Spencer TuckermanI started making this list ten years ago, and every year, December sneaks up on me, and I regret signing myself up for the exercise. The last thing any rational person should be doing during the one week that’s a reprieve from the grind of everyday life is self-assigned homework.
And then I start spiraling. I’ll wonder if it was a down year for music and then realize I’m only thinking that because, sadly, I’m devoting a fraction of the time to new music discovery I used to and, sadly, I’m rapidly becoming old and out-of-touch. This used to be a place where I could boast about knowledge, about taste, about doing the research required to be an authority. Now it’s a reminder of my mortality.
But then I get towards the bottom of this page—my favorite songs of the year—and start thinking about the people and memories that I’ll associate with 2023 when I look back in five or ten years, which is why I started doing this in the first place. To capture that. I’m grateful for the reflection, so the work continues. See you next year.
50. Zack Fox––”dummy”
Two years since making the leap from the Twitter timeline to Spotify playlists, Zack Fox is back. Like much like the work on his debut, this pulls one of my favorite tricks by being a joke that’s so skillfully executed that it circles around to something that demands to be taken seriously.
49. Bleachers—”Alma Mater”
Spend enough time on social media, and you’ll be trained to hate Jack Antonoff and his production style. While I think making him a music industry villain is a little extreme, I get it. What I won’t get behind is hating on his band Bleachers, which I continue to find pretty awesome.
48. Home Is Where––”daytona 500”
One of the best new bands of the last several years, Home Is Where always manages to make music that feels like it’s breaking and then recontextualizing ideas on the fly, either thematically or musically. “daytona 500” affects a country sound and cries about roadkill, Wal-Mart, and Dale Earnhardt.
47. Nowaah The Flood—”Akbar Pray Day” (ft. Mach-Hommy)
I’m not even sure where I found this song, but I know producer D-Styles made a masterpiece with this beat, which samples Run-DMC.
46. Pohgoh––”Your New Old Apartment” (ft. Gordon Withers)
The rubric for a good cover song is pretty complicated. Covers that completely reinvent the original tend to be kinda tacky and covers that too closely channel the original start to just feel like karaoke. I think my favorites are ones that are able to find something new that existed within the source material already. Pohgoh’s take on one of my favorite Signals Midwest songs fits the bill.
45. Downhaul––”Fracture”
I don’t go to many concerts anymore (due to being old, uncool, and stuck in a city with America’s worst DIY music scene), but I was able to see Downhaul last summer, and it was a beautiful case of a band I liked on Spotify being a band I love in concert. They rock, and so does this song.
44. Frog Legs—”The Worst McDonald’s Ever”
Everyone deserves to have a tiny bit of folk-punk, as a treat.
43. boygenius—”True Blue”
“And it feels good to be known so well. I can't hide from you like I hide from myself.”
42. Travis Scott––”LOST FOREVER” (ft. Westside Gunn)
A Travis Scott song I like completely independent of anything Travis Scott is doing. Come for the awesome Chuck Senrick sample, and stay for my personal hero, Westside Gunn, making modern art in the second verse.
41. Alex Lahey––”You’ll Never Get Your Money Back”
Alex is carrying on the long lineage of “every single rock musician from Australia is incredible.” This has been slowly unfolding over five or six years for me, and at this point, there may be more Australian bands I like than American ones.
40. Rick Ross & Meek Mill––”They Don’t Really Love You”
Absolutely tragic state of affairs when I can’t manage to get into most of these newfangled rappers, so I cling to Rick Ross to channel bygone days of my youth. Ricky turns 48 years old next month. The man’s still got it.
39. Home Is Where––”yes! yes! a thousand times yes!”
It is not my favorite Home Is Where song, but it is probably their masterpiece so far, building on their themes of destruction and rebirth and translating them into musical ideas. This explodes and rebuilds itself in a grand way that feels like a leveling up for the group.
38. 100 gecs––”Hollywood Baby”
Barbie was good, but Greta Gerwig needs to answer for her decision to not include this song.
37. Turnstile & BADBADNOTGOOD––”Mystery”
I was in the BBNG cult hard a decade ago. As a jazz appreciator and a hip-hop lover, they were doing something that felt entirely new and exciting. Somewhere along the way, I lost them, but this song reached me and got me back on board. They continue to be very good.
36. Youth Lagoon––”Idaho Alien”
To a very specific demographic, Youth Lagoon storming back onto the scene was tantamount to a Jai Paul or Jandek emergence. I cannot imagine how many times I listened to “17” in college or how many playlists I included it on. Having Trevor Powers’ music back in my life is great, especially because it’s grown with me. The new stuff is awesome.
35. Spoon––”I Can’t Give Everything Away”
I start hoarding for this list on January 1, liking songs on Spotify as I encounter them until I have a collection of 100-something tracks to mold into the masterpiece you’re reading. This one here, a Bowie cover released eight days into the year, was the first to make the list this year. (I like it better than the original. I’m sorry.)
34. Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist––”Mancala” (ft. Vince Staples)
Earl Sweatshirt is one of the most talented lyricists alive, but his taste (which he is entitled to!) prevents me from getting into most of his music. This still brings his shaggy, freeform approach but finds him in a palatable register. It doesn’t hurt he has Alchemist and Vince Staples with him.
33. Rob Grant––”Hollywood Bowl” (ft. Lana Del Rey)
Is this a way to Trojan horse yet another Lana Del Rey song onto this list by including a track by her father? Hard to say.
32. Boys Like Girls––”BLOOD AND SUGAR”
If you’re my exact age, there was a period when Boys Like Girls was your Beatles. I still maintain that “The Great Escape”––a song about having a crush in math class––is one of the great pop-rock songs of the 2000s and hasn’t gotten the nostalgic tailwind it deserved. The band came back this year with some stuff that’s more pop and less rock, but it’s actually a pretty good version of that type of thing. Make another emo album, fellas!
31. Jeff Rosenstock––”LIKED U BETTER”
Your favorite musician’s favorite musician continues to never miss.
30. Arm’s Length––”Up In Smoke”
My favorite breakout act of 2022 is coming back with a new album already, and if it’s as good as their debut, we’ll have more songs on this list next year.
29. boygenius––”Not Strong Enough”
I’m not sure I don’t just enjoy these three artists more individually than as a group, but this song does feel like a distillation of why they linked up in the first place.
28. Bully––”A Wonderful Life”
Bully’s Lucky For You feels like one of those albums that kind of emerges out of the ether to become a critical darling. We get them every year. I’m not mad at it because something about it feels like a kind of throwback to ‘90s female rock artists.
27. Blondshell––”Olympus”
At once sleepy and catchy, a vibe that’s hard to get right but is pretty special when it works.
26. Militarie Gunn––”Do It Faster”
Crunchy, fun, and anthemic, which––at the risk of devaluing a good song––almost kinda follows in Dogleg’s footsteps by being the kind of song you want to hear on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtrack.
25. John Moreland––”3:59 AM (Live at Third Man Records)”
This song’s not new, but this version is, and it’s even more intoxicating in this form. I’ve loved Moreland since 2017’s Big Bad Luv, and this live album has brought some of his older work back to me.
24. Tyler, The Creator––”STUNTMAN” (ft. Vince Staples)
Tyler has undeniably blossomed as an artist over the last several years but has kind of left me behind in the process. “STUNTMAN” has him showing off his chops, though.
23. Youth Lagoon––”Rabbit”
“Rabbit” captures what makes blog darling Youth Lagoon’s return so exciting in that it takes the essence of what I loved about Powers in as an artist in 2011 but expands it with more layered songwriting and world-weary wisdom.
22. Home Is Where—”floral organs”
My new favorite from one of the best young bands out there. They’re doing a Cronenberg-type exploration of the relationship between soul and body and it rules.
21. Westside Gunn––”Jalen Rose” (ft. Boldy James)
[insert sickos-haha-yes.jpeg] A dusty beat. Boldy James enters like Leo da Vinci: “GXFR, mi jefe. Two way, deuce, siete. Three MetroCard with ese. You comprehend, comprende?” Westside Gunn follows him like Jackson Pollock: “Flying in the biddy and the helibopter!”
20. Evan Honer––”idk sh*t about cars”
I found this song on TikTok, which feels weirdly shameful, but I guess it’s just a thing that happens in 2023. A lot of music on that app really sucks (not naming names), but I do think it’s led to a kind of cool resurgence of guys who can write catchy guitar music, which—believe it or not—is kind of a lost art in the mainstream.
19. MJ Lenderman––”Dan Marino (Live)”
MJ Lenderman has taken over my life, proven by the fact that this group of live recordings is probably my favorite album of the year. A good live album delivers new angles on studio recordings of songs you love, but this one (and “Dan Marino” especially) takes it a step further by presenting some of Lenderman’s early work in its best form yet. Feels a bit like a greatest hits album of his early career. It’s essential.
18. Dim Wizard––”Ride The Vibe”
A song about doing something big and getting the hell out of town. It’s the best road trip song of 2023––an anthem for the dreamers.
17. Tee Grizzley––”Loop Hole” (ft. 21 Savage)
I am not quite a scholar on Tee Grizzley, but I know part of the value prop is how he’s an artist who excels in a shaggy, bootstrapped way. He sounds like the best version of everyone’s local rapper. “Loop Hole” is exciting because it sheds a lot of those aesthetics. Here he’s sharp and precise, riding a menacing beat that feels like a tank rolling down a city street.
16. Superviolet––”Overrater”
The year’s greatest underdog anthem from Steve Ciolek, former frontman of the now-defunct Sidekicks, one of the all-time underdog rock and roll bands.
15. Dominic Fike––”4x4”
Fike’s career hasn’t played out like I thought it might when I first heard his music in 2018, and he’s perhaps become even more scattershot in the quality of his releases, but “4x4” is proof that he’s still got the juice when he’s able to hit the mark.
14. Travis Scott––”I KNOW?”
By now, I approach new Travis Scott music with a tremendous amount of skepticism, but “I KNOW?” is one that’s managed to have staying power. It packs a tiptoeing piano beat, a slithering flow, and stripped-back vocals that harken back to Scott’s early days when he was an exciting newcomer rather than a festival headliner.
13. Slaughter Beach, Dog––”My Sister in Jesus Christ”
Originally released on a compilation in 2020, this made its way onto Slaughter Beach, Dog’s new album (one of the year’s best), so I’m gonna take advantage of the loophole and throw it in here. The secret to what makes SBD so fun is that a lot of what they’re doing is a kind of alt-country filtered through indie rock—not too dissimilar from what bands like Wilco have built legacies on. This is a perfect example of what makes the sound special.
12. MJ Lenderman––”Rudolph”
A song for fans of Christmas and Pixar’s Cars from the current holder of the My Favorite Songwriter in the World title.
11. Zach Bryan––”Jake’s Piano/Long Island”
A double track and maybe the best songwriting work of Bryan’s quickly exploding career. “Jake’s Piano” examines how those who die continue to exist in our lives, and “Long Island” charts the distance that can develop between us and those who are still alive––a yin and yang of life and death, presence and absence.
10. Maude Latour––”Heaven”
“Don't you think it's sweet that I'm dreamin' 'bout you, even when you're sleepin' next to me?”
Tired: Female pop genius Olivia Rodrigo
Wired: Female pop genius Remi Wolf
Inspired: Female pop genius Maude Latour
Latour has been dotting this list for a few years now, yet somehow hasn’t been able to make the mainstream inroads that Rodrigo or even Wolf have. Of course, it doesn’t make the music any worse, but you’d think someone with these songwriting chops and this knack for infectious left-handed melodies would spread.
09. Lana Del Rey––”Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd”
“I can't help but feel somewhat like my body marred my soul. Handmade beauty sealed up by two man-made walls.”
The best artists—painters, filmmakers, musicians—don’t have nearly the range people assume. The greats iterate on themes. Scorsese makes movies about gangsters, Michaelangelo paints Christ, and Lana Del Rey mythologizes Americana to tear it all down. On her ninth album’s title track, she spins a yarn about the Jergins Tunnel in Long Beach, which—despite its beauty—has been boarded up since 1967: “When’s it gonna be my turn?” It’s English-class symbolism, but she elevates it by inserting it into a body of work that’s been obsessed with these motifs for more than a decade.
08. Lana Del Rey––”A&W”
“I haven't done a cartwheel since I was nine. I haven't seen my mother in a long, long time.”
I don’t think Lana’s quite gotten the push to place her in the mainstream’s top tier, and maybe she’s too public to earn critical revelry, but she’s nine albums deep and now has several songs that feel like monumental, career-definers––”A&W” included. Maybe it’s time we start talking about her as one of the most accomplished artists of her generation.
I’m old enough to remember the early days: Tumblr hype, homemade music videos, industry plant accusations. It’s been nearly 12 years since the SNL performance. Who’d have guessed then that she’d be making some of the best music of her career more than a decade later?
07. Zach Bryan––”Deep Satin”
“Is that song stuck in your head ‘Friend of the Devil’ by The Dead? Or is that just what your friends want me to be?”
As a consequence of Zach Bryan becoming the most prolific mainstream artist since rappers in the mixtape era, he’s got songs from four different albums on the last two years of this list. “Deep Satin,” as a song, isn’t any more exciting than any of the rest of his impossibly consistent work, but as a possible future direction for his career, I find it kind of intoxicating. His music is already built for large-crowd catharsis, but here he really steps into Springsteen. It’s probably my favorite vocal performance and much more instrumentally rich. I’d kill for a whole album of this stuff.
06. Slaughter Beach, Dog––”Float Away”
As a big Modern Baseball fan a decade ago, I spent a lot of time hoping Jake Ewald’s follow-up project would eventually bend to that sound, which—in hindsight—was obviously misguided. Instead, what the band has become is kind of the logical evolution of the groundwork laid by MoBo: Still quippy and catchy but packing a lot more intricacies and much more maturity.
05. Olivia Rodrigo––”get him back!”
“I wanna break his heart, then be the one to stitch it up.”
Pop perfection. Maybe my favorite smash hit since Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” in 2015.
04. Young Thug––”Went Thru It”
“Now I keep an S on my chest, baby. I saved the world in a dress, baby.”
2023’s perseverance anthem is a fitting headliner for Young Thug, who’s currently awaiting trial on trumped-up RICO charges. It’s impossible to hear this beat and not be happier than you were when it started.
03. MJ Lenderman––”Knockin’”
“They took my drivers license, but you still have yours. You're all I need, babe.”
The current best songwriter in the world strikes again. Lenderman continues to flex an uncanny ability to mine emotional depth and complexity out of silly premises. Here, he references golfer John Daly and birds trapped in Home Depot to craft an affecting love song that doubles as a half-cover of the Bob Dylan classic. Nobody else is doing this. Maybe nobody else ever has.
02. Zach Bryan––”Ticking”
“And everyone thinks they know me now in these close-minded, leave-me towns, but I'm too young to even know myself.”
A song about the push and pull between wanting to get up and go and missing those you have to leave behind, between wanting to grow and knowing that lifelong relationships will change.
This is the second year in a row that a Zach Bryan song about the highway has landed at #2 on this list. Where “Highway Boys” is anthemic and gleeful, this partner song is sorrowful but accepting. Time moves differently on the interstate, but growth happens on the road.
01. Mustafa––”Name of God”
“Whose Lord are you naming, when you start to break things? It's my only life you hold.”
It makes sense that Mustafa got his start as a spoken word poet because he writes lyrics that force you to hang on to each and every word. He has nine solo songs on streaming services, and three of them are undeniable masterpieces.
I have a bad habit of needing to compare artists to other artists. Mustafa is Frank Ocean. He’s Tupac. But it does him a disservice because his music exists in my life outside of those boundaries. This came out in October. He has a knack for delivering music at exactly the right moment—pleas for peace from the rubble. And that’s a lot bigger than a great song.