My Top 10 Favorite Albums of 2023
Welcome to my Substack!!
I’ll start this blog off by being honest and saying right off the bat that I’m not very good at grand, sweeping introductions. 2023 is so fresh and recent, I’m not really sure how it’s going to be looked back on for music broadly and it’s way too early for me to try. All I know is a lot of great music came out this year and for the first time in a long time I had the passion I needed to check out a lot of interesting and exciting new albums in full. For my first post on this page, and the first blog post I’ve written in general in like half a decade, I wanted to talk about these albums and why they helped define my year. I just want to get into it, so here are my top 10 (okay more like 20) favorite albums of 2023!
10. Kelela - Raven
This was the last album I listened to for this list, which is kinda embarrassing considering it came out in February. It took my friend lamenting the fact that this didn’t make the top 25 I posted on Twitter for me to finally listen to Kelela’s sophomore album. While I’m mad at myself for not listening to it when it came out and allowing it to define my 2023, I got to listen to this calming, dark, pulsating ambient dance album in the dead of winter while walking through my hometown in a thick fog. While this album sounds like it was meant to be listened to in dark clubs or in cities late at night, hearing it alone in the fog was an experience that’ll stick with me for a long time. I felt like I was living in the album cover. That cover, one of many amazing album covers we got this year, is a perfect representation of listening to this album. The ambient synths and Kelela’s beautiful voice completely wash over you. While the biggest hit from this album, the 2-step bop Contact, is probably my favorite song here, I also want to shout out the hypnotic title track, the infectious Happy Ending, and Enough For Love, which bridges the gap between this and 2017’s Take Me Apart perfectly. This is an album that celebrates looking inward and being introverted, one that works great in a packed club but even better dancing to it on your own. I’m fully on the Kelela train now and I hope I can have more experiences with her music as special as that walk in the fog.
9. Chappell Roan - The Rise & Fall Of A Midwest Princess
Oh my god make this woman a superstar. While this isn’t the last Dan Nigro-produced pop album to make my top 10, this is easily my favorite synthpop album of the year. Another album I got to pretty late in the year, I was introduced to Chappell Roan through my friend showing me the first track on this album, Femininomenon. Just from that song, with its themes of partying and having fun after the end of an online relationship and the fact that it has a fucking beat, I knew Chappell Roan would be right up my alley. I think these upbeat pop jams are where Roan really shines, and they’re all over this album. Red Wine Supernova, HOT TO GO!, and my personal favorite on the album, Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl, are so fun and danceable and full of Roan’s signature hilarious and perfectly crafted pop songwriting. This album isn’t just bangers however, and she shines just as brightly on the ballads like Coffee and especially Casual, which has one of my favorite bridges of the year. (California also hits especially hard as an Angelino who’s trying to decide if she wants to leave or not.) Chappell Roan’s powerful and expressive voice absolutely sells every song on this album. The Rise & Fall of a Midwest Princess is full of great dance bops and heartbreaking ballads, it’s upbeat, it’s funny, it’s queer, it’s colorful, it’s sex-positive. It’s everything that a great pop album should be. I’m confident that Chappell Roan is one viral hit away from being our next pop princess and I personally can’t wait to see what she does next.
8. 100 gecs - 10,000 gecs
1000 gecs was always an album that would be hard to follow up. When it came out in 2019, it instantly hooked me with its wholly unique combination of harsh electronics, catchy songwriting, chipmunk vocals, and the ethos of just throwing everything off the wall to see what stuck. 1000 gecs helped define my late high school years and I still look back on that era very fondly. However with the combination of my changing music tastes, the collapse of the hyperpop scene that the gecs helped build, and the nearly 4 year wait between albums, I honestly didn’t have very high expectations for the follow-up. I didn’t know if you even could follow up an album like 1000 gecs, but they did, by making an album that may be even more singular! Laura Les and Dylan Brady have both clearly become more confident in their vocals and creative choices, giving us even bolder genre experimentation. We go from the ska-infused hyperpop of Stupid Horse on their debut to the full on ska number I Got My Tooth Removed, the pop punk-y banger Hollywood Baby, and we even get full on nu-metal on Billy Knows Jamie. There’s also tons of the great electropop that made me a gecs fan in the first place, like Dumbest Girl Alive, 757, and the great 2021 single Mememe that closes the album. I think the track that best represents this album however is Frog On The Floor, a song that is literally about a frog hanging out at a party and everybody thinking it’s super cool. I think this captures the ethos of this album so well. It, like the rest of this album, is so unabashedly silly and isn’t afraid to do whatever the hell it wants, which is something I can really appreciate.
7. Danny Brown - Quaranta
Danny Brown was unquestionably one of the MVPs of rap in 2023. Easily the bigger story for him was Scaring The Hoes, his collab album with JPEGMAFIA, which I also enjoyed don’t get me wrong! I love their energy together and the chaotic production, but it didn’t stick with me as much as I hoped. To me at least it felt less like a full on collab, and more like a JPEG album that featured Danny on every track, which was a little disappointing as somebody who’s always loved Danny’s work. Thankfully Danny kept teasing a solo album coming this year that finally dropped in November, and WOW he knocked it out of the park! The lead single Tantor had me expecting another louder, chaotic album in the vein of Scaring The Hoes or even Atrocity Exhibition, but what we got surprised me in a great way. Danny Brown gives us a largely laid back, contemplative, and introspective album in Quaranta, a title which translates to “forty” in Italian and sums up the overarching themes of this album perfectly. On the opening title track Danny discusses how rap saved his life - and fucked it up at the same time, and he spends the rest of the album showing how that’s the case. Tracks like Ain’t My Concern, Down Wit It and Celibite have him looking back on his life, the current state of rap music, and how his life has changed from having a career in rap, all over expertly crafted, hypnotic beats. The classic high-pitched Danny isn’t gone however, as heard on the aforementioned hilarious lead single Tantor and the insightful Jenn’s Terrific Vacation which discusses the harms of gentrification. Overall this is a fantastic album showing how, into his 40s, Danny Brown is as exciting and creative as ever, showing a great example of how to age gracefully in rap and ultimately making my favorite hip hop album of the year.
6. Zach Bryan - Zach Bryan
Zach Bryan has been one of my favorite success stories of the 2020s so far. I don’t pay attention to country music very much, so my introduction to him was with his massive breakout hit Something In The Orange, which spent most of 2022 steadily gaining popularity before finally becoming a top 10 hit in early 2023. Even with country music’s continued rise in relevance, I figured this song’s success had to be a fluke. There’s no way this guy, who isn’t connected to Nashville and was only big in indie country circles before SITO, was gonna be a star right? His next album definitely wasn’t gonna sell 200k copies in his first week right??? There’s absolutely no way that it would have a chart conquering album bomb, including a #1 debut with a Kacey Musgraves duet right???? I’m a chart watcher, I follow the hot 100 every week, and I can’t lie, a big part of why this album makes me so happy is seeing an album that sounds like this and is written like this become one of the most popular things in America. It feels like a sign of things to come, a representation of the slow decentralization of country music from Nashville and the popularity of rustic, Americana-infused red dirty country among young people. Zach Bryan is certainly the biggest name in this new scene, but with the level of success he had in 2023, it feels like the beginning of a massive shift in mainstream country. And even removed from its larger cultural context this album still holds up really well! The production is very country, but the addition of elements from places like indie and heartland rock gives it a very wide appeal. It’s his fullest-sounding music to date while still staying true to the sounds and aesthetics of his earlier work. I love the varied instrumentation on here, especially the horns that show up on anthemic tracks like Overtime and East Side of Sorrow. These work in great contrast to the slower ballads of the album like Summertime’s Close and the smash hit I Remember Everything. Bryan’s songwriting is also excellent, giving a detailed and personal perspective on themes like masculinity, substance abuse, family and his drive to create. I think Overtime was a great opener for this record (after the intro) since it showcases everything that makes this album work and showcases the ethos of this whole project really well. Zach’s voice is also as soulful and powerful as ever, adding a lot of emotion and character to these songs. Overall I’d definitely recommend this project if you have even a passing interest in country music and want an idea of where I think the genre is going in the years to come. Plus, like I said, it gave Kacey Musgraves a #1 hit, what more could you want???
5. Underscores - Wallsocket
Admittedly, I’m very late to the Underscores train. April Harper Grey has been getting buzz since her 2021 debut Fishmonger, and has been active for even longer, and I just never got around to it. My first Underscores track was the one off single Count Of Three (You Can Eat $#@!), which was an instantly catchy pop rock song, but it wasn’t until the lead single for this album, Cops & Robbers, when I realized that I needed to be paying attention to this artist. Cops & Robbers is one of my favorite songs of the year, a dynamic electronics-infused rock song about working at a bank and embezzling money. It, along with the BANGER follow-up Locals (Girls Like Us), got me super excited for the full album, and the rest of it didn’t disappoint. Grey is a great songwriter and this album is full of catchy and infectious hooks infused with a blend of indie rock, electropop, and even hyperpop influence. The top genre for this album is “indietronica,” which feels like an appropriate descriptor, but even then this album’s sound is kind of unlike anything I’d heard before. It also covers a wide variety of subject matter that I find super interesting. This album was actually released via an ARG and tells an overarching story about teenagers living in the fictional town of Wallsocket, Michigan. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the narrative of this album? However I think these tracks all touch on very specific experiences of growing up and being young in the modern day, which I really appreciate. Shoot To Kill, Kill Your Darlings explores how it feels to see someone you know join the military and the complicated feelings that come with seeing someone you love joining a violent, exploitative system that could easily get them killed. And then there’s Johnny Johnny Johnny, the catchiest song about a transgender teenager being horrifically groomed and abused by somebody validating her gender identity! Easily one of the darkest songs of the year, and one of my favorites. This album is full of distinct musical ideas and unique lyrical subject matter, and it makes me extremely excited to see what else Underscores can do.
4. Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS
Olivia Rodrigo is a pop star that’ll always mean a lot to me. She’s one of the most influential people in pop music right now, and is just a few months older than me. When she broke through with Driver’s License and her debut album Sour in 2021, I was in a very similar spot to her in my own life (outside of not being a rich and famous Disney star sadly
3. Boygenius - The Record
Spoilers for the rest of this list, but this was a fantastic year for female-led singer-songwriter alt rock projects, with The Record being a prime example. Boygenius is made up of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, 3 of the most exciting singer-songwriters to break through over the past 5 years. Admittedly I was most familiar with Phoebe before hearing this album, but I respected and saw the talent in all 3 artists, and after hearing this project I can tell they were made for each other. It’s rare to find a supergroup with this much obvious chemistry, and even rarer to find one where that chemistry comes from love. Baker, Bridgers and Dacus clearly all have a lot of love, respect, and understanding for each other, and it translates to the music very well. They all sound like one cohesive unit, whether they’re all singing together like on opener Without You, Without Them, or supporting the other member’s singular voices on later tracks such as Revolution 0 or We’re In Love. These tracks expertly show off the individual strengths of each member, like Dacus’ rich and powerful voice and Baker’s specific framing in her songs. Where The Record really shines however are the tracks where every member gets a moment to shine. Cool About It and Not Strong Enough both give each member a verse to showcase their unique voices and songwriting abilities, while also showcase how well they work together as a trio. It’s their dynamic that makes The Record for me. It may not be reinventing the wheel, but these 3 artists coming together and documenting their friendship on record is what transforms this album from a solid, well written alt rock album to one of the best of the year. Also I can confirm this group is absolutely great live. Lucy had a *concussion* when I saw them and they still kicked ass, that’s dedication.
2. Paramore - This Is Why
I was so. fucking. confident. That this would be my album of the year. I was certain of it. It came out in February and every track instantly hooked me in a way that no album has done in years. Paramore are my favorite kind of musicians, the kind of band that constantly experiments and gives every project its own musical identity while still retaining their core sound. The Beatles, Blur, a certain other artist that I’m about to talk about, it’s such an easy way to get me invested in your music. And with their first album in nearly 6 years, Paramore came back with full on post punk revival. Even though this album is very distinct from the emo rock of their early albums and the synth-heavy indie pop of their 2010s albums, it’s still clearly Paramore. Lyrically, this is a pandemic record through and through, and for my money it’s the best one we’ve gotten. The band perfectly capture the feelings of malaise and anger that I’ve felt constantly for nearly 4 years now, especially on tracks like Running Out Of Time, a comedic track about bad time management which also discusses the anxieties of being alive and losing people, and The News, which I read as an angry freakout over seeing the horrible state of the world and seemingly not being able to do anything about it (which… ohh yeah that’s been my mood this whole fucking decade). I specifically stress that the BAND achieves this, since Taylor York and Zac Farro are more important than ever on this project. Paramore are sometimes talked about like a Hayley Williams solo project, and yeah her vocal performances are absolutely excellent on this, but this album would be nothing without its rhythm section. You First needs Taylor York’s catchy guitar riff, Figure 8 needs Zac Farro’s impressive drumming, they’re absolutely essential to the sound of this record. Of course, Hayley Williams is as great a vocalist as ever, she’s able to capture the exhaustion and malaise needed for tracks like This Is Why and Running Out Of Time, as well as push her vocals to her limits on tracks like The News and Thick Skull. This Is Why feels simultaneously like a culmination of Paramore’s work up to this point and a glimpse into the future of the band. It combines their emo rock, pop punk roots with the synthpop of their previous two albums and newer influences like indie rock and post punk. It showcases the tightness of Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro as a unit, and I think it’s their best album to date. But what could’ve topped it??? We’ll get to that in a minute, but before we do I want to quickly highlight some
Honorable Mentions
Janelle Monae - The Age Of Pleasure: While it might not reach the theatrical highs of Dirty Computer or The ArchAndroid, this album full of chill, fun bops absolutely ruled my summer. Janelle probably had a blast making this album and you can really hear it.
Lil Yachty - Let’s Start Here.: My first AOTY pick of the year! Even if it got unseated pretty quickly by Paramore, this is still a really interesting and adventurous project for Yachty. He’s not reinventing the wheel for prog or psych rock, but he fits into the genre better than I think anybody expected and I really like how he combines the genres with rap and r&b throughout.
Laufey - Bewitched: An undercurrent of my music listening in 2023 was getting more and more into vocal jazz throughout the year, and Laufey played a big role in that. She blends the sounds and aesthetics of jazz/mid-century pop and modern day singer-songwriter music perfectly, and her music is always something I’m in the mood for. I also can’t recommend Samara Joy’s 2022 album Linger Awhile enough if you like Laufey PLEASE make Samara Joy as big as her soon.
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin: An album I was only able to listen to once this year but wow what a project. Deeply personal and gut wrenching while also ultimately being optimistic and hopeful about the future, all while combining various musical elements from Sufjan’s past albums. Undeniably one of the GOAT singer-songwriters at this point.
Bully - Lucky For You: I had never heard of Bully, the solo project of Alicia Bognanno, before hearing this album, but what an introduction. Just a great fuzzy alt rock album full of lyrical introspection and hooks that get stuck in my head for days.
PinkPantheress - Heaven Knows: PinkPantheress is the future of pop music. Great vocals, great production, a well executed expansion of her sound, her “YEAH!” is the best ad-lib in music right now.
Kesha - Gag Order: One of the many triumphant moments Kesha had in 2023, this album is full of interesting and adventurous production while also giving Kesha the space to process all she’s been through in her career. Cannot wait to see what she’ll do now that she’s free from That man.
Lana Del Ray - Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd: Her best album. The personal songwriting is so great here, perfectly complemented by her delicate vocals and the genre-blending production supporting her. I’ve liked Lana albums in the past but I think this was the album where her hype fully clicked for me.
Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You: Put this album off for way too long for some reason, this is some of the best pop music I heard all year. Some great catchy songwriting here but I especially love how experimental and out there the production is while still sounding cohesive. She goes from 2-step to a fucking bagpipe solo! And somehow neither of them sound out of place!!
Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist - Voir Dire: The last cut I made from this list. Earl Sweatshirt has had one of the most interesting evolutions of any rapper in the past 10 years, and The Alchemist’s production compliments him perfectly. The Alchemist helps refine the sound of Earl’s past few projects and together they create some of the best work either of them have made.
And those are just some of the many great albums that came out this year! There was so much great music that I heard in 2023, and even more that I still haven’t gotten to yet. But we still need to answer the question: What’s my #1? Who dethroned Paramore? Who could’ve possibly come in at the end of the year and completely ran away with my album of the yea-It was Mitski.
1. Mitski - The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We
Yeah I know this is extremely predictable if you know me, but I mean what else could it be??? Mitski is my favorite artist currently working, and there’s a good chance that The Land Is Inhospitable is her best album yet. I almost don’t want to say too much about it here, since this is an album that means so much to me and deserves a full write-up of its own. What I’ll say here is that this album is another exciting evolution in Mitski’s sound, trading in the synths of Be The Cowboy and Laurel Hell for a folkier Americana sound. The instrumentation is flawless, you can really hear everybody in the studio together, which adds to the gentleness of tracks like Heaven and the intensity of tracks like The Deal. The production from Patrick Hyland adds a level of warmth to Mitski’s music that really makes this album stand out in her discography and perfectly compliments the songwriting here. Mitski is often categorized, sometimes unfairly, as “sadgirl music”, and while this album can be devastating, I think there’s a lot more going on here. There are certainly some songs here that add to that reputation. I Don’t Like My Mind is maybe the most relatable song she’s ever written for me, focusing on a narrator who does anything she can to avoid sitting with her own thoughts so she isn’t consumed by regret. The Deal is about somebody trying to trade in their soul, which Mitski explained was a metaphor for the idea of giving yourself up entirely to someone or something else. There’s also The Frost, which has jaunty and beautiful country instrumentation supporting a song about deep loneliness and losing friends. And then there’s I’m Your Man, a simple acoustic ballad that had such a visceral effect on me the first time I heard it. It’s a song about shifting relationship dynamics, how Mitski sees this relationship’s end as inevitable, and how unable she is to cope with a life without this person in it. This track, and this album as a whole, features some of Mitski’s most poetic and devastating lyricism, but like I said there’s more going on here. Like Javelin, this is an album that finds hope and acceptance in bleak situations. Every so often a spark of optimism pops up and it completely shifts the overall tone of the album. Heaven was one of the singles that preceded this album, and it was the one that made me realize this would be something special. It’s a gorgeous country ballad about how, even with the hardships of the outside world, you can find peace and comfort in the people you love. There’s also the closer I Love Me After You, where Mitski celebrates the freedom that comes from solitude. And of course there’s one of the most beautiful songs Mitski ever wrote, and the biggest hit of her career, My Love Mine All Mine. Another ballad, and one often mistakenly seen as a sad song, is about the power of love and how our love is the only thing we have that’s truly our own. On this song Mitski writes about love as if she’s in awe of its existence, and the song becomes even sweeter in the second verse where she sings about asking the universe to share her love with the person she loves most after she dies. It feels like a warm hug in audio form, and it’s a very unexpected but welcome choice to be Mitski’s biggest song, a beautiful representation of her work. There’s so much more I haven’t discussed about this album; the choir motif, the religious undertones throughout, the ways this album contrasts with her previous release Laurel Hell, how it fits within the larger context of her career, but I should stop myself here. I feel so fortunate to have a songwriter like Mitski, somebody who’s distinct and strong voice shines through no matter how much she experiments with her sound, and the warmth and power of The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We is something that’s going to stick with me for a very long time.