Peter Gabriel is a legend and can do whatever the hell he wants, but I'm not in love with his unorthodox release strategy for I/O. Gabriel released all 12 of the songs as singles throughout 2023, so I've been listening to the majority of the album for the last few months before finally being able to hear it in full in December. And the album contains two distinct mixes of each song, a 'Bright Side' mix by Spike Stent and a 'Dark Side' mix by Tchad Blake. Both mixes are excellent, and more alike than they are different, but I feel like Gabriel should've just made a decision and committed to one or the other being the definitive version of the album -- for me the Dark Side mix is consistently more appealing, Tchad Blake just has a great ear for texture and makes the drums punch a little more. I regard Peter Gabriel's first 5 albums as classics, and everything since then is kind of on a lower tier, but i/o is pretty damn good, I put it about on the same level as Us, maybe higher because there aren't any overly cartoony attempts at MTV hits. I already did my top 50 albums of 2023 post before I listened to most of these albums, but I still like to do my look back at December releases, don't wanna miss any good albums just because they drop at the end of the year. 

This album seemed to get a pretty mixed reception, but I was pleasantly surprised that I like it a lot more than Queen. The only songs I don't really like are the three previously released singles, those could've been loosies if you ask me. Plus, it was exciting to see that Baltimore rapper Tate Kobang, who's been working with Nicki for a couple years now, all over Pink Friday 2. He's featured on a song with Lil Wayne, "RNB," and has writing credits on 5 other songs on the album, including the breakout hit "Everybody," which is pretty cool -- for some background, I was the first person to interview Tate Kobang for Baltimore City Paper in 2013, and also profiled him for Fader in 2015 and Pigeons and Planes in 2016. 

Madeline Kenney's A New Reality Mind was my 4th favorite album of 2023, so I was delighted that she ended the year by releasing a live-in-the-studio performance of the entire album in order. The intricately textured instrumentation on A New Reality Mind is a big part of the appeal of the album, but I like hearing stripped-down voice-and-piano renditions that really show how strong the bones of the songs are. 

Over the last three years, Tate McRae has undergone this gradual evolution from the sad gen z balladeer of "You Broke Me First" to an old-fashioned dance pop diva with choreography-heavy videos and TV performances. And I think I like jiggy era Tate McRae much more than her offbrand Billie Eilish period, although I think the 2022 non-album single "Uh Oh" was especially great, I'm sad it got lost in the shuffle. "We're Not Alike" has a very zeitgeisty "she said she was a girl's girl, that's a lie" chorus, they should probably jump on releasing that as a single. 

Dove Cameron has been Disney Channel famous for over a decade, but she started to become normal famous in 2022 after coming out as bisexual and releasing the massive gender-bending pop hit "Boyfriend." Instead of capitalizing on her big single at the right time, though, she waited a year to release this 8-song first half of a debut album, which I think was a missed opportunity, her label should've gone all in. Cameron's grown-up pop stuff is perhaps even more overly indebted to Billie Eilish than Tate McRae's early work, but she also has this campy dramatic femme fatale thing that she put to great use in the Chicago/Burlesque-inspired second season of the Apple TV+ film musical parody series "Schmigadoon!" 

Shannon Ramsey is a Baltimore-based gospel artist who once appeared on The CW's reality singing competition "The Next," and her debut album is a really funky, danceable record that could fit in with a lot of secular R&B right now but also happens to be a gospel record. A lot of that is thanks to the Baltimore producer King Midas, a hugely talented guy I interviewed for a poorly managed local magazine about 10 years ago, who fills the album with big grooves and vocodered backing vocals, but Ramsey's an excellent singer who pulls off a lot of different vocal styles with total confidence. 

Last year I made a B.G. deep cuts playlist after he got out of prison, and it's exciting to hear him rapping like he barely missed a step after a decade away. It always felt like out of all the classic era Cash Money rappers, B.G. was the guy who influenced contemporary trap music, even more than Lil Wayne, so it makes total sense that T.I. signed B.G. in the 2000s and now Gucci teamed up with B.G. for his first post-prison project. 

L.A. producer Terrace Martin quietly had one of the most impressive runs of 2023, releasing 8 albums or EPs fusing jazz and soul and hip-hop on collaborative projects with Alex Isley, Gallant, James Fauntleroy, Calvin Keys, and Dinner Party. Martin ended his busy year with Ornamental, which doesn't really sound like a Christmas album, it's just a bunch of lush instrumental grooves with titles like "Hot Chocolate" and "Starry Night," but I'm not complaining. 

Blackbird Presents is a company that has put on a lot of all-star concerts celebrating musical legends, which are usually turned into a live album and/or TV special or DVD. 9 years ago I did the lyric prompter for Blackbird's Emmylou Harris tribute in D.C., which was an amazing night, so every time they do a cool show I get jealous that I wasn't working on it. And I'm really really jealous that I wasn't there for their event last year celebrating Willie Nelson's 90th birthday. The TV special is a trimmed down and abbreviated version of the concert, but the album is the whole 3-hour show. There are some great covers here, including the (fka Dixie) Chicks doing "Bloody Mary Morning," Dwight Yoakam doing "Me and Paul," and Lyle Lovett doing "Hello Walls," as well as Willie duetting with George Strait, Shery Crow, and Snoop Dogg. 

Wharton Tiers is associated with the the No Wave scene of the early '80s and produced Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex and Glenn Branca records. So when I saw Sonic Youth live for the first time in 1998 and Tiers was one of the opening acts, it kind of surprised me that he was leading a band (on drums) that was basically playing fairly straightforward surf rock instrumentals. I like his stuff, though, I was happy to see he had a new record out, his stuff is a little less conventional than I realized in '98 but still kind of a good time groove-driven record.  

R&B is a genre that, for better and for worse, really relies on the major label system, and when artists stop making hits or age out of their era and go independent, it seems rare that they really know how to keep making high quality records without industry support (Tinashe being a notable recent exception). Omarion's last couple albums aren't a huge step down from his peak records, but he never really made consistently great music, and now it just feels like he's coasting in mediocrity. 

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