Favorite Songs of 2022

50. Wilco — ”Tired of Taking It Out On You”

A rite of passage at this point. I don’t know if Wilco is my favorite band of all time. They probably aren’t. But I love lead singer Jeff Tweedy too much not to fall for one song a year. I’ve been ranking my annual favorites for at least a decade and he’s probably appeared in more lists than anyone.

49. Flatland Cavalry — ”Mountain Song”

A bunch of weird stuff happened in my brain this year, something I blame on turning 30. One of those things was finally making contact with something I’ve spent most of my life circling: Formally becoming something of a country music fan. “Time ain’t a thing here, luck is my best friend,” indeed.

48. Nilüfer Yanya — ”midnight sun”

Not sure what I love more: Songs based on drum breaks and acoustic guitars or songs that take their title from the bridge.

47. Camp Trash — ”Let It Ride”

Another band that made a huge dent on my 2021 list. Camp Trash’s debut LP The Long Way, The Slow Way is one of my favorites of the year. I listened to a lot of music in this vein growing up, but something about Camp Trash specifically seems to hit that mood directly. It’s music that feels designed to be played on a portable CD player.

46. Runner — ”Ur Name on a Grain of Rice - demo”

I wrote this last year and I guess it continues to hold true, but this kind of ambling bedroom pop is everywhere still. I like all of it while recognizing it’s kind of light and airy to the point of being nearly disposable. But something about Runner’s demo version of this song feels lived-in enough that it’s retained some sticking power.

45. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — ”(You Made It Feel Like) Home”

The GOATs Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have never made my favorite songs of the year list, despite my great admiration of their work. For whatever reason I’ve always seemed to silo “music for film” into a separate place in my brain, but the two puddles have merged in 2022. This song come from Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, one of my favorite movies of the year, pinned down by a couple stirring needle drops.

44. Junior Varsity — ”Singapore”

Junior Varsity was my band of 2021, and as a result doesn’t have near the same presence on this year’s list, but the duo continues to make some of the most affable pop music in the world. I build this list of annual favorites in real time, which means I spend all year listening to these songs. Junior Varsity never gets skipped.

43. Danger Mouse, Black Thought, A$AP Rocky, & Run The Jewels — ”Strangers”

Danger Mouse making rap music feels like a transmission from an ancient LimeWire past. The Black Thought and Run The Jewels collaborations make quick sense, but consider it a plot twist that A$AP Rocky sounds perfectly at home as well. Perhaps it’s a testament to the versatility of each.

42. The 1975 — ”All I Need To Hear”

I love The 1975’s b.s. so much, yet amidst the more naked provocation and gleeful, wanton pretension exists “All I Need To Hear,” a sincere little ballad. It was (allegedly) recorded in one take and (allegedly) designed to feel like a cover of someone else’s song. Both of those could be a lie, but I’ll buy it.

41. Princess Nokia — ”No Effort”

Listen to this song for 30 seconds and then tell me it doesn’t belong on a list for best songs of the year. I do a poor job of following Princess Nokia and then I’ll hear one of her songs and curse myself for not spending every waking minute blasting her music.

40. Lana Del Rey — ”Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd”

America’s foremost crafter of flawless album titles returns with the title track to her 2023 record. After falling out of love with Lana a bit between 2012 and 2019, I’m glad to have her back in my life. She’s firmly in the Pusha T category where she continues to make the exact same type of music, but she’s now so good at it that I don’t get tired. Serve me Americana pastiche forever.

39. MJ Lenderman — ”You Have Bought Yourself A Boat”

If there’s an artist discovery from 2022 most likely to stay with me into the future, it’s MJ Lenderman. I nearly gave this spot to “You Are Every Girl To Me,” another great cut from Boat Songs. But there’s a line on here where he says, wearily, “They gave this hurricane your human name.”

38. Origami Angel — ”live from the ufo”

I’ve been on the Origami Angel train since 2019. Their 2021 album GAMI GANG (one of my favorites) won me over with its brash style and rollicking energy. But “live from the ufo” sheds that, embodying a soft, twinkly love song. It’s not something I thought I’d want from them but now I need more.

37. Freddie Gibbs — ”Gold Rings” (ft. Pusha T)

Another completely overlooked Pusha T verse comes here. Few rappers are better at weaving in unique vocabulary and phrases than Pusha. “Gold Rings” features “cummerbund” and “create-a-player” seamlessly.

36. Mt. Joy — ”Bathroom Light”

Whiskey-soaked sleaze disguised as, like, coffee house stuff.

35. Cheem — ”Snag”

I am 30, officially old enough to feel something when a new band pays homage to the very worst style of music from my youth.

34. Freddie Gibbs — ”Ice Cream” (ft. Rick Ross)

I probably put too much Freddie Gibbs on this year’s list. I am only human, with human weaknesses. But, in my defense, this selection here is owed primarily to Rick Ross’ verse. We’re 12 years removed from the modern masterpiece that is Teflon Don and he still has gas in the tank and fire in the belly.

33. Wild Pink — ”ILYSM”

Every single time I listen to a Wild Pink song I think I should be listening to them more. They remind me a lot of The Killers at their best—alt rock pitched in a grander tone. Every song has the walls blown out and run time extended, elevating good music to a more weighty plane.

32. The National — ”Weird Goodbyes” (ft. Bon Iver)

Matt Berninger and Justin Vernon is a dream collaboration for a certain type of guy (me). “Your coat’s in my car; I guess you forgot. It’s crazy the things we let go.” If you don’t want this kind of woozy, forlorn songwriting, why are you listening?

31. Jack M. Senff — ”Little Light”

My flirtation with country culminated so completely this year that this list is also littered with this kind of country-adjacent stuff. Crucially, these are all lyrics-first. It’s singer-songwriter more than it is Nashville pop.

30. Tindersticks — ”Stars at Noon”

Becoming the kind of guy who listens to movie soundtracks is easy when they’re this good. There were some great needle drops in 2022 movies, but this one, titled after the film in which it appears, might be my favorite—a bleary, sweaty waltz.

29. Freddie Gibbs — ”Feel No Pain” (ft. Anderson .Paak & Raekwon)

Anderson .Paak references Keanu Reeves. Freddie Gibbs references Bubba Wallace. Raekwon references Danny Ainge.

28. Kurt Vile — ”Stuffed Leopard”

Kurt Vile, in limited doses, is one of my favorite songwriters. If I listened to this every day I might lose my mind, but there’s something about him spilling for nearly seven minutes.

27. Vince Staples — ”ROSE STREET”

An anti-love song that is actually just a kind of bromance song.

26. Microwave — ”Circling the Drain”

“I am getting my ass kicked, but I am playing to lose.” This is still a band that will release 20 songs I don’t feel strongly about and then one song that feels like it’s the best rock song I’ve heard in my entire life. No act of this ilk has a better Spotify top 10 popular list. (“Something Right” is #10 right now and it’s literally a perfect emo song.)

25. Slaughter Beach, Dog — ”Intersection”

I still miss Modern Baseball in a lot of ways, but I’ve gotta admit Jake Ewald’s second act in Slaughter Beach, Dog is a lot more impressive. The contemplative and poetic rarely gets people going in the same way MoBo’s rollicking emo does.

24. Drake & 21 Savage — ”On BS”

There was a time when I considered myself a big fan of Drake’s, but over the past six or seven years all of is music has fallen somewhere on the spectrum between lifeless and outright terrible. My fascination with Her Loss—his collaboration with 21 Savage—proved to be short lived, but “On BS” recaptures some of the carefree fun of his last great projects: What A Time To Be Alive and If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.

23. Moneybagg Yo — ”Blow”

Few artists are able to so successfully capture and repackage concentrated energy. “Blow” may not match 2021’s “Time Today” in menace but it keeps the bouncy swagger and sprinter’s pace.

22. Meridian Ohio — ”Give Off A Glow”

I first heard “Give Off A Glow” years ago, digging through Meridian’s Bandcamp page. I loved it back then, so I was thrilled to see it dusted off for the band’s 2022 LP New Ways for Old Days. The nine-year arc is fitting for a song about seeing ghosts.

21. Arm’s Length — ”Object Permanence”

I am old and uncool and busy with “real life” now, so the rate at which I discover completely new bands has greatly diminished. One that’ll stick around past 2022 is Arm’s Length. It’s emo that begs to be played at an unhealthy volume.

20. Boldy James & Real Bad Man — ”All the Way Out”

Boldy’s second verse is the best of the year in the Non-Pusha category, a fitting distinction for a guy who’s been making good music with little to no fanfare for more than a decade.

19. Joyce Manor — ”Gotta Let It Go”

I saw Joyce Manor in concert in 2016. I’ve thought about that set more and more recently as the band has become one of my all-time favorites and their west coast locale keeps them from frequenting Cincinnati.

18. Pusha T — ”Hear Me Clearly” (ft. Nigo)

“Hear Me Clearly” first hit the world in a circulated clip from the Kenzo FW22 runway show. Models stoically walk a long hallway as Pusha spins webs about Harry Potter and a “kilogram Kickstarter.” Not since high school had I been so rapt by a snippet. (The full song lives up to the hype.)

17. Camp Trash — ”Lake Erie Boys”

I listen to a lot of this music and kind of always have, but something about Camp Trash—and this song specifically—is intensely nostalgic to me. This is tonally indistinguishable from stuff I listened to when I was a 13-year-old Lake Erie boy myself.

16. Zach Bryan — ”Younger Years”

Song of the Summer 2022

15. Noah Kahan — ”Stick Season”

All the hallmarks of the annoying song that won’t age well: Blew up on TikTok, white guy, guitar-based. Go back and try listening to “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. And yet I do think this one is different, just because it’s not quite in the category of uber-catchy, ringtone-type guitar music. This blew up because of its songwriting, which is something that happens with less and less frequency. Cool to see it in 2022.

14. PUP — ”Matilda”

One of the best (and one of the only!) shows I saw in 2022 was a packed room erupting over PUP. Their 2022 album THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND is very good but I couldn’t quite get it to stick as much as Morbid Stuff—my favorite album of 2019. “Matilda” sticks though, and it can tear down a room full of sweaty 20- and 30-somethings looking to recapture the freedom of their youth.

13. Retirement Party — ”Quick to Change”

I saw Retirement Party open for Foxing in January 2019. The band performed songs from their debut LP Somewhat Literate and its package of clever quips and witty barbs. Things were simpler for all of us then. They called it quits this year, but not before sending us off with a final EP. “Quick to Change” is quite possibly the best song of the band’s brief run; a good place to leave things.

12. Pusha T — ”Let The Smokers Shine The Coupes”

Late night TV musical performances are generally a wasteland, especially when it comes to hip-hop. The genre does not translate well to a studio audience seated comfortably under an applause sign. But sometimes the contrasts form something beautiful, like Pusha T letting this song rip on Jimmy Kimmel in June. We support all mainstreaming of Pusha T.

11. Zach Bryan — ”Tishomingo”

I listened to so much Zach Bryan in 2022 that I don’t know how to weave him into this list, but Spotify tells me this is the song of his I listened to second most, so here we are. This is the song of his I’d play around a campfire, which captures how simple and laid-back it is but undersells how good it is.

10. The 1975 — ”Part Of The Band”

“The worst inside of us begets that feeling on the internet. It's like someone intended it.”

I think about The 1975 in the same way that I think about a lot of movies these days. In an era where so much art feels thoughtless and designed to go down easy, you have to appreciate art that provokes, even when the provocation is occasionally childish. Matt Healy’s band lives in this realm, blending schoolboy impulses with larger-than-life pretension. I’ve described them as the best bad band or the worst good band, and I’ve come to love them. Their 2022 album Being Funny In A Foreign Language (see what I’m saying?) is great, and “Part of the Band” is the best of the bunch.

09. Junior Varsity — ”Florida”

“There's complications from believing it's all fate. You never work as hard in understanding the true nature of the thing.”

Junior Varsity—a band I’ve been following ferociously for a couple years—recently dropped “Florida” alongside some very ominous messaging: “One last one before we go.” If this really is the final entry for the reclusive duo, it’s a shame. It’s a single that sheds their party tone in favor of something soft, twinkly, and heartfelt. It’s a nod at the possibility of the band’s next era, one that may never come to exist.

08. Signals Midwest — ”SETTLED IN MY SKIN”

“Just let me be here to imbibe the moment bеfore it’s tail lights in a fog of ‘best wishes’ and ‘warm rеgards.’”

One of my favorite bands of all time dropped their fifth album, serving as proof that if you stick with anything for a long time—and give it every part of yourself—you really can just get better and better. Youth is overrated when the alternative is this kind of expert grasp of songwriting and heavy guitar. “SETTLED IN MY SKIN” is a song about uncertain futures and relationships stretched and strained against the barrier of time—something Maxwell Stern has been writing about for more than a decade at this point.

07. Arm’s Length — ”Formative Age”

“I'm not concerned that you'd kill for me, but you don't even live for me. I beg you to get out of bed.”

Blunt-force rock music. Power emo in the vein of so many of my favorite bands. (I would never want put this pressure on anyone, but it’s scratching my years-long Hotelier itch.) All I want in this life are soaring hooks and mosh-pit energy to make me feel 21 again.

06. ME REX — ”Giant Giant (Destruction Story)”

“I want to burn your silhouette into the ground around my feet and let that savage incandescence carve its own way into me. I know that you get beaten up by ghosts in your sleep. You wake up without bruises and climb to your feet.”

This is not the first time ME REX has appeared on one of these lists; they cracked the top 15 in 2020. I’m endlessly amazed by the scope of their ambition despite their stature as what seems to be a pretty small band. (Just one of their songs on Spotify has eclipsed 60,000 plays.) Open their lyrics and you’ll find length that’s rare in rock music. Listen to their songs and you’ll hear frantic density and intricacy.

05. MJ Lenderman — ”Hangover Game”

“It wasn't a pizza that poisoned him in Utah. With a hotel bill to prove: Three thousand dollars on just five dudes.”

An ode to drinking through the lens of Michael Jordan’s “Flu Game.” Harmless conspiracy theories through alt-country fuzz. MJ Lenderman is a one-of-one artist and he appeals to me for so many different reasons. Boat Songs has become something of a breakthrough hit and the kind of album that makes you think, “Why would anyone ever make music that doesn’t include electric guitar?” “Hangover Game” is the most fun I had listening to music all year.

04. Pusha T — ”Diet Coke”

“They mad at us. Who wouldn't be? We became everything you couldn't be. Everything your mama said you shouldn't be. The Porsche's horses revvin', like, ‘Look at me.’”

The beat of the year (produced by the legend 88-Keys with an assist from Kanye) was a fitting way for Pusha T make his triumphant return for solo album number four. Detractors continue to say Pusha—now 45 years old—has run out of things to rap about. I don’t care because Pusha doesn’t either. “I am like the Martin Scorsese of street raps,” he told Hot Ones. “That’s how I want to be seen.” He’s an expert at his craft and arguably getting better with age, something we’ve rarely seen in hip-hop.

03. 49 Winchester — ”Russell County Line”

“And in that dirt was planted seeds of hope, and from them grew the flowers of our lives. And all our favorite little things that true loves brings, all the times we laughed and cried.”

Unmistakably country, yet, in its best, most spiritual moments, it adopts the kind of heartland rock that would make Bruce Springsteen holler. It’s a song about seeing the world and missing your own backyard. Spotify Wrapped tells me this was my fourth-most played song of the year. That sounds impressive and yet it cannot possibly be accurate. There is no way I listened to any song more in 2022.

02. Zach Bryan — ”Highway Boys”

“I wanna ride that K-10 to way back when, sleep next to the river, hear it rushin' again, get my no-good soul back to where it belongs, and do my best to keep truth in songs.”

I first heard Zach Bryan in 2019 as video of a sweaty kid playing his guitar in the dark started making the rounds. It felt like alchemy in the way that few newly discovered artists do and even fewer are able to follow through on. He’s finally arrived in full, completely owning 2022. He released a massively successful major-label debut, 34 songs deep, and then for good measure a nine-song EP and some stray singles on top of it. No artist has had such a prolific output in one year this side of Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane. It feels wrong to choose a single song to represent all of that music, but “Highway Boys” is what I listened to most, so that seems like a good place to start.

01. Black Country, New Road — “Concorde”

“I was breathless upon every mountain just to look for your light.”

I make these stupid lists every year. They’re a Sisyphean exercise, futilely ranking something that defies objective categorization. I sit around and wonder if one song is really better than another as if that were possible to determine and if anyone would even care if it were. And yet there’s a phenomena that occurs annually where I’ll hear a song—maybe in March, maybe in July—and instantly know it’s my #1 of the year. “Concorde,” a sprawling six-minute opus, frames a love interest as a supersonic jet: A sunk cost fallacy that will never break even and a speeding comet that will never be caught, and yet an object of worship and deep-seated desire nonetheless. It’s a songwriting masterpiece culminating in a tidal wave of an outro that will define the year in music for me.