieve, and At The Graves. Mast Year's debut album is roughly 75% sludgy bombast with pummeling drums and screamed vocals, and roughly 25% comparatively calm guitar interludes, which I think is a good ratio, I like the way the album has these waves of rising and falling action.
14. Susan Alcorn and Septeto del Sur - Canto
I've been fascinated with the way Susan Alcorn plays pedal steel guitar in an experimental context for a long time, and this year I got to meet her and talk to her for an hour and really pick her brain and learn about her career -- it was mainly for a couple quotes in a Baltimore Banner piece about the High Zero Festival, but I have another piece about Alcorn on the way in 2024. She flew to Chile to record Canto with Chilean folk musicians, and it's a really beautiful, fascinating fusion of sounds.
15. Mick Jenkins - The Patience
The 4th album by Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins features appearances by Freddie Gibbs, Benny The Butcher, and JID. And I wish people checked for Mick's albums like they check for those guys, he really deserves it, he's been rapping his ass off over really interesting production for a decade now.
16. Paramore - This Is Why
Paramore's first four albums album kept progressively expanding, getting longer and bolder and more varied and ambitious, to the point that it confused me a little when the band seemed to scale down on their last two records and make things more compact, narrow, focused. Now that I've accepted that they're never going to make an album like Paramore again, though, I really dig what they've done with After Laughter and This Is Why,
17. Renee Rapp - Snow Angel
I'm still bummed out that Renee Rapp is shrinking her starring role on "The Sex Lives of College Girls" to a recurring role in the show's upcoming third season to focus on a music career, because when someone has this most potential as an actor and singer, it'd be nice to see them do the whole J.Lo thing and pursue both careers full tilt. And even though Snow Angel didn't quite set the world on fire, it's a really fucking good debut, full of humor and melody and vulnerability and personality, and I hope it sets a strong foundation for her pop career.
18. Department - Dumb Angel
I enjoyed interviewing Melbourne producer Adam Kyriakou about his debut album a few weeks ago because I really think Dumb Angel presents such a novel way to combine dozens of samples into a record than the kind of hyperactive jumpcuts of Girl Talk or Paul's Boutique, something more painterly abstract. I was torn between wanting him to detail every sample I didn't recognize so I could go back and hear all the source material and figure out how it fit together, and wanting to let some of it remain a bit of a mystery.
19. Ashley McBryde - The Devil I Know
Four years into the 2020s, there probably isn't any artist who's made 3 albums this decade as good as Ashley McBryde (if there is, it's someone who's made a lot more than 3, like Nas or King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard). Just an absurdly good songwriter, can put together something as bittersweet and beautiful as "Single At The Same Time" and something as hard rocking as "The Devil I Know," with Jay Joyce always serving up the perfect sound and the perfect arrangement for her lyrics.
20. Brothers Osborne - Brothers Osborne
Part of me wishes that every artist who records with Jay Joyce would stick with him for every album, but I respect Brothers Osborne putting their fourth album in the hands of someone less expected like Mike Elizondo, especially after interviewing John Osborne about it. And I love a song like "Back Home" more knowing that they're from Maryland.
21. Terrace Martin & Alex Isley - I Left My Heart In Ladera
Terrace Martin has been one of the west coast's best producers for over a decade, but it feels like he really shifted into a prolific high gear this year. He released something like 8 albums or EPs in 2023, some solo and some collaborations, half of them just in the last few weeks. My favorite of that run pairs Martin with a younger star from one of R&B's greatest dynasties, Alex Isley (daughter of Isley Bros guitarist Ernie Isley). I Left My Heart In Ladera kicks off with a cover of the Sade classic "Paradise," but on the next 8 tracks the duo stake out their own jazzy corner of quiet storm R&B.
22. Margaret Glaspy - Echo The Diamond
The sound of Margaret Glaspy's third album, which she co-produced with Julian Lage, is wonderfully dry, the sound of three musicians in a room in such unnerving close focus that you feel like you hear hands moving across guitars and drums as much as the instruments themselves, the distance between Glaspy's face and the microphone. I love hearing a singer/songwriter album done with this kind of power trio physicality, even if Glaspy, bassist Chris Morrissey, and drummer David King only flex how loud they can get a few times on Echo The Diamond.
23. Nas - Magic 3
Nas had a remarkable run with the 6 albums he made with Hit-Boy in space of a little over 3 years. That would've been unthinkable earlier in his career, in the '90s, when he was a little less prolific than his contemporaries or even in the 2010s, when he released a song called "Nas Album Done" and then took 2 more years to release an album. I'm curious if he's gonna put his feet up now or try to keep this run going with different producers.
24. Jay Royale - Criminal Discourse
Nas is one of the many sampled voices on Criminal Discourse, a loving tribute to '90s/early 2000s true crime rap. But East Baltimore rapper Jay Royale also drafted some of the stars of that era, including Havoc, Kool G Rap, AZ and Styles P. for an impressive album that racked up a couple million streams as an underground triumph.
25. Daisy Jones & The Six - Aurora
When everybody was posting their Spotify Wrapped a couple weeks ago, so many people had a fictional band as one of the top 5 artists they listened to the most in 2023 that Daisy Jones & The Six trended on Twitter. Daisy Jones & The Six was a popular novel, but the Amazon Prime series had the difficult task of not just adapting the story and bringing the characters to life but creating a soundtrack that could plausibly be one of the most popular albums of the 1970s. And Blake Mills did an incredible job writing and producing these songs, in the process getting millions of people to listen to Riley Keough sing without necessarily knowing or caring that she's Elvis Presley's granddaughter.
26. Bailen - Tired Hearts
Julia, David and Daniel Bailen's second album didn't hit me as immediately as their 2019 debut Thrilled To Be Here. But they're still masters of pastoral, nostalgic harmony-leaden pop/rock, hitting the Fleetwood Mac nostalgia sweet spot as well as Daisy Jones & The Six, and the side 2 stretch from "Love You Blind" to "Hiding" is sublime. The other day WTMD played Bailen's new Christmas song, and I recognized their lovely, distinctive sibling harmonies immediately.
27. Young Thug - Business Is Business (Metro's Version)
It's commonplace for new rap albums to be quickly followed by deluxe editions that add some bonus tracks, but the Metro Boomin version of Business Is Business, released 3 days after the original album, is something different that shows how dramatically important sequencing is to an album. Metro's Version only adds two songs, but it completely shuffles the order of the album and it just flows much better, with opening and closing tracks that actually feel like album bookends. Young Thug has always had a frustratingly large vault of unreleased music, but the upside is that a really solid album was right there ready to be assembled when he went behind bars -- it wouldn't surprise me if we get more albums of this quality before he's a free man again.
28. NLE Choppa - Cottonwood 2
Cottonwood 2 is a good example of how much the streaming era has inflated the lengths of rap albums -- its initial release was 70 minutes, followed by a 100-minute deluxe edition and the two hour "deluxe 2.0" a few months later. Despite his inability to filter or edit down his records, though, Memphis's NLE Choppa made one of the few formulaic major label rap albums of 2023 that I found enjoyable to listen to, it's just full of bangers, from "Stomp Em Out," to "Glide With Me" and "All I Know."
29. The Beaches - Blame My Ex
I saw The Beaches at a festival last year when I was waiting to hear another Canadian pop/rock band, the New Pornographers, and they really charmed me and put on a great show. And I spent the next year listening to the early singles from Blame My Ex and anticipating the band's second album, which is really deservingly becoming a breakout on mainstream alternative radio.
30. Kiana Lede - Grudges
We've had a good run of younger women making platinum R&B albums in the past few years (SZA, Summer Walker, Ella Mai) after a pretty dry era when nobody besides Beyonce was thriving. And Kiana Lede's two albums are some of my favorites that didn't quite reach a larger audience -- even a duet with Khalid, every major label's default move for breaking a female artist, didn't move the needle. Lede and producer Mike Woods have really found a lovely sound to build around her smokey and sultry voice.
31. Morgan Wade - Psychopath
I feel like it's kind of back luck to be trying to break through in country as a Morgan W. in the age of Morgan Wallen dominating the genre. But after Morgan Wade's independent 2021 album Reckless became a critically acclaimed hit, she signed with a major. And her first album for Sony Nashville retains her distinctive writing style and puts a tasteful little bit of gloss in the production by Jason Isbell sideman Sadler Vaden.
32. Cleo Sol - Gold
Cleo Sol and her producer Inflo are both members of the 'mysterious' collective Sault, who I find a little hit-and-miss despite their growing reputation as very important artists. Personally, I think the two albums Sol released this fall, particularly Gold, are a little more appealing than most of the group's work, some beautifully sung and simply recorded piano ballads.
33. Paul Simon - Seven Psalms
I thought Paul Simon's 2016 album Stranger To Stranger was really special, one of the best albums anybody's made a full 50 years after their debut, and I was comfortable with that being probably his last collection of new songs. Still, I'm delighted that inspiration came to Simon in a dream and he was moved to record Seven Psalms, a 33-minute song cycle presented as one long track, minimal and meditative and not quite like anything he's done before.
34. The Lemon Twigs - Everything Harmony
After three albums that went all over the garage rock/power pop map, The Lemon Twigs set their sights on a folky chamber pop sound for Everything Harmony that sometimes evoked Simon & Garfunkel, reaching the top 10 of the UK Indie chart for the first time with a gentler approach and a new label, Captured Tracks.
35. Tinashe - BB/ANG3L
Since I do separate album and EP lists at the end of each year, it drives me a little crazy that there's no hard and fast standard separating one from the other, and one artist's EP can be longer than another artist's album. So I just try to take artists at face value about how they define a project, but it's frustrating that Tinashe called BB/ANG3L an album at 7 songs, especially because it could be as good as 2021's 333 if it was longer, I would love if this gets one of those deluxe editions with just 3 or 4 extra songs to make it really feel like an album.
36. YG Teck & Peezy - Champain
YG Teck has reached a level of underground stardom that very few Baltimore rappers have ever reached, he even went on tour this year, it's really cool to say. And though he dropped a solid solo EP this year, my favorite project was a duo album with another regional star, Detroit's Peezy, who had just broken through to mainstream radio with "2 Million Up," and they don't have especially similar voices or rapping styles, but like the same kinds of production and subject matter enough for the combination to really work.
37. Semisonic - Little Bit Of Sun
At a time when alternative radio was full of swaggering party animals, Semisonic's big hit "Closing Time" stood out, partly because Dan Wilson was a dad in his mid-30s with librarian glasses, but also because there was such a classic pop craftmanship in his songs. And after 20 years away, it feels like the band hasn't missed a step, adding a few new elements to the comfortingly familiar Semisonic sound.
38. Blur - The Ballad Of Darren
I've always been a little hot and cold on Blur, but I really learned to love their catalog this year, and thought that they got into this really confident, relaxed late career groove for their 9th album, I hope Darren Albarn keeps getting back together with the boys every few years and doesn't give his career over completely to the cartoon monkeys.
39. Super City - In The Midnight Room
I have a great interview in the can with these guys from a few weeks ago, not sure when it's coming out. But in the rapidly changing Baltimore rock scene, it's cool to see a 5-piece band like Super City stay together for going on 10 years, continually tightening up their sound and their musical chemistry, writing together and letting every member of the band contribute creatively. So many bands just fall apart before they get to the point Super City's at on their third album.
40. Cannons - Heartbeat Highway
Maybe it's a true triumph of the ""Lynchian"" post-Lana Del Rey aesthetic that a band like Cannons can be alternative radio fixtures without hipsters having any idea they exist, but I really enjoy their woozy cabaret synth pop.
41. Zach Bryan - Zach Bryan
Zach Bryan is almost like a mixtape rapper the way he releases so much music on his albums and between albums that I start daydreaming about how I would curate his albums. If he wasn't a stickler for his self-titled album being entirely self-produced, it definitely could have been even better with the addition of "Dawn" featuring Maggie Rogers or "Deep Satin."
42. Slaid Cleaves - Together Through The Dark
I don't listen to a lot of rootsy music that doesn't make it to the mainstream level of someone like Zach Bryan. But I started listening occasionally to WXPN's Americana Music Hour, and it turned me on to Slaid Cleaves, a journeyman singer-songwriter from Maine and currently based on Austin, and I just instantly connected with his stuff.
43. Foo Fighters - But Here We Are
For years, Dave Grohl gracefully dodged constant rampant speculation about which Foo Fighters songs were possibly about Kurt Cobain (after all this time, the only confirmed one was "Friend Of A Friend," written while Cobain was still alive). But after losing another bandmate, Taylor Hawkins, as well as his mother in the same year, it felt right that Grohl was able to openly reflect on his grief in an album this time, and But Here We Are leaned into the classic Foo Fighters sound while also stretching out in new ways like the 10-minute epic "The Teacher."
44. Rae Sremmurd - Sremm 4 Life
Last year, I made a list of the 22 best rap duos of all time, and I'm embarrassed that I forgot to include Rae Sremmurd, who have really been pretty consistent across four albums despite each one being less commercially successful than the one before it.
45. Raye - My 21st Century Blues
It was a good year for Raye-no-Sremmurd, who did something a lot of young pop singers dream of: got out of her contract with the major label that was keeping her on the shelf, finally release her debut album independently, maintain full creative control with a deeply personal album, and still score a big mainstream hit.
46. Mimi Webb - Amelia
Mimi Webb is another British pop singer who released her debut this year, I wish this one crossed over more to the US charts more, this album is just bursting with big memorable hooks.
47. Willie Nelson - I Don't Know A Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard
Willie Nelson turned 90 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, and we're all so lucky that he's still around and sharing his gift with us, releasing two albums in 2023. Over the years Nelson has made several albums saluting his favorite songwriters or singers, from Lefty Frizzell to Frank Sinatra, and I Don't Know A Thing About Love champions Harlan Howard, who like Nelson was writing hits for people like Patsy Cline back in the '50 and '60s.
48. Kelly Clarkson - Chemistry
Kelly Clarkson's legacy is secure and she's transitioned gracefully from being one our greatest pop stars to a beloved television personality who occasionally goes viral for doing an amazing cover on her show and proving she's still a powerhouse vocalist. But nobody really noticed that she released an album this year, and that's a shame, because it's a beautifully cathartic post-divorce album, with the most Clarkson writing credits since she battled Clive Davis for creative control on 2007's My December.
49. Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding - Alive At The Village Vanguard
In 2011, jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding scored an upset at the Grammys, winning Best New Artist over more obvious choices like Drake and Justin Bieber. This year, Drake revealed he still has hard feelings about it, dropping some pathetic sour grapes bars about Spalding on For All The Dogs. Personally, I would take Spalding's brilliant 2016 album Emily's D+Evolution over Drake's entire catalog, and I also really enjoyed this year's Alive At The Village Vanguard, which returned to her jazz roots with a delightfully spontaneous live set of standards.
50. Cheat Codes - One Night In Nashville
Country and dance music only seem to intersect in the most crassly commercial ways possible. And the fourth album by the L.A. trio Cheat Codes, featuring appearances by Little Big Town, Dolly Parton, Brett Young, and more, isn't necessarily an exception. But the combination of gleaming pop EDM beats and big twangy hooks is unusually charming here, they really figured out the melodic common ground between the genres.
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