The 2022 End of Year music lists thread

Uncut's Top 75 Albums of 2022:

75. Drugdealer - Hiding in Plain Sight
74. Chris Forsyth - Evolution Here We Come
73. Aoife Nessa Frances - Protector
72. Širom - The Liquified Throne of Simplicity
71. Angeline Morrison - The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience
70. Tommy McLain - I Ran Down Every Dream
69. Jack White - Entering Heaven Alive
68. Kathryn Joseph - for you who are the wronged
67. Jake Blount - The New Faith
66. The Unthanks - Sorrows Away
65. Beach House - Once Twice Melody
64. Ghost Power - Ghost Power
63. Robyn Hitchcock - Shufflemania!
62. Jenny Hval - Classic Objects
61. Yard Act - The Overload
60. Sarah Davachi - Two Sisters
59. The Black Keys - Dropout Boogie
58. Pye Corner Audio - Let's Emerge!
57. Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling & Andreas Werliin - Ghosted
56. Father John Misty - Chloë and the Next 20th Century
55. Amanda Shires - Take It Like a Man
54. Suede - Autofiction
53. Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE
52. Tim Bernardes - Mil Coisas Invisíveis
51. Jake Xerxes Fussell - Good and Green Again
50. Drive-By Truckers - Welcome 2 Club XIII
49. Bill Callahan - YTI⅃AƎЯ
48. Carson McHone - Still Life
47. Rich Ruth - I Survived, It's Over
46. Björk - Fossora
45. Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
44. Makaya McCraven - In These Times
43. Revelators Sound System - Revelators
42. Jana Horn - Optimism
41. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms
40. Ty Segall - "Hello, Hi"
39. Khruangbin & Vieux Farka Touré - Ali
38. Courtney Marie Andrews - Loose Future
37. Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators
36. S.G. Goodman - Teeth Marks
35. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset
34. Daniel Rossen - You Belong There
33. Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen
32. Horace Andy - Midnight Rocker
31. Kevin Morby - This Is A Photograph
30. Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful
29. Julia Jacklin - PRE PLEASURE
28. The Comet Is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam
27. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
26. Jockstrap - I Love You Jennifer B
25. Cass McCombs - Heartmind
24. Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork
23. Arctic Monkeys - The Car
22. Hurray For The Riff Raff - Life On Earth
21. black midi - Hellfire
20. Kurt Vile - (watch my moves)
19. Sharon Van Etten - We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
18. Gwenno - Tresor
17. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
16. Richard Dawson - The Ruby Cord
15. Lambchop - The Bible
14. Beth Orton - Weather Alive
13. Cate Le Bon - Pompeii
12. The Weather Station - How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars
11. The Delines - The Sea Drift
10. Elvis Costello & The Imposters - The Boy Named If
9. Brian Eno - FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
8. Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
7. Wet Leg - Wet Leg
6. Wilco - Cruel Country
5. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
4. Angel Olsen - Big Time
3. Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band - Dear Scott
2. Joan Shelley - The Spur
1. The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention

Earlier and earlier

Rough Trade are slow out of the gate this year.

Check out both Top 20s below and head to Rough Trade US and Rough Trade UK for their full Top 100s.

ROUGH TRADE US - VINYL ALBUMS OF 2022

1. The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
2. Jack White - 'Fear of the Dawn / Entering Heaven Alive'
3. Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl
4. Wet Leg - Wet Leg
5. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
6. Mitski - Laurel Hell
7. yuele - Glitch Princess
8. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
9. black midi - Hellfire
10. Yard Act - The Overload
11. Alvvays - Blue Rev
12. Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
13. Angel Olsen - Big Time
14. Horsegirl - Versions of Modern Performance
15. They Hate Change - Finally New
16. Nova Twins - Supernova
17. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
18. The Lounge Society - Tired of Liberty
19. Bartees Strange - Farm to Table
20. OSEES - A Foul Form

ROUGH TRADE UK - ALBUMS OF 2022

1. Jack White - 'Fear of the Dawn / Entering Heaven Alive'
2. The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
3. Yard Act - The Overload
4. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
5. Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl
6. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
7. yeule - Glitch Princess
8. black midi - Hellfire
9. Wet Leg - Wet Leg
10. The Lounge Society - Tired of Liberty
11. Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
12. Mitski - Laurel Hell
13. Horsegirl - Versions of Modern Performance
14. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
15. Kelly Lee Owens - LP.8
16. Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler - For All Our Days That Tear The Heart
17. Osees - A Foul Form
18. Ibibio Sound Machine - Electricity
19. The Orielles - Tableau
20. Nova Twins - Supernova

I'm still about a month out from being able to do mine.

Huh? I didn't even know Kelly Lee Owens released something this year! And it's eluded me since April???

I really liked the new KLO album, it's a really precise intersection of ambience and menace

Jack White at #1 feels a bit too Radio X (though tbh I have heard nothing from it, maybe it's good, who can say? Guess we'll never know)

it will not be good

Adding these in from Moka's duplicate thread:

BLEEP - Top 10 Albums

https://bleep.com/top-10-albums-of-the-year-2022

TIME - Top 10 Albums

https://time.com/6235186/best-albums-2022/

I hit an ad on that Time page, and for a moment thought “5 Surprising Things that Contribute to Aging Gracefully” was the title of a 1975 album.

Decibel announced their Top 40 albums of the year:

40. Temple of Void, Summoning the Slayer, Relapse
39. Gaerea, Mirage, Season of Mist
38. Sigh, Shiki, Peaceville
37. Still/Form, From the Rot Is a Gift, Hex
36. Midnight, Let There Be Witchery, Metal Blade
35. Doldrum, The Knocking, or the Story of the Sound That Preceded Their Disappearance, Katafalque
34. Amorphis, Halo, Atomic Fire
33. Imperial Triumphant, Spirit of Ecstasy, Century Media
32. Black Anvil, Regenesis, Season of Mist
31. Municipal Waste, Electrified Brain, Nuclear Blast
30. Castrator, Defiled in Oblivion, Dark Descent
29. Daeva, Through Sheer Will and Black Magic…, 20 Buck Sin
28. Ripped to Shreds, 劇變 (Jubian), Relapse
27. Mother of Graves, Where the Shadows Adorn, Wise Blood
26. Eight Bells, Legacy of Ruin, Prophecy
25. Tzompantli, Tlazcaltiliztli, 20 Buck Spin
24. SpiritWorld, Deathwestern, Century Media
23. Escuela Grind, Memory Theater, MNRK
22. Vanum, Legend, Profound Lore
21. Satan, Earth Infernal, Metal Blade
20. Mizmor + Thou, Myopia, Gilead Media
19. Dream Unending, Song of Salvation, 20 Buck Spin
18. Phobophilic, Enveloping Absurdity, Prosthetic
17. Negative Plane, The Pact…, The Ajna Offensive
16. Sumerlands, Dreamkiller, Relapse
15. Terror, Pain Into Power, Pure Noise
14. Voivod, Syncro Anarchy, Century Media
13. Chat Pile, God’s Country, The Flenser
12. Wake, Thought Form Descent, Metal Blade
11. Oceans of Slumber, Starlight and Ash, Century Media
10. Mortuous, Upon Desolation, Carbonized
9. KEN mode, Null, Artoffact
8. Kreator, Hate Über Alles, Nuclear Blast
7. Nechochwen, Kanawha Black, Bindrune
6. Soul Glo, Diaspora Problems, Epitaph
5. Immolation, Acts of God, Nuclear Blast
4. Blackbraid, Blackbraid I, self-released
3. Sonja, Loud Arriver, Cruz Del Sur
2. Cave In, Heavy Pendulum, Relapse
1. Undeath, It’s Time… to Rise from the Grave, Prosthetic

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2022/11/10/spoiler-here-are-decibels-top-40-albums-of-2022

― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Thursday 10 November 2022 20:13 (two weeks ago)

ty em!

Guess I should listen to that Horace Andy album.

MOJO - TOP 75 ALBUMS OF 2022

75. Elizabeth King - I Got A Love
74. Kelly Lee Owens - LP.8
73. Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Recordings from the Åland Islands
72. Kae Tempest - The Line Is a Curve
71. Julia Jacklin - PRE PLEASURE
70. Eiko Ishibashi - For McCoy
69. The Black Keys - Dropout Boogie
68. Lambchop - The Bible
67. Jon Spencer & The HITmakers - Spencer Gets It Lit
66. Angel Olsen - Big Time
65. Brian Eno - FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
64. Wu-Lu - Loggerhead
63. Nina Nastasia - Riderless Horse
62. Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - Topical Dancer
61. The Lightning Seeds - See You in the Stars
60. Spoon - Lucifer on the Sofa
59. Björk - Fossora
58. Gilla Band - Most Normal
57. Oren Ambarchi - Shebang
56. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
55. The Proclaimers - Dentures Out
54. Jake Xerxes Fussell - Good and Green Again
53. XPropaganda - The Heart Is Strange
52. Ezra Furman - All of Us Flames
51. Kurt Vile - (watch my moves)
50. Moor Mother - Jazz Codes
49. Anaïs Mitchell - Anaïs Mitchell
48. Midlake - For the Sake of Bethel Woods
47. Johnny Marr - Fever Dreams Pts. 1-4
46. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
45. Yard Act - The Overload
44. Working Men's Club - Fear Fear
43. Alabaster DePlume - GOLD – Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love
42. Cass McCombs - Heartmind
41. Leyla McCalla - Breaking the Thermometer
40. The Mars Volta - The Mars Volta
39. Elvis Costello & The Imposters - The Boy Named If
38. Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder - GET ON BOARD
37. Khruangbin & Vieux Farka Touré - Ali
36. Jockstrap - I Love You Jennifer B
35. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
34. Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
33. Jeff Parker - Forfolks
32. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Endless Rooms
31. Oumou Sangaré - Timbuktu
30. Hurray For The Riff Raff - LIFE ON EARTH
29. Father John Misty - Chloë and the Next 20th Century
28. Gwenno - Tresor
27. Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE
26. Joan Shelley - The Spur
25. Gabriels - Angels & Queens – Part I
24. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset
23. Drive-By Truckers - Welcome 2 Club XIII
22. Mavis Staples & Levon Helm - Carry Me Home
21. Cate Le Bon - Pompeii
20. Beth Orton - Weather Alive
19. Makaya McCraven - In These Times
18. The Comet Is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam
17. Kevin Morby - This Is A Photograph
16. Rich Ruth - I Survived, It's Over
15. Wilco - Cruel Country
14. Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
13. Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful
12. Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
11. The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention
10. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
9. Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork
8. Jack White - Fear of the Dawn
7. Bill Callahan - YTI⅃AƎЯ
6. Suede - Autofiction
5. Arctic Monkeys - The Car
4. Horace Andy - Midnight Rocker
3. Black Thought & Danger Mouse - Cheat Codes
2. Wet Leg - Wet Leg
1. Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band - Dear Scott

I keep forgetting Wet Leg was this year, it really feels like last year.

Fair, since the two singles anyone cared about are from 2021.

The uproxx critics poll submission deadline is Monday November 28 at 11 pm us et. Poll will be posted in December some time

This Michael Head album is not bad but just kinda average. Top 5 (including #1) on two lists though??

Both of those lists also have Wet Leg in their top tens, so can be discounted as having anything to do with music

Does MOJO consider December 2021 albums as released this year? I only ask because it seems ridiculous to put Parker’s Forfolks on the list when he was head of two of the better jazz releases of 2022. Never understood why this happens, especially in the age of digital releases.

Michael Head Scratcher

Most interesting list I've seen so far, from Loud & Quiet, with probably my favorite album of the year at #1:

https://www.loudandquiet.com/short/loud-and-quiet-albums-of-the-year-2022/

Yeah, that's a good list - thanks

Don’t know album of Toronto singer bassist Saya Gray, number 2 on Time Magazine list whose only other mention on ILM appears to be on an NPR list ( if I searched name right)

I hadn't listened to it in awhile but the KLO album still works for me. The tag line of "Throbbing Gristle meets Enya" was silly but it did also trigger an extended revisit of early industrial tapes over the summer. Funny how inspiration works.

Does MOJO consider December 2021 albums as released this year? I only ask because it seems ridiculous to put Parker’s Forfolks on the list when he was head of two of the better jazz releases of 2022. Never understood why this happens, especially in the age of digital releases.

― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Sunday, November 27, 2022 12:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Places like Mojo have to work like two months in advance so things can be ready for a print issue. Strictly online ventures have no excuse beyond racing for clicks

The Michael Head album is great, though a little surprised to see it so high on some lists. I guess there's a lot of affection for him given his struggles with booze and heroin.

speaking of race for clicks, here's uproxx's unranked albums list

https://uproxx.com/music/best-albums-2022-list/

has Asake and Burna, lacks Rema and Wizzy

here's my annual reminder that Uproxx is owned by global record label conglomerate Warner Music Group and shouldn't be in the business of reviewing records, much less hosting a poll of critics on the year's best records. (no one cares! i don't know why, but they don't.)

I still don't believe "Alex G." is a real person making real music.

never really liked him before but i really liked his new album ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.lyrics.cat/v/9/97de8067a82fde4d5f48056c77e0a451.jpg
“I still don’t know how I got away with it.”

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/best-albums/best-albums-of-2022/#once-twice-melody

every year all these fuckin lists are just anagrams of each other

yes, sadly since the demise of witch house we have been limited to these predictable 26 letters and 10 numerals

the loud and quiet list seems sufficiently interesting

The most interesting lists are still to come: Aquarium Drunkard, The Quietus, and a few others. These other pubs are, for the most part, utter jokes.

oh yes, AD always excellent

yes, sadly since the demise of witch house we have been limited to these predictable 26 letters and 10 numerals

― link.exposing.politically

╚Ø╚

TIME 10 BEST SONGS

https://time.com/6235775/best-songs-2022/

They picked the wrong Sudan Archives song! (FreakaliZer is the right one) still happy to see her there.

I wouldn't know, I keep replaying the title track. Best dense r&b mini-suite banger since Tkay Maidza and Bree Runway have been making music.
Cool that they included Finesse.

Also the best Sudan Archives song cannot not have violin

Yeah, the new Alex G is annoyingly good. Like a post-late-Low version of slacker-indie.

Love love love "ChevyS10" and think it serves as the natural peak when listening to the album - good choice, Time

NYT (Pop): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/arts/music/best-albums-renaissance-bad-bunny.html

NYT Jazz: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/arts/music/best-jazz-albums.html

Yeah, the new Alex G is annoyingly good. Like a post-late-Low version of slacker-indie.

This is literally the first time I've heard his music described in a way that makes me mildly curious!

Critic Gene Seymour's jazz list is better than the Times jazz list, even though it has a Keith Jarrett album on it.

I think Gene Seymour and I like totally different jazz.

I don't agree with him about much — I'm doing a list of 20 albums for Stereogum, and the Shipp album will be on it and I'm considering the Salvant, Sorey and Turner discs, though I'm less sure about them. The Mary Halvorson album he cites as an honorable mention will definitely be on my list.

Excited for your list!

Yeah, the new Alex G is annoyingly good. Like a post-late-Low version of slacker-indie.

guess i have to check it out then, what i've heard of his previous stuff was just fine

yeah that's the first description of Alex G that sounds palatable to me

https://www.gorillavsbear.net/gorilla-vs-bears-albums-of-2022/
https://thequietus.com/articles/32400-the-quietus-top-100-albums-of-2022-norman-records

weirdly they have the same #1

someone needs to let the gvb guy know about real lies

ok this alex g album is nice, he's foregrounded all his production eccentricities, at least since the last album of his i heard which was a while ago.

the late-period low comparison holds up only in a few places but i get it. i'd more directly say it's a slacker-indie take on 'hyperpop', reminds me of the fantastic dltzk album from last year. would love to hear what he'd come up with working with bj burton

like it only really delves into something that actually sounds 'hyperpop' occasionally but just the general way it hangs together is fairly reminiscent of what those sort of artists are doing

I listened to the Jockstrap the other day. It isn't remotely AOTY lol

And the h word has been uttered so I'd best get around to Alex G at some point

Was the Quietus list all Sleaford Mods records and unlistenable art metal again? Last year’s list was abysmal

xp you might be disappointed by the alex g idk but it's at least adjacent to that whole area

i also disliked the jockstrap album but maybe listening to it again would make me hate it

i don't think there was a sleaford mods album this year so you may be in luck

seems like there is a bunch of art metal though, have not tested its listenability yet

Quietus list has disappointed me for a while, so much noodly nothingness, this year no different. Also Fontaines fuckin DC over so many better rock choices, what is it with that band and critics

Also, some actually great Quietuscore - like, tailor-made for them - came out in the form of Holy Scum and it isn't even in their 100. But why list the best thing any member of Gnod has ever done when you can just list yet another fuckin Gnod album?

And as for Jockstrap, yeah it's some diverting and occasionally effective modern production wedded to some truly lumpen songwriting by a BCNR member, embarrassing how that bunch have taken over

I don’t think the Jockstrap will age well at all, it has some great moments tho.

i listened to the caroline album that's on all these lists bc the descriptions were interesting and it sounds like christmas music

I like the GVB list but I rarely coincide with him on albums. His songs list is usually more up my alley. I suspect half of his top 20 tomorrow will be songs I loved this year.

xp I mean, that could be a good thing!

The lists I most look forward to are Raven Sings The Blues and Aquarium Drunkard.

AD and Bandcamp's various lists were great last year iirc

I'm really liking the June McDoom off the GvB list though

I don’t think the Jockstrap will age well at all, it has some great moments tho.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Thursday, December 1, 2022 7:55 AM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Nice to see the Carmen Villain album on the Quietus list, it's super! And also Darklife by Death's Dynamic Shroud. And of course Real Lies.

Although as the years go by I care less and less about these lists. I used to get FOMO at this point of the year and think I had to catch up on all the great music I missed, only to later realise most of it was shite.

I listen to Alex G infrequently but I would have never thought to use any of those descriptors upthread about him.

Caramanica NY Times list has Nigerian Asake and Pareles list of additional top albums has Malian Rokia Kone ( w/ Jackknife Lee)

i listened to the caroline album that's on all these lists bc the descriptions were interesting and it sounds like christmas music

Yeah, I don't get this one at all, even though I do like some of the adjacent stuff that came out this year.

caroline is like the only artist on these lists whom i adore!
the record is just fantastic
"christmas music"??? like - is Palace Music or Songs:Ohia or even like early Mogwai christmas music? it's definitely not an in-vogue style though

Rolling Stone’s 100 best albums of 2022: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-2022-list-1234632387/

xp
heh I listened to the first song on that and was like "woah this sounds like 1999" so yeah

Is Rolling Stone even trying to have a point of view or is the intent of the magazine simply to document for historical record what the popular masses consumed in a given year

Probably just a copy editing oversight but it made me laugh that the Lizzo blurb is uncredited.

Midnights at #3 – LOL

Glad tQ gave some props to the Širom album, putting it #11— it is a genuinely excellent record, been playing it a lot.

That Rolling Stone list has Tove Lo fairly high, which I haven't seen on many other lists. I love that record and was beginning to wonder if I was the only one.

Is Rolling Stone even trying to have a point of view or is the intent of the magazine simply to document for historical record what the popular masses consumed in a given year

― Indexed

I was trying to think of the last time their number one wasn't a big selling number one album. All I could come up with was that U2 album that invaded everyone's iTunes. Before that maybe TV On The Radio in 2008.

A few good tracks but I was disappointed with the new Tove Lo album xp

caroline not normally my sorta thing but really enjoyed the album
fav bit is when good morning (red) falls apart

Also, some actually great Quietuscore - like, tailor-made for them - came out in the form of Holy Scum and it isn't even in their 100. But why list the best thing any member of Gnod has ever done when you can just list yet another fuckin Gnod album?

― imago

I missed Holy Scum at Torfest to see another act and supposedly they were one of the best things at the festival. I should probably check out the album. Though tbf I'm perfectly happy for them to not list every band's side project in their EoY chart (unless it's mine, lol). Anyway, it's a good list and if all you're seeing on it is art metal then you're massively overlooking a whole lot. I can see a few things that will/might make my own ballot and I'm not even halfway through.

I will say I liked the Quietus list better than last year, tho I just cannot with the noise and metal they prefer— maybe I’m getting old, but most of it truly sounds like shit to me.

complex - https://www.complex.com/music/best-albums-2022/

First Sault appearance?

second Wizkid one, once again at #26

However you feel about Gioia's taste (and personally I find I have a good amount of overlap), you have to hand it to him for providing an informative one-line description of each item on his honorable mention list. I hope he sticks with this format for his best-of list. It's the perfect amount of information to quickly digest. I don't want to read an essay, just enough information to give me a hint of whether it might align with my own taste, and not meaningless buzzwords:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-best-recordings-of-2022-honorable

https://www.popmatters.com/best-indie-rock-albums-2022

is Palace Music or Songs:Ohia or even like early Mogwai christmas music?

now that's what I call a perfect blurb, listening now, wonderful album

However you feel about Gioia's taste (and personally I find I have a good amount of overlap), you have to hand it to him for providing an informative one-line description of each item on his honorable mention list.

yeah that's a very nice format, youtube links for all entries too

also a lot of stuff I'm not familiar with

his rock choices seem to come from a person not too familiar with the genre

wow, brutal top 6 indie rock albums there from popmatters

the 5 current british post-punk buzz bands plus bartees strange, and the rest of the top 25 looks like they threw darts at a playlist

tell me you're 20 years old and know zilch about rock music without telling me you're 20 years old and know zilch about rock music

I was gonna ask which of those bands are worth checking out; haven’t heard of most of em

It is a fucking terrible list but there's a few decent things there

Just went through the audio clips… It does feel like a pretty random assortment.

If you want some collective-listening-based lists to go with the editorial/authorial ones, my algorithmic country/genre explorer for the year is up (to be updated again after the year actually ends):

https://everynoise.com/2022_around_the_world.cgi

ted gioia's list is the only list i look forward to every year, even though i pretty much hate everything else about the guy. whatever.

i see that he's going to post the top 100 list behind a paywall again. i subscribed last year just to get access to it, but if somebody feels like posting it here that would be cool.

Cabbages list (best hip-hop):

https://www.cabbageshiphop.com/best-hiphop-rap-albums-2022/

(2nd list I've seen after Loud & Quiet with Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals' 'King Cobra' at #1)

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-songs-2022/

you know what, fuck it, amazing #1 choice

this hikaru utada song might be the most ILM-bait song i've ever heard

Didn't think Destroyer was going to get much attention this year; pleasantly surprised.

Gorilla vs Bear top 50 songs

https://www.gorillavsbear.net/gorilla-vs-bears-songs-of-2022/

Yeah I like it a lot and great #1

The p4k list isn’t bad either.

this hikaru utada song might be the most ILM-bait song i've ever heard

― josh az (2011nostalgia), Monday, December 5, 2022 9:30 AM (one hour ago)

I only listened to the first two minutes but this is otm

Hikaru will def make it into the top 77 tracks.

It’s somewhat overindulgent at 12 mins, but Floating Points is an amazing producer so it doesn’t feel as long as it is.

Bummer that Big Thief couldn’t muster two tracks on the list (like Beyoncé did), even though their album is full of incredible songs

there's a lot to love about the p4k list but i'm baffled by #1

some kind of CANadian CONspiracy

I don’t mind it, but most songs in that top 10 they’ll completely forget about when the 2020-2024 or the EOD poll comes, assuming p4k still exists.

Pomeranian Spinster (the Alvvays track right before Belinda Says on the album) is one of my top jams of the year; but none of the other songs on the album really sound like anything much to me. Strange #1 indeed

Seems to me like pfork meant to swap #1 and #100. That's the only explanation.

like a lot of other alvvays tracks it's fine but it's hard to understand what makes it so special.

Pitchfork list is a pleasant surprise.

rolling stone singles: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-2022-list-1234632381

appreciate the amount of latin music on there, otherwise pretty bland

Cool, they include "Pomeranian Spinster" (and correctly flag it as the album's best song)

vinylmeplease is the first list i've seen to mention 454's fast trax 3, which will absolutely be on my list
https://www.vinylmeplease.com/blogs/magazine/best-albums-2022

besides plenty latin (same as in their albums list), Rolling Stone also has lots of kpop, plus it has five of the big afropop songs of the year in its top 50. I call that progress.

It seems more interesting/diverse than the Pfork list (based on quick scrolls thru each)

vinylmeplease is the first list i've seen to mention 454's _fast trax 3_, which will absolutely be on my list
https://www.vinylmeplease.com/blogs/magazine/best-albums-2022🕸

odd #1 choice by p4k but it's a great song from what is probably the best pop/rock band on the planet, so i'll take it

corny indie dream pop rock that still works somehow

xxp yes! oddly, i don't think either of their albums are available on vinyl at vmp or anywhere else

xp world-class indie dream pop, no "corny" or "somehow" about it

i always thought Alvvays was a band it was easy to underestimate til they creep on you - maybe not anymore - I like Easy On Your Own? best for the absolute melancholic wallop of the central lyric & unpredictability of the key changes & melody throughout.

i like the alvvays song but it seems very much "marry me archie" redux and what's the message we're sending if a lesser version of "marry me archie" is better than all pop music in 2022

Wowwwwwww to this Hikaru Utada track

I didn't know I wanted a Floating Points/Jessie Ware collab so badly until now

I think they're the best band *and* I think "Belinda Says" is a very strange choice for #1 song of the year. No idea how they got there.

first chunk of the bandcamp albums list is up: https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2022/the-best-albums-of-2022-a-d. usually one of my favorite best-of lists.

unpredictability of the key changes & melody throughout

i will be the fuckin judge of this

unless I got a bad match on the import, it appears that every track on the Pitchfork list is on Spotify. not to single them out as I assume this is true of most lists, but it says a lot about how people are listening (myself included).

quite possibly listened to more minutes of Bandcamp than Spotify this year (fewer different albums but what I did buy I caned), where's my Bandcamp Unwrapped

lmfao christ this 2nd track of the alvayys is like the most clichéd ad-ready bollocks I swear to god, every chord was just about the most obvious one they could have picked, there is so much unboring music out there, why does this stuff get the plaudits I do not understand. not sorry this is EOY war stations

just very dreary

oh look there's a song called Very Online Guy YES HELLO I'M HERE I'M REAYD FOR MY CALLOUT

*READYY

AllMusic Year in Review, starting with their favorite albums: https://www.allmusic.com/year-in-review/2022/allmusic-best-of-2022

didn't know I wanted a Floating Points/Jessie Ware collab so badly until now

― Indexed

This would break ilm

"Spitting Off The Edge of the World" is extremely ok. I feel like if a song is eligible for top 10 or 20 of the year it should be among that artist's best work and this is not one of their 10 best songs. But it's ok.

The video is great tho.

the rest of the utada hikaru album is excellent too fwiw (except for the one out of place skrillex collab)

feels wild that rolling stone had a better #1 than p4k!

The Horace Andy is cool. Thank you bandcamp

I only care for about half of Pitchfork's top 10 and agree the #1 is an odd choice from that album, but it's still nice to see a genuinely surprising ranking that won't be a carbon copy of everyone else's. Are Beyonce & Two Shell the only artists with more than one track?

The Alvvays choice is weird but I think there are a bunch of places where they chose the "right" song -- Rosalia, Bad Bunny, Beyonce, Taylor, The 1975, CRJ, Maren (good for them putting this in the top 50)

no "western wind" is a very weird pick for crj too

Glutton for punishment, I've ploughed straight into the caroline album. I mean who knows

Well, credit for picking the only really good song on that YYYs album.

oh look there's a song called Very Online Guy YES HELLO I'M HERE I'M REAYD FOR MY CALLOUT

This was, by pure chance, the first song I heard off the new one, and the last one.

"western wind" is great but not picking "the loneliest time" seems like the wrong kind of contrarianism!

I agree

feel like if they had gone with pomeranian spinster as the #1 everyone would have called it a boring consensus vote-by-committee choice

though listening to "belinda says" now it's maybe the biggest POP song on the album so i don't know why everyone's surprised

Not to argue the point to death, but "PS" is such a more exciting / better song (IMO), why would it have been called a boring choice(?)

i would be baffled no matter which alvvays track was #1

bc it's the song everyone highlights from the album

Good, it's the best! lol

"Western Wind" was the lead single?

it wasn't a good lead single

Because I've siloed myself off so much, these lists always befuddle me completely— most of this stuff is utter mind detergent, imho, but I guess that's the purpose of pop music, so ymmv.

I do like the Utada, fwiw. Alvvays certainly a band for the "bands I've avoided even listening to because of the stupidity of their name" thread.

That Steve Lacy song is both charming and catchy and incredibly annoying at the same time.

I can never remember— when do we start doing our EOY 77 lists again?

The Alvvays album is great and that is one of the best songs on there, but them being number one on the Pitchfork list and The Beths getting shut out completely is disappointing. Nothing on Blue Rev comes close to Expert In A Dying Field's title track.

nominations usually open pretty soon

Guardian's Top 20 songs:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/05/the-20-best-songs-of-2022

Wow I just heard "The loneliest time" and holy shit when did CRJ become this bland.

https://i.imgflip.com/48mqsj.jpg

heyyyy

haha

i've been dishing it out tbf

this is definitely caring too much but when was the last time p4k had such a middle-of-the-road indie track as #1? "seasons (waiting on you)"? there was at least a little bit of zeitgeist around that to help justify it

Are Beyonce & Two Shell the only artists with more than one track?

dj python as well

funny i have never really loved crj but i do love “the loneliest time” (the song)

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/

That Guardian list of 20 songs w/three repeat artists is a firm rejoinder to people who don't like editorial meddling with the results

reading the description of that steve lacy song and imagining just how angry listening to it will make me, it is quite a powerful feeling

kinda hard to imagine that song making anyone angey

or angry

those are the songs that make me angriest!

The Wire's list is out.

1. Lucrecia Dalt - ¡Ay!
2. Moor Mother - Jazz Codes
3. Bill Orcutt - Music For Four Guitars
4. Oren Ambarchi - Shebang
5. Kali Malone - Living Torch
6. Sarah Davachi - Two Sisters
7. Billy Woods - Aethiopes
8. Björk - Fossora
9. Silvia Torozzi & Deborah Walker - Canti Di Guerra, Di Lavoro E D'Amore
10. Carl Stone - Wat Dong Moon Lek
11. V/A - Fragility Of Sounds
12. Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems
13. Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
14. Sun Ra Arkestra - Living Sky
15. Daniel Bachman - Almanac Behind
16. Horse Lords - Comradely Objects
17. Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis & Belladonna
18. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy
19. Claire Rousay & More Eaze - Never Stop Texting Me
20. Diamanda Galás - Broken Gargoyles
21. Vanessa Rossetto - The Actress
22. Coby Sey - Conduit
23. Hudson Mohawke - Cry Sugar
24. Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture
25. Horsegirl - Versions Of Modern Performance
26. Moin - Paste
27. The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
28. Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph - Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef
29. Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV
30. Robert Storey - The Eventual Window
31. Tegh & Adel Poursamadi - Ima
32. Devin Townsend - Lightwork
33. Laura Cannell - Antiphony Of The Trees
34. Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat - Chasing The Phantom
35. Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki
36. The Lord/Petra Haden - Devotional
37. Afrorack - The Afrorack
38. Roc Marciano & The Alchemist - The Elephant Man's Bones
39. The Ephemeron Loop - Psychonautic Escapism
40. Julmud - Tuqoos
41. Alvin Curran - Drumming Up Trouble
42. N Chambers - Mirage Colony
43. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela*
44. Eric Chenaux - Say Laura
45. Tomáš Niesner - Bečvou
46. Brian Eno - Foreverandevernomore
47. Ishmael Reed - The Hands Of Grace
48. Oren Ambarchi/Jonas Berthling/Andreas Werliin - Ghosted
49. Deliluh - Fault Lines
50. Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators

*the only album on this list I voted for

great no. 1

Haven't heard it, but not that surprising - she was on the cover three issues back.

Interesting - #18 on that list was my #1 vote, none of my other votes placed

I still love Sarah Davachi’s music but have fallen behind by a couple releases - too many, with too much frequency for me to be able to absorb and appreciate them.

(But I have no doubt this one was great and I’ll get to it by 2024.)

Orcutt solo is a thing that everyone seems to love but that has never fully clicked for me. This one came closest.

Interesting - #18 on that list was my #1 vote, none of my other votes placed

Phelimuncasi was my #1. (And I suspect that Devin Townsend album at #32 to be a thumb on the scale — I know reviews editor Joe loves Townsend but I can't imagine any other Wire writers giving him the time of day.)

ha i have loved all the orcutt guitar albums but don't care for the newest one as much

Looks like the Big Thief album may end up being underrated...

I think it's weird for Pfork to call it "contemporary Brooklyn indie rock’s answer to the Beatles’ White Album or Prince’s Sign o’ the Times." Do any of the band members even live in Brooklyn? (Maybe Adrianne, for parts of the year?) It would be like a review of the White Album calling it "contemporary Liverpool post-skiffle" or something

it's funny to me how high the weeknd is on a lot of these lists when it was prob the biggest flop pop album of the year & critics haven't much cared for him in years. he made a consciously cool album qua album that was critic bait in a lot of ways & it was rejected by the public... critics at the time were like "hey pretty good record let's keep it moving" but i guess it held for ppl over the course of the year? it feels like there weren't a lot of albums for ppl to rally around this year

I thought Big Thief would do better tbh

Wet Leg too.

https://www.complex.com/music/best-albums-2022/

this top 10 is pretty boring but the complex list is one of the few mainstream publication lists i've seen that seems to reflect reality in some way... it at least acknowledges that artists like brent faiyaz, yeat, wizkid exist

the lack of mainstream rap and R&B on the pfork list is quite noticeable

I've been trying to find a way in to the Lucrecia Dalt album for a while now and it just keeps not clicking. Someone who loves it please evangelize.

^same, I enjoy the opener and then immediately struggle with it

Sudan Archives at #2 on P4k's list is a very pleasant surprise. Big Thief feels like it would have been AOTY for them a decade ago. Renaissance feels both deserving and incredibly safe?

not enough lists mentioning cash cobain and chow lee imo

except for...the new york times

factual

the real WAVY LADY

Big Thief seem to have taken a hit from the Israel dust-up and their awkward response this year? Not dramatically but just enough to drop them a few spots. Or maybe it just came out too early in the year.

https://www.cabbageshiphop.com/best-hiphop-rap-albums-2022/

A hiphop list

for... a certain kind of listener

lol

otm

It’s a no major label release allowed list with infinity knives & Brian Ennals at #1

stereogum albums: https://www.stereogum.com/2206970/best-albums-2022/lists/year-in-review/2022-in-review/

There was a time when I could get hype about an
Earl Sweatshirt release

have you heard this one yet? it’s my fav thing he’s done

Maybe I’ll try it again but upon release I couldn’t get into it.

it has the Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn collab and Makaya McCraven. other than that, whatever, not for me (#1 and 2 very good tho)

really liked the Earl Sweatshirt too

Treblezine

https://www.treblezine.com/the-50-best-albums-of-2022/

https://www.treblezine.com/the-100-best-songs-of-2022/

yeah i'm definitely surprised that the big thief album has ended up somewhat underrated by all these lists

Maybe it is partly that it came out early in the year (although you'd hope ppl would have memories) – and a bunch of the tracks were released last year, with some of them making "Best of 2021" lists ("Spud Infinity," the track that appears on the Pfork Songs list, was actually a 2021 release as well... but I guess it came out late in December, so it missed their 2021 cutoff. Whatever)

I revisited the album recently, and I'm casually convinced it's one of the better albums to be released in my lifetime, by anyone (no joke)... I understand this may not be a universal sentiment, but I certainly didn't expect to see it plopped down at #7 or #8 on these lists, several slots below Alex G or whatever.

Yeah I relistened the other night for the first time in a little while and I still liked every song as well as the shifting shape of the thing.

Meanwhile, I have a strong weakness for and bias toward jangly indie-rock, but I really don't get why Alvvays is near the top of so many lists. It's fine but unexceptional, I like the Beths album better for something sort of in the same mode. How did this get designated as an AOTY contender in 2022?

yeah the alvvays album is just extremely... fine, don't get the hype here at all

Some might recall from the "AOTY So Far" thread that the Big Thief was the only album that appeared on every mid-year list I aggregated. To what extent do individual pubs and journalists react to that and attempt to hype others, consciously or not?

To what extent do individual pubs and journalists react to that and attempt to hype others, consciously or not?

― Indexed, Tuesday, December 6, 2022 5:02 PM (fifty-one seconds ago)

not at all. those mid year lists are just things everyone does to feed the content mill... prob not very much thought put into them and i highly doubt any writer or editor thinks about those lists for even a second after the publish button is hit or is referring back to those lists when it comes to year end

Question for any journalists who submit lists to different publications. In an end of year best of, do you submit the same ballot or tweak it depending on the genres they cover? I.e. does The Wire get the same list as Pitchfork or RA etc?

Same ballot.

I'm doing 3 lists: a top 10 for The Wire, a 20-album jazz list for Stereogum, and a 50-album list for my own newsletter/site (which picks up where the 50-album list I published at the end of June leaves off). There were 2 or 3 things on my Wire ballot that will be on the Stereogum list, and some crossover with the Burning Ambulance list(s) as well.

apart from beyonce the critical consensus feels more fragmented than ever this year

idk, top 11 or so seem pretty omnipresent

https://www.albumoftheyear.org/list/summary/2022/

Yeah this Steve Lacy song is repulsively bland. Yeah cool vibes yeah. Vibes! Cool vibes. Fuck off

Oh god the HUMMING

I resisted that song the first few times I heard it but gave in.

I just listened to it for the first time, haha, umm

¬_¬

this year i thought steve lacy had passed away for a few months and realised i had dreamt it

sorry steve lacy

Bad Habit: Of all the lo-fi, vibe-y indie r&b that could have bubbled to the top of the charts in the past decade this is the song that made it huh? At least is more of a song than that Glass Animals one that was pretty much just *vibe*…

It makes me a bit sad to see that video of Steve Lacy himself frustrated at the success of the song, or rather the success of the snippet on tik-tok. The idea of people paying to see an artist only for a 10 second hook so they can record it for an instastory or tiktok or whatever and not even knowing the rest of that damn song makes me feel “get off my lawn” old.

possible reasons why music you liked or expected to get high rankings on these lists didn’t do as well as you thought OR music you dislike did better than you expected

1. other people genuinely have different musical tastes than you
2. these lists are often decided by committee, inevitably sanding down any eccentric personal favorites in favor of boring consensus choices (see also the annual ILM polls)
3. an enemy of yours paid every music publication to knock your favorite album down 20 places
4. you have terrible taste in music
5. the universe is a random and cold place

feel free to refer back to these as needed

Loophole: I don’t have any favorite albums anymore!

you forgot a crucial one:

6. inherent biases during the selection process

Does The Wire still do individual genre lists? I’m always curious to see those. I hadn’t gotten around to the Lucrecia Dalt album yet (their overall number one), so I’ll be checking that one out first. Ephemeron Loop and Dewa Alit look intriguing too.

I listened to the Lucrecia Dalt album twice last night and really liked it. Highly cinematic.

here's my annual spaghetti against the wall:

https://www.saidthegramophone.com/archives/best_songs_of_2022.php

honestly bewildered that anyone with an ear for pop has placed anything else at #1, seems obvious

weird to feel like the only person who liked/remembered the new paramore song lol

it's got a good chorus but has to slog through some pretty janky bars to get there

@_@

Brilliant list as usual sean!

Finally someone acknowledges the greatness of Provenza!

That Passionfruit yt views number feels off though, could’ve sworn it was a massive hit.

Does The Wire still do individual genre lists? I’m always curious to see those. I hadn’t gotten around to the Lucrecia Dalt album yet (their overall number one), so I’ll be checking that one out first. Ephemeron Loop and Dewa Alit look intriguing too.

― Skrot Montague, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 6:16 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It does!

Sean: first time hearing that Shabason + Krgovich song and it’s a perfect fit for my mood this morning. Thank you so much for that one.

I listened to the Lucrecia Dalt album twice last night and really liked it. Highly cinematic.

― Chris L, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 6:40 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes! Reminded me of the last Weyes Blood album, in a weird way.

I think the issue with Dragon New Warm Mountain is that glorious as it is, after a break people went back to it and remembered how fundamentally annoying 'Sparrow' was.

incorrect

Sean: first time hearing that Shabason + Krgovich song and it’s a perfect fit for my mood this morning. Thank you so much for that one.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, December 7, 2022 10:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

was the shabason + krgovich album not on the gorilla vs bear list? feels like catnip for that site

NPR is rolling out genre-specific lists: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1138407917/best-music-of-2022

wonderful list, sean, as is your wont. it gives me plenty to explore.
love that we have the same Rema favourite and wow at the swift Kwesta x Kabza pick. the Dunnie is a very pleasant afropop surprise.

honestly bewildered that anyone with an ear for pop has placed anything else at #1, seems obvious

― sean gramophone, Wednesday, December 7, 2022 8:09 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Good choice and a fantastic blurb

weird to feel like the only person who liked/remembered the new paramore song lol

https://consequence.net/2022/12/top-50-songs-2022-list/

I keep finding gems on the STG list.

Nunnery, more* are new for me and I love those songs on first listen. I never know where to look for this kind of music. Please never stop posting.

aw, thank you moka!
one day i want to come to your club (?)

Yes, two bars and two clubs! - although in one of the clubs I’m not the main partner so I don’t get too much creative control, it does pretty well but it’s probably too posh lol. If you ever come to Mexico I would only recommend visiting me around April/May… when the massive state fair takes place (feria de san marcos) the rest of the year it’s very calm and somewhat boring and not a very touristic destination lol. Would be happy to have you anytime tho!

I’m good at working nightlife but I’ve always had the dream of doing a coffee and breakfast place so I can finally play all the softer music and older music I can’t quite play on the bars lol.

Here’s one of the bars, several partners on this one, downtown. Very laidback and trendy.
https://instagram.com/casa_segunda

Here’s another (it’s actually split into two places but I don’t have photos of the other side lol) Very local, has been around for 9 years now. Thursdays we have live jazz or blues. I get to play whatever I want in this one since it’s usually not very loud since it’s more designed to be seated and talking with friends over beers instead of standing up.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYCVsjdrDlx/

Here’s my first bar that I used to own with another friend, also located downtown but we sold it to someone else before the pandemic… lasted almost 10 years… I was 25 iirc… a bit small but I loved it:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVXSEECh1hw/

One of the clubs but it has been redesigned recently… so these are photos 2019 I think… this is more “posh” and more typical with the pop clubs in the US… I have never been to clubs in Canada but I suppose there’s several like these ones:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B73vvP8H8bo/

The other club opens only on April / May… i’ll have to upload photos of that one too… we erase all social media posts each year…

Anyways I’m derailing the main thread lol, so if anyone ever comes to mx send me an email in case I’m not active around here.

looking at these photos feels like staring at a portal into another world. <3

<3

Show me your list and I'll show you my club must be the platonic ideal of ILM flirting. Get a room you two. :D

Lol and I haven’t shown him the bar at my house yet!

One my first listens I really liked the Villareal album that you named, Sean, but somehow I have cooled significantly to it.

I know this seems like a weird thing to note, but I do think that sometimes these EOY lists are influenced by elements as mundane as the weather and the seasons. If you had asked me in June whether the Villareal album would be on my year-end list, I would have absolutely said yes, because playing it loud in the heat and humidity of mid-summer on the US east coast was a deep pleasure. Now, when I give it a listen, it seems sort of hokey. This happens a lot to me with certain records, and I presume it does with most people, too.

100%

Looking forward to listening through this list:

https://www.ravensingstheblues.com/favorite-albums-of-2022/

https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2022/best-southern-albums-of-2022

This list has Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, indie rock/indie/ punk- Angel Olsen, Hammered Hulls (DC punk vets newish group), & more; Beyonce, Earthgang, JID, but no one in Mississippi, no southern soul and little jazz

Wow! From that list the only two albums I’ve heard are Sessa and Drugdealer and I like them a lot. RSTB always delivers the goods! Glad to see his list this early and love his rationale behind it.

If you want some collective-listening-based lists to go with the editorial/authorial ones, my algorithmic country/genre explorer for the year is up (to be updated again after the year actually ends):

https://everynoise.com/2022_around_the_world.cgi

― glenn mcdonald, maandag 5 december 2022 1:33

glenn, thank you for your work on this. so much to explore, and a great resource for exploring the scene of a given country or genre. it’s also fun trying to parse the listings of the categories I have some affinity with.

some impressions – I’m very open to standing corrected if I’m getting anything wrong here!

country-wise, Nigeria looks pretty straightforward: tracks by popular artists, but its very biggest artists are missing (no Wizkid, Burna, Rema, Davido, CKay, Oxlade, Ayra Starr, etc), because the Nigerian share within their global audience is quite small (and apparently that goes even for their minor tracks/album deep cuts – is that right?) (and I assume Ruger, who’s a pan-African star as well, *is* in there with his brand new smash because it hadn’t yet crossed over to other (African) countries at the cut-off point.)

as for South Africa, it looks like most of the biggest amapiano hits are filtered out for similar reasons: they were big hits in other (mainly South and East) African countries as well, diminishing their South African share of listeners. local genres with less international appeal (very much including songs in Afrikaans) are therefore over-represented. many of the amapiano hits that are there are relatively new, so haven’t had the time to cross over abroad yet.

Senegal was a funny one: thanks to my Sunday deep dive, I knew all of the artists and half of the songs in the top 10, whereas the day before they were all unknown to me. it will be so much fun to check out the rest of that list!

Sierra Leone (which I picked as a random small African country) was a bit of a head scratcher. no local acts whatsoever in the main list, strictly mainstream afropop hits (75% Nigerian). however, there’s also a genre list for ‘Sierra Leonean pop’ – how come none of these made it to the main SL list? are they being streamed so much less than these foreign hits (at least by people with Spotify access, which may be a privileged minority in a poor country like SL)?

something I don’t really get: a song like Kizz Daniel’s “Buga (Lo Lo Lo)”, a Nigerian song that was one of the biggest pan-African hits of the year is absent from the Nigerian list for, I assume, precisely that reason (see above) – but why does it then appear on several other (African) countries’ top listings? wouldn’t their share be even smaller? or was its popularity there significantly bigger in comparison? his most recent hit “Cough (Odo)” as well is absent from the Nigerian list (which makes sense), but it appears on even more listings for other African countries (+ Haiti!) than “Buga”. how does this work?

tl;dr this country/genre explorer is a many-splendored thing of wonder (and much more interesting to me than the narrow selections the Pitchforks of this world have to offer). I might deep-dive into Surinamese pop next!

Seeing these lists roll out makes me long for the what.cd era where someone would inevitably make a collage of each list and you could download everything with just one click.

Daaaamn, Whiney

https://www.stereogum.com/2207657/the-10-best-experimental-albums-of-2022/lists/year-in-review/2022-in-review/

So psyched to do that!

Very cool to see.

the everynoise explorer is very interesting, but for the reasons breastcrawl said it'd be pretty interesting to also have a version that includes tracks of domestic origin & domestic + international popularity too

south korea for instance has an even more extreme version of the nigeria effect where its top tracks are all quite obscure/minor/off-beat because kpop has such a big international following, but in japan that effect isn't anywhere near as strong (though it's still there) as the japanese industry is much more insular & has nowhere near the same international following (though there's still a bunch of stuff that was evidently enough of a crossover to not make the list)

the australian list is about what i'd have expected - mostly rap that's indistinctively imitating what's big in the uk (amused that #1 on the list is a bbcc impression) and indie rock beloved by triple j.

Great list Whiney!

Thanks Moka!

a lot of great music there

Yeah, the goal is for the country and genre lists to complement each other in cases like Korea / K-Pop, or Nigeria / Nigerian Pop, since the genre lists are based on the global fanbase for the genre. Each list is scaled to the size of the audience whose listening decides it, so Kizz Daniel can dominate the smaller Spotify audience in Sierra Leone a little more easily than the larger one in Nigeria, even with the combined weighting of local popularity and local-share-of-global-popularity...

Great list, whiney, tho my palate for certain types of sounds is less than yours. Your intro had more in common with my list than your actual list! (I also think, tho, that the more recent Wadada Leo Smith with Naqvi and Cyrille is far superior to Pacifica Koral Reef)

that the more recent Wadada Leo Smith with Naqvi and Cyrille is far superior to Pacifica Koral Reef

I like both, but I agree with this. (The big problem is my general antipathy to hour-long tracks vs. albums with multiple discrete pieces.)

fwiw i like both, too, but the PKR is a little too “quiet” for me

Yeah, the goal is for the country and genre lists to complement each other in cases like Korea / K-Pop, or Nigeria / Nigerian Pop, since the genre lists are based on the global fanbase for the genre. Each list is scaled to the size of the audience whose listening decides it, so Kizz Daniel can dominate the smaller Spotify audience in Sierra Leone a little more easily than the larger one in Nigeria, even with the combined weighting of local popularity and local-share-of-global-popularity...

ah do the genre lists also work in the same way - the highest ranked tracks are those that are the most distinctively popular only with fans of those genres? because it seems like you get a similar effect as the country lists, where some stuff would appear to have too broad an appeal to make these lists, which of course is interesting to see on its own too but still leaves some holes i guess

NME's 50 Best Albums of 2022
50. Just Mustard - Heart Under
49. Liam Gallagher - C'MON YOU KNOW
48. Kehlani - Blue Water Road
47. Megan Thee Stallion - Traumazine
46. Björk - Fossora
45. Wunderhorse - Cub
44. Oliver Sim - Hideous Bastard
43. caroline - caroline
42. j-hope - Jack In The Box
41. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Unlimited Love
40. Warpaint - Radiate Like This
39. Bartees Strange - Farm to Table
38. The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention
37. Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
36. Lizzo - Special
35. Kojey Radical - Reason To Smile
34. Black Thought & Danger Mouse - Cheat Codes
33. Alex G - God Save the Animals
32. Kevin Morby - This Is A Photograph
31. The Weeknd - Dawn FM
30. Alvvays - Blue Rev
29. Father John Misty - Chloë and the Next 20th Century
28. Fred Again.. - Actual Life 3 (January 1 - September 9 2022)
27. Steve Lacy - Gemini Rights
26. Loyle Carner - hugo
25. Dry Cleaning - Stumpwork
24. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
23. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
22. Denzel Curry - Melt My Eyez See Your Future
21. Mitski - Laurel Hell
20. Foals - Life Is Yours
19. Wizkid - More Love, Less Ego
18. Confidence Man - TILT
17. Pusha T - It's Almost Dry
16. Harry Styles - Harry's House
15. Yard Act - The Overload
14. Jockstrap - I Love You Jennifer B
13. Charli XCX - CRASH
12. Taylor Swift - Midnights
11. Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There
10. The 1975 - Being Funny in a Foreign Language
9. Rosalía - Motomami
8. Nova Twins - Supernova
7. Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul - Topical Dancer
6. Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl
5. Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
4. Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia
3. Beyoncé - Renaissance
2. Wet Leg - Wet Leg
1. Arctic Monkeys - The Car

https://www.nme.com/features/music-features/the-50-best-songs-of-2022-3358809

Surprising number one pick for the NME there.

And a surprising number forty-one pick.

Pitchfork readers voted the Big Thief album #1, and “Simulation Swarm”(!) the #1 song.

weird, change and spud infinity much stronger imo

nah

pleasantly surprised by the P’fork readers’ love for Beyoncé, Rosalía and… Sudan Archives.

pleasantly surprised by their love for one of the most marketed acts of all time?

yes

"simulation swarm" was the only big thief single from this year (the others were all last year) and it's not surprising that p4k readers would prefer it over the more country-tinged tracks

idk which is my favourite from the album though, probably "little things" or "no reason"?

Turns out Pitchfork readers like the exact same albums that are pushed to them over and over by publications paid off by publicists to promote those very same albums

Top Albums By State once again the best part because of the random stuff that manages to get in

>:D xp

publications paid off by publicists to promote those very same albums

This is, uh, not how it works.

yeah tbf to pfork and chums they're hardly being paid for this, the editorial decisions to push this stuff are def more 'how can we build & maintain our brand' than 'beybey's people just forwarded us a million dollars'

come on, people legit love Beyoncé, you can chalk it up to whatever you want but "brainwashed by ingenious, diabolical marketers" is too lol

ofc but it is no wild triumph to see her do well on the pitchfork readers list now is it

incredibly stoked by citizen kane's showing in the sight and sound poll y'all

fair point, I'm not sure why breastcrawl was surprised, presumably a lingering misapprehension of pfork's diehard indie-ness

possibly, I remain a perennial stranger in Pitchfork land.
(and this is a good reminder to stay away from there - those supposedly deep insights by imago et al are so tiresome)

having said that: to an extent the readers seem to have taken their cue from the editorial lists here. they don’t have to tho. lots of critics’ darlings are snubbed by said critics’ public. Sudan Archives could have easily be a victim of that, but not here.
and I find it significant that the readers voted 5 Renaissance tracks in their top 50 when there were only 2 in the editorial top 100.
for an album that was seen by many as critbait with no lasting power that is indeed a lot of seemingly Real Love. (it’s also notably different from the readers’ response to Lemonade in 2016).

(btw, there were also 2/50 Motomami tracks against 1/100)

anyway, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Super Bowl show by international superstar industry plant Sudan Archives!

Surprising number one pick for the NME there.

Sarcasm? Arctic Monkeys is exactly the garbage I'd expect to see there.

I wouldn't call myself a Pitchforklander tbh, v much a self-styled dissident in exile. a romantic warrior. a hero really

"simulation swarm" was the only big thief single from this year

How do folks encounter “singles” from albums like this? College radio? (I would have thought that once the album is out, all the songs would be on the same playing field…)

“Simulation Swarm” is a great song; I don’t know which track I would’ve voted for, if I couldn’t vote for the ones released last year (maybe “No Reason” or “Spud”)

Sound Opinions top 10s via
https://www.soundopinions.org/show/889

Jim DeRogatis
1. Dry Cleaning, Stumpwork
2. Wet Leg, Wet Leg
3. The Linda Lindas, Growing Up
4. Muna, Muna
5. Viagra Boys, Cave World
6. Katie Kim, Hour of the Ox
7. Amanda Shires, Take It Like A Man
8. Drive-By Truckers, Welcome 2 Club XIII
9. Alvvays, Blue Rev
10. Lizzo, Special

Greg Kot
1. Nnamdi, Please Have a Seat
2. Sharon Van Etten, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
3. Danger Mouse and Black Thought, Cheat Codes
4. Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, Topical Dancer
5. Wet Leg, Wet Leg
6. Trupa Trupa, B Flat A
7. Santigold, Spirituals
8. Dry Cleaning, Stumpwork
9. Billy Woods, Aethiopes and Church
10. Alvvays, Blue Rev

I wouldn't call myself a Pitchforklander tbh, v much a self-styled dissident in exile. a romantic warrior. a hero really

Aw cmon I was obviously joking there, I'm a dick in EOY season we all know this, I don't mean any of it personally. Bad Bunny and Rosalia both did banger albums this year and I'm sure Sudan Archives did too, will get around to that soon

Idk what shtick I've been spouting today/recently that has been of that sort? Obv I'm always skeptical of hype by inclination (until the music is proven Bangerish), which might not be healthy, but idk, pointing out that it isn't a massive W to have 5 Beyonce songs in a reader top 50 is not exactly controversial?

What I really resent is grown music critics revealing that they are simply aesthetically bankrupt horny dads by high-placing that fuckin Wet Leg album

You can disagree with taste, but it is revealing IMO to say that the only reason men could like a band with two women is supposed horniness.

(It doesn’t even make sense as a jab; it’s not like wet leg are very young pop stars who dress skimpily or whatever)

Well it sure as hell isn't their music

Disagree

Wet Leg are insanely catchy.

I will say that Jim DeRo does seem to be especially captivated by spirited, assertive young women who "don't take no guff," as he puts it when reviewing their albums. Sometimes it seems a little fetishistic but mostly as kind of an overly enthusiastic display of allyship from a guy who really wants you to know he's a feminist.

If anything, the Linda Lindas on his list made me raise an eyebrow, because I think it’s strange when teenage musicians are rated alongside adults (but maybe that’s not fair, and I haven’t heard their music).

Last year’s 77 made me recalibrate the sort of environment I take ILM to be, which is much more appreciative of and interested in “popular” music than I took ILM to be when I was younger. I simply don’t like a lot of what is talked about, and rarely do any of these lists align with my own tastes. that is fine— I’m here for other reasons!

pretty confused at the suggestion that ilm is now more poptimist than it used to be - when was it not very appreciative and interested in 'popular music'? if anything it's less than it used to be, surely - less interested in what's broadly popular and more in various favoured niches

x[ That's interesting because the main thing that struck me about ILM when I discovered it nearly 20 years ago was that it was a place that took popular music seriously and discussed it intelligently, which isn't unusual now but felt like it was back then.

Of course, I liked that ILXors were into all sorts of other music, too. But I mean, this was ILM's top 10 tracks of 2004:

1. Britney Spears, "Toxic"
2. LCD Soundsystem, "Yeah"
3. M.I.A., "Galang"
4. Usher ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris, "Yeah!"
5. Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell, "Drop It Like It's Hot"
6. Jay-Z, "99 Problems"
7. Annie, "Heartbeat"
8. Rachel Stevens, "Some Girls"
9. Annie, "Chewing Gum"
10. Gwen Stefani, "What You Waiting For"

I didn’t know there were polls that far back!

I think that I just never paid attention back then to the polls, and because I spent most of my time in the bobbins threads, my memory is certainly skewed.

It also might be a function of ILM getting smaller and so now I engage in conversations that I might not have 15 years ago, which is good in most ways but makes me feel like an alien in some ways, too, particularly when we’re discussing year in music stuff.

Surprising number one pick for the NME there.

Sarcasm? Arctic Monkeys is exactly the garbage I'd expect to see there.

― billstevejim

Yeah, sorry it was. They have a history of being overly generous with their end of year placements for them.

Whatever People Say - 1
Favourite Worst Nightmare - 2
Humbug - 12
Suck It & See - 6
AM - 1
Tranquility Base - 2
The Car - 1

ILM's 2022 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll / NOMINATIONS THREAD

xps

Moor Mother's Jazz Codes is beautiful

Vanessa Rossetto’s The Actress, featured on Whiney's list of experimental recordings, is really good. Erstwhile Records has amassed an incredible trove of great releases, including field recordings, formal compositions, and improvised pieces, duos and solos, documenting a lot of composers who will go down in history as defining our moment

Aquarium Drunkard's list is up.

Love the Vanessa Rossetto album

the Aquarium Drunkard Year In Review is one of those lists where I’d like to have a playlist of all these albums so I could blindly shuffle through it just to see what sticks. this is stuff that is outside of my wheelhouse for the largest part, but there’s enough overlap that I’m intrigued by lots of it.

when I hand-pick I tend to stay close to home (figuratively speaking):

that’s why I listened to Agadez by Étran de l’Aïr: good-not-great Tuareg rock by a wedding band from Niger. I’m a pure dilettante in this genre, but I like what I’ve heard of people like Terakaft, Imarhan and Samba Touré better. “Tchingolene” is fantastic tho.

Celestine Ukwu (& His Philosophers National)’s No Condition Is Permanent compilation is a whole other story. this is among the best music I’ve ever heard (“Okwukwe Na Nchekwube”!). beautiful idiosyncratic early-70s Nigerian (Igbo, very notably) highlife, completely new to me.
I wouldn’t say it makes sense on an EOY list, the songs in question (as well as many others) are widely available on Spotify (and I’m sure elsewhere) in numerous guises as Nigerian releases - but I’m very thankful AD put it on theirs, obviously!

yeah the AD list is always tantalizing but seriously overwhelming

This morning, I quite liked the Aoife Nessa Frances album from it (file under psych folk perhaps, but more tightly composed than that might make you think).

And I was very pleased that Anna Butterss album had already been nominated twice before I got to my own first noms, really awesome album (file under jazz, but expansively)

The AD review is as overwhelming as it can get, but I always find a few things on it that blow my mind— last year they featured kafari’s ‘blanket of black’ record and it is tremendous, became one of my records of the year after the year was over. (riyl: solo piano, Dilla, warbling tape)

Agadez great not good imo

the Aquarium Drunkard Year In Review is one of those lists where I’d like to have a playlist of all these albums so I could blindly shuffle through it just to see what sticks. this is stuff that is outside of my wheelhouse for the largest part, but there’s enough overlap that I’m intrigued by lots of it.

― I did see Xhaka crotchgrab (breastcrawl)

He actually does a spotify playlist where he picks one song from each album as a sampler:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7BuDl0QxqcMd2r8TGUue8R

It’s a better way to actually see what sticks and listen then to the albums that pique your interest, otherwise it becomes a 300+ hour playlist.

I like going through and seeing what catches my fancy, no Spotify needed :)

thank you, Moka! looked for something like that yesterday, but couldn’t find it. will explore.

(I still like my idea of a full-albums playlist, to make the experience even more like a lucky dip, so that I could ideally come across that one track on an album that really hits my sweet spot, even it’s not the curator’s choice - its “Tchingolene” if you will)

only three hearted (which in my case means ‘listened to’) tracks on the whole list, Alabaster DePlume, Makaya McCraven and the Étran de l’Aïr I listened to yesterday. again, while Celestine Ukwu is missing because that new compilation is not streamable, all of his six albums are in fact on Spotify (twice in most cases).

I made a playlist of them for anyone who might be interested.

fader lists have been pretty good lately and this one is no exception!

https://www.thefader.com/2022/12/13/the-50-best-albums-of-2022

good #1 and decent stuff scattered but seems like the usual hip regurgitation

Has there been a good list leaning country/roots/americana/whatever you want to call it?

if you're willing to navigate away from Spotify, the Celestine Ukwu can be heard here:
https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/no-condition-is-permanent

xp to sctttnnnt, Bandcamp Daily published this today ... limited to releases available on the platform, of course:

https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2022/the-best-country-of-2022

good #1 and decent stuff scattered but seems like the usual hip regurgitation

― imago, Tuesday, December 13, 2022 11:50 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i feel like the pop-leaning picks were pretty good, or at least aligning with the poptimist stuff i enjoyed this year

if you're willing to navigate away from Spotify, the Celestine Ukwu can be heard here:
https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/no-condition-is-permanent🕸

Stereogum’s 50 favourite songs - which is the top tens of five of its writers.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was the whole thing ... or rather, I thought I listened to the whole thing on Bandcamp at one point. Either I dreamed that or they took down most of the tracks.

But yes, fair point!

xpost, obviously

That is the whole Mississippi comp; breastcrawl's point was that there are several full Ukwu albums available on streaming

But the truth is that this was a messier year. Some of our favorite albums this year were bold and beat-driven, and some came from major label stars. But just as many were intricate, reflective, or confounding, at odds with the mainstream narrative.

This is every single year

It seems hopelessly wack to devote five of the spots on your 10-best-songs ballot to one album

fair enough

xpost goddamn i'm confused, re: Ukwu. ignore me, please!

lol omar

this sort of writing style is the absolute death of culture

and as for breihan, pffft haha

good #1 and decent stuff scattered but seems like the usual hip regurgitation

enjoyed the fader list, hadn't heard Fair Exchange No Robbery

and the Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett is wonderful!

i feel like the pop-leaning picks were pretty good, or at least aligning with the poptimist stuff i enjoyed this year

― comedy khadafi (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 17:32 (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah fair. i just always hate their indie/avant/etc picks, so dull

_ It seems hopelessly wack to devote five of the spots on your 10-best-songs ballot to one album_

fair enough

I wrote Stereogum's jazz list; here it is. 10 albums, 10 runners-up (the latter listed alphabetically).

a few things for me to check out there, but cool to see the Binker & Moses, which seems v underrated to me

Came out too early in the year; everyone forgot about it. But it's a fantastic (and amazing-sounding; more jazz acts should hire Hugh Padgham to produce them!) record.

yeah fair. i just always hate their indie/avant/etc picks, so dull

― imago, Tuesday, December 13, 2022 1:20 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not a dazegxd fan? lol

lmao he's ON RYM. online enough that I'll check him out

xp to sctttnnnt, Bandcamp Daily published this today ... limited to releases available on the platform, of course:

https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2022/the-best-country-of-2022

― alpine static, Tuesday, December 13, 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Thank you!

I wonder if year-after-year expecting lists to do anything other than converge on consensus and then, taking that as read, wanting that list to be in a different order/to feature different things, might be as decent a definition for madness as we could hope for.

But where would be the fun in passive acceptance yadda yadda.

fader list certainly is one of the most intriguing of these

Here’s a good list from a tastemaker known as my 18-yr-old son. (I haven’t heard all of these.) (He really likes Cities Aviv.)

TOP 25ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
1. Working Title For The Album Secret Waters by Cities Aviv
2. Mr Morale and The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
3. Man Plays The Horn by Cities Aviv
4. NO THANK YOU by Little Simz
5. 10 By Westside Gunn
6. Reset by Panda Bear & Sonic Boom
7. Spirit Roaming by AKAI SOLO
8. It’s Almost Dry by Pusha T
9. The Forever Story by JID
10. God Don’t Make Mistakes by Conway The Machine
11. Drill Music in ZION by Lupe Fiasco
12. Melt My Eyez, See Your Future by Denzel Curry
13. Jazz Codes by Moor Mother
14. Riderless Horse by Nina Nastasia
15. SICK by Earl Sweatshirt
16. A Foul Form by Osees
17. Romona Park Broke My Heart by Vince Staples
18. And I Have Been by Benjamin Clementaine
19. Laughing So Hard It Hurts by Mavi
20. People Helping People by No Age
21. Wasteland by Brent Faiyaz
22. Bloodspiller by Tha God Fahim and Jay Nice
23. DISCO4: PT ll by HEALTH
24. The Family by Brockhampton
25. Big Ghost by Mickey Diamond and Big Ghost Ltd.

tipsy’s son post on ilx challenge

I didn't know Clementine had a new album out! I'll definitely check that one out. So far my favorite discovery from the AD list is the Dumb album. Should score a direct hit for anyone who likes early Parquet Courts/Pavement-y stuff.

Wow - yeah, total early Parquet Courts

lmao you guys weren't kidding about Somewhere Near Marseilles eh

would say it's good though? the album's def good - while more mellow than I'd usually go for the production is always extremely intricate, which keeps me interested

Agree with your son’s #8, tipsy.

Really enjoying the Dumb LP this morning.

Also from the AD list, it’s a reissue, but Ndikho Xaba’s Ndikho Xaba and the Natives is fantastic.

World of Echo's hindsight 2022 is uncovering a lot of missing pieces for me. Very grateful for their recommendation of Yuta Matsumura's Red Ribbon, which has been on repeat for the past couple of days.

https://worldofechomusic.com/collections/hindsight-2022

Ooh agreed about Red Ribbon, which I also discovered through World of Echo.

What your favorite album of 2022 says about you

Most of these missed me completely, but this one came close:

13. The Comet Is Coming — Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

You’re annoyed at crypto guys for ruining Effective Altruism

lmao

missing me as well but the Yard Act one is rightly murderous

Two lists from me:

50 Best Albums of January-June 2022

50 Best Albums of July-December 2022

Gonna dig in right now. Your Stereogum list was excellent. I just bought Ugly Beauty from the publisher btw. Half off - great deal!

npr's 100 best songs of the year: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1135802083/100-best-songs-2022

the first one to have "shake dhat" by zahsossa, fwiw

RA albums: https://ra.co/features/4077

i like that list

Cool list froM RA

npr's 100 best songs of the year: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1135802083/100-best-songs-2022🕸

the first one to have "shake dhat" by zahsossa, fwiw

The West caught wind when Selena Gomez jumped on the remix, but we'll stick with the original.

wow at “Shake Dhat” btw

xp I caught wind w/the remix, and that is the version I prefer (but I know that's not the correct opinion, lol)

you’re right, it’s not, but that’s okay

I was referring to (primarily) continental Europe btw, if that was unclear

words of wisdom:

It takes *very* little for a person to recognize that there are *worlds* of music they don’t know and can dive into. When year end lists all champion the same albums, writers are doing everyone a disservice & it’s extremely discouraging. We should be checking ourselves more tbh!!

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) December 13, 2022

When year end lists all champion the same albums, writers are doing everyone a disservice & it’s extremely discouraging.

well... i might suggest consulting the definition of the word "consensus"

that npr list is fun

I’m not expecting critics to go full Senegalese neo-mbalax anytime soon (although they should), but I mean, after several years of huge impact in large parts of Africa, some publications at least should be wise (at an EOY level) to South African amapiano by now, no?

the fader's best songs: https://thefader.com/2022/12/15/the-100-best-songs-of-2022

I’m not expecting critics to go full Senegalese neo-mbalax anytime soon (although they should), but I mean, after several years of huge impact in large parts of Africa, some publications at least should be wise (at an EOY level) to South African amapiano by now, no?

― I did see Xhaka crotchgrab (breastcrawl), Thursday, December 15, 2022 1:03 PM (twenty-two minutes ago)

as a general rule if you're looking to publications year end lists for heterodoxy you're more than likely going to be disappointed. especially places like pitchfork and rolling stone where you have dozens upon dozens of voters... the point is to build a consensus which by definition is going to result in lists that aren't recognizing niche sounds/scene beyond surface level if at all. tho i would say even in those cases, most of the lists have some sort of idiosyncratic slant to them i.e. pitchfork is more heavy on experimental music, rolling stone had a lot of latin & k pop on its list. ones like NPR or fader where you prob have more like 5-10 ppl making up a list might be (or are) less orthodox and more fun to read. individual lists are always more interesting than publication lists -- and i would agree that an individual list that just regurgitates 10 albums on every publication top 50 is useless -- but to me the function of publication lists as a reader is not discovery but temperature taking. i have the same frustrations w/ year end lists as most ppl but the point of them is essentially to make you angry that certain things are being highlighted over others

individual lists are always more interesting than publication lists

We couldn't even go one year

Love these ones off the RA list, need to catch up with the rest:

Marina Herlop - Pripyat
Whatever The Weather - Whatever The Weather
Soichi Terada - Asakusa Light
Ron Trent presents WARM - What Do The Stars Say To You
Jamal Moss - Thanks 4 The Tracks U Lost

Bit surprised not to see the Caterina Barbieri album though, that was an absolute monster

not sure I needed all of this listsplaining (critsplaining?). I’m aware of how these processes (and I have no doubt Joshua Minsoo Kim is too).

as you say yourself tho, there’s lot of ‘niche’ stuff (for want of a better word) on many of these lists to begin with and, your words again, there are in fact publications that do for instance have plenty of Latin and Kpop, and yes, a healthy dose of Afropop as well, a lot of which is probably obscure to large parts of their readers. my point is: why stop there? if there’s a place for a Black Sherif song, shouldn’t be amapiano on your radar too? *especially* if you’re “temperature taking”, as you call it?

my personal bias aside, amapiano is unquestionably one of the biggest new genres of the past few years from a global perspective (as acknowledged by many of these same publications btw, when blurbing someone like Asake, for example, who does make it to several of these lists).

and to be clear, amapiano is just the most blatant example that I can see, there are probably others.

I’m actually sort of taken aback by this defensive reaction - didn’t think JMK saying that “we” (whether that’s ‘persons’ in general or ‘(music) writers’ in particular) should check ourselves more in this regard would be in any way controversial, least of all on ILM.

I separate EOY lists between those that reassure and those that surprise. The former enforces the consensus just as much as it establishes it (i.e putting Arcade Fire first on an indie rock publication). The latter usually does this by going niche in a genre known to the reader. Both have a narrow scope and leave a lot of music exactly nowhere (actually, it pushes it back, relegates it). It wouldn't be frustrating if it was inevitable.

rolling stone had a lot of latin & k pop on its list.

Julyssa Lopez, who has fairly diverse music tastes including various Latin genres, has just been a senior music editor there for a year and a half or so I think. I wonder if she has helped recruit writers there

https://www.thefader.com/2022/12/15/the-100-best-songs-of-2022

fader tracks list also very good

yes, best list so far - voodoo chili posted it earlier

79. Kabza De Small, “Eningi”

“Ah weSomandla, ngicela ungnike imali eningi eningi eningi.”

look now, I stand corrected amapiano-wise
I also feel vindicated - it can be done, hey people / it’s easy if you try

the list also has Samthing Soweto in non-piano guise and several afropop tracks (including the number one)

another highlight (see also the Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2022 thread

35. El Alfa, “Gogo Dance”

ugh, meant to quote not hide these tracks!

79. Kabza De Small, “Eningi”

“Ah weSomandla, ngicela ungnike imali eningi eningi eningi.”

35. El Alfa, “Gogo Dance”

FADER list looks really interesting and overall agreeable as usual.

Super weird Bad Bunny pick at #2 tho lol… it’s not really a hit (although every damn song on that album has 400m+ to 1 Billion streams on spotify so I guess all of them could be considered hits lol) and it’s one of the least sonically interesting songs in there for me. I mean sure it’s different but it’s not great at what it does imho.

That Burna Boy track at #1 makes up for it tho

yeah i didn't get why they went with that bad bunny track either

"Last Last" is a solid song but not SOTY material. I also think TheFader lists all the right music though.

it’s a damn lot closer to an actual soty than most other lists’ excuses for one.

Granted, it's not easy to find a SOTY, I just wouldn't put it among Burna Boy's best songs.

https://uproxx.com/critic-polls/uproxx-music-critics-poll-2022-albums/

Uproxx critics poll- Beyonce won best album. Rosalia and Bad Bunny appear on first glance to be only artists on album poll not from North America or UK

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/10-best-reggaeton-trap-songs-of-2022/

Remezcla lists are hinted at above and discussed in rolling Afro-Latino thread

X-post - Burna Boy “last last” at 17 on the Uproxx critics poll singles/ track list is one of few signs that the 200 plus critics there are aware of music not from the UK or North America

I like that Alex G runner song but hate how it reminds me of Runaway Train and I keep switching ones verses on top of the other

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/10-best-dembow-songs-of-2022/

companion list to the reggaeton, and at least as good

to the reggaeton *list*

chris richards: https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/12/16/best-albums-singles-2022/

I’ve seen it in several lists and I don’t really get the appeal of “Poland”

Unless it’s a meme song? In which case I support it because memes should always be cherished.

it’s a meme song

yachty doing a weird carti impression is a lot better than his usual deal although it is pretty slight

it's hilarious

love it

npr list is good but I can't for the life of me understand the appeal of harry styles "as it was" (it's a fairly big hit, it's not grating, but c'mon it's not a great song)

(maybe just my tired ears)

It kind of sounds like “take on me”… maybe that’s what people like about it.

yeah I can see that

it's just so... dull, blunted, careful, nothingy... spoken word twee with placeholder lyrics

nothing to dislike, nothing to love

I'll stop now

has the croatian amor record shown up on many lists

https://data.whicdn.com/images/316109861/original.jpg

has the croatian amor record shown up on many lists

― LaMDA barry-stanners (||||||||), 17. december 2022 21:24 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It's good but I think I prefer the album Loke Rahbek did with Frederik Valentin this year: Together It apparently works as a soundtrack to Chris Markers Sans Soleil, though i haven't checked it.

I think what’s frustrating about ppl suggesting kpop and bad bunny making it in some way suggests equivalence w how it would feel if more amapiano made it, is that kpop and bad bunny make boring formalist product, and amapiano is full of vibrant innovations/ reinventions of genre

Idk, def feels to me like bad bunny has become the generic stand in for actually suggesting something interesting, I like angel Dior’s “A I O” more than any bad bunny song I heard this year but it doesn’t make lists, is Fuerza Regida making lists, etc … critics that boast abt being cosmopolitan for listening to bad bunny but seem to have an inch deep investment in that music really throw me

This goes across genre too these could be traded in and out for idk pitchforks favorite female rappers, or POW’s eventual list of fav roc marciano/Earl sweatshirt knockoffs, etc

Exclaim 25 best songs

https://exclaim.ca/music/article/best_songs_of_2022

They have albums, eps, worst album artwork and other lists in there too..

Textura

https://www.textura.org/archives/articles/2022picks.htm

The Croker record at the top of Textura's Jazz list is good, not #1 good, but I like it. We went to college together, I used to see him perform all the time, it was nice to hear him in good form all these years later.

Their definition of jazz is hilarious to me. (Theo Croker put out another, much more interesting album this year that placed on my Stereogum list.)

I think what’s frustrating about ppl suggesting kpop and bad bunny making it in some way suggests equivalence w how it would feel if more amapiano made it, is that kpop and bad bunny make boring formalist product, and amapiano is full of vibrant innovations/ reinventions of genre

Idk

Deej, I don’t hear boring formalist product on latest Bad Bunny. He incorporated many genres on latest — bachata, salsa , Dominican dembow, Latin indie pop

bad bunny is certainly subject to being a token latin pick but he's the biggest star in the world and is making interesting & ambitious enough stuff to deserve the attention

certainly far better than when there'd be lists with a random bts single as a token pick since bts singles were consistently mediocre-to-terrible by that point

bad bunny made an incredible, compulsively listenable album, and i'm sure the listmakers' enjoyment of his music is sincere, but this point...

critics that boast abt being cosmopolitan for listening to bad bunny but seem to have an inch deep investment in that music really throw me

does resonate with me. many of these lists include a song or two from bad bunny or rosalía and call it a day. rolling stone's inclusion of so much latin music is admirable, but it did feel like they were just picking every big latin hit without much discernment.

The Textura list has both Anders and Benjamin Koppel, which I think even Danish critics would consider too much.

Their definition of jazz is hilarious to me.
― but also fuck you (unperson)

Their list has mostly jazz records by jazz musicians on jazz labels, in what way is that hilarious?

Basically, it's the most dinner-party, don't-wake-the-baby version of jazz; if you played most of these records for Manfred Eicher, you'd have to slap him awake afterwards. The only exceptions are the Marquis Hill, the Roxy Coss, and the Julieta Eugenio. Everything else is the most blanched, bloodless, "refined" shit imaginable.

no roy donk no credibility

I was about to reply: it's pretty milquetoast, conservative stuff on that Textura list.

Dinner Jazz!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4WbFJYqd3UwMG81ImGarBq

well yeah but that's pretty par for the course for a website firmly focused on the ambient/classical space.

OkayAfrica's best Nigerian songs: https://www.okayafrica.com/nigerian-music-songs-best-2022/

NPR Best Roots albums: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/19/1134907922/the-best-roots-music-of-2022

fyi for those who look forward to this

Finally starting on the AOTY spreadsheet, and it's very early, but safe to declare that the winner, once again, is caps lock.

— Rob Mitchum (@robmitchum) December 17, 2022

the hagan album from the ra list is pretty nice

^^ co-sign, one of my favorite discoveries from list season so far

yes! A great album with lots of cross-ILM appeal. I posted about it in the afropop thread, but bobbins or doing-it-wrong bobbins would have made sense too

RA tracks:
https://ra.co/features/4098

Nick León feat. DJ Babatr - Xtasis
Kelela - Washed Away
Rhyw - Honey Badger
A+A - Eternal September
DJ Plead - Come Quick
Ahadadream - Spaceship
Pariah - Caterpillar
Incienso
DJ Python - Angel
Sally C - Downtown
Nikki Nair - Step 2
GiGi FM - Manas (PST)
Heavee - Sonic Warfare
Physical Therapy - Emotional Rescue
Isabella Lovestory - Exibisionista
Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal - B.O.T.A.
Nia Archives - Forbidden Feelingz
Maara - Lezzies In A Jacuzzi
Margaret Dygas - Butterfly Effect
Utada Hikaru - Somewhere Near Marseilles
Kush Jones - BX Bounce
Beyoncé - Break My Soul
Peggy Gou - I Go (Soulwax Remix)
Shanti Celeste - Cutie
Skin On Skin - Burn Dem Bridges
Two Shell - home
KH - Looking At Your Pager
SHE Spells Doom - Bossano
Paurro - Galavisión
Jennifer Loveless - Around The World
Joy Orbison - Pinky Ring

Concrete Islands: https://concreteislands.com/concrete-islands-albums-of-the-year-2022/

So have there been any of these including essays, individual lists and excerpted comments of some balloteers from wherever, as well as blurbs from regular contributors: you know, like ye olde Pazz & Jop??

Spoiler: In a year where disorientation ruled and turbulence was the norm, sometimes healing comes in the form of lightweight bop and other times it comes in the form of a confessional gut-punch.

Kerrang Top 50 Albums of the Year

ra list continuing to deliver returns, loving the ron trent album's gorgeous balearic sound

When did Kerrang get into pop-punk??

When did Kerrang get into pop-punk??

A decade ago, maybe longer. They're almost a UK version of Alternative Press at this point.

yes that ron trent is so good xxp

DMY / DUMMY top 25 trax

https://dmy.co/features/the-25-best-tracks-of-2022

Top 25 albums

https://dmy.co/features/the-25-best-albums-of-2022

first showing (I think) of the Rema album, at #25

When did Kerrang get into pop-punk??

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Wednesday, 21 December 2022 16:46 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Since dookie got big but especially in the last 20 years where they really got into the glammy pop end of emo after nu metal died off

passion of the weiss rap songs list. only two roc marciano songs on there

https://www.passionweiss.com/2022/12/20/best-rap-songs-2022/

the 20 best Ghanian songs, according to OkayAfrica (rob posted their Nigerian list the other day):
https://www.okayafrica.com/ghana-music-songs-best-2022-2658958575/

there’s a general Afrobeats list as well (which has just one Tanzanian and one South African song along with Ghanaian and (overwhelmingly) Nigerian stuff that’s also in the above lists):
https://www.okayafrica.com/afrobeats-songs-best-2022/

expecting them to also publish their EOY list for East African and South African songs soon.
a genre-specific amapiano list is already out tho:
https://www.okayafrica.com/amapiano-songs-2022-best/

Late to the game here, but super stoked to see Sudan Archives featured in top 10 or 5 in lot of lists. She deserves it and stoked for the success the attention will bring to her. She was the best live show I saw in 2022 as well.