My 20 Favorite Albums of 2023

 
2023, huh?  What a year.  I don't know that there were any releases this year that had an instant classic cultural status, nor were there any ones that personally blew me away completely, but that was made up for by the fact that there were so many albums that were very strong even if they weren't era-defining.  According to my Last.fm, I've racked up 12,627 song plays this year at the time of writing this, so I was listening to quite a bit of music in 2023.  Here's a rundown of some of my favorites that took up much of that listening time.

The rules: Everything is the same as usual.  The window of eligibility for this list is anything released from January 1, 2023 to now.  This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between.

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2020

You can't write an intro to an end of 2020 list without paying some lip service to what a tumultuous year it was, but out of the three lists you'll be seeing over the next three days, this music roundup feels like the one that was affected the least by the pandemic.  Back at the beginning of everything, when most people assumed this whole COVID-19 thing would blow over in a few months (oh, how naive we were), there were some albums that got pushed back a few months, but once everyone realized we were going to be in it for the long haul, even those came out.

If anything, we got more music due to the pandemic, not less.  After all, Taylor Swift -- previously known for her rigid gaps between release dates -- put out two albums in the last five months.  And it wasn't just her, all over the map we saw artists dropping more music or putting out projects sooner than we expected.  While some used their newfound time due to canceled tours to supplement their income in creative ways, others simply got to work, and we got to reap the rewards.

Musicians weren't the only people with time on their hands either.  Between working remotely minimizing the amount of interruptions I experience during the day, and the lack of TV programming leading to lots of time needing something to occupy my ears while watching NBA games, I had many more opportunities to listen to music in 2020.  I tried to use that time to expand my horizons and listen to genres I've largely bypassed, like electronic music and emo, because I previously just didn't have the bandwidth to dive into a whole new world.  Naturally, this led to me feeling more overwhelmed than ever by the sheer amount of music there is out there just waiting to be heard.  Every year, there are albums I really want to get to that I don't end up spending time with before the deadline for this list, but it seemed to double this year.  Between the 10 million Griselda albums, the weekly deluge of Detroit rappers dropping Youtube loosies, and all the emo bands Ian Cohen recommends on Twitter, there is so much good stuff that didn't get my full attention.  So think of the list you're about to read as less definitive and more like a snapshot of my favorite things I managed to get to.

The rules: Everything is the same as usual.  The window of eligibility for this list is anything released between January 1, 2020 and now.  This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between.  As always, I'm praying that nothing substantial comes out in the twilight hours of the year.

Favorites: January and February 2018

Favorites is a monthly feature that offers up quick thoughts on media, both new and old, that I've recently enjoyed.

Movies

Heat (1991)

I'm embarrassed to say that before last month I had never seen Heat, Michael Mann's crime epic in which Robert De Niro and Al Pacino become entangled in a cat-and-mouse game on opposing sides of the law.  It turns out the film lives up to the hype and more.  De Niro and Pacino are terrific, of course, but Mann is the one who elevates the film to its legendary status, imbuing the movie with a mythic quality that genuinely makes you ponder its musings on life and how we spend it.  Plus, the post-bank robbery shootout still might be the best that has ever been put to film.

Paddington/Paddington 2

Film Twitter was all abuzz about these films, and with good reason, because they are truly delightful.  Unlike everyone else, I'm slightly partial to the first movie, but both are heartwarming, funny, and astonishingly directed family films.

Music

Kero Kero Bonito

I first became aware of KKB last year when Frankie Cosmos, one of my favorite artists, talked about her love of the band when she covered their song "Fish Bowl."  But I didn't get around to checking them out until this year, when I decided to listen to their album Bonito Generation and fell completely in love.  Their cutesy, playful style may not be for everyone, but if you can get on their level, you're in for music that's actually impressive on a sonic level (the amount of neck-snapping synth sounds on display in "Lipslap" is astonishing) and has some pretty thoughtful observations on that limbo period of semi-adulthood that is your 20s.  I haven't listened to TOTEP, their new EP that dropped last week, but they're one of the bands I'm most excited about now.

The Smiths singles and B-sides collections

I like the beginning of the year, because not many new albums have come out yet, and it gives me time to catch up on older music that I have been meaning to check out.  Despite being a fan of The Smiths' proper albums, I never listened to much of the singles collections like Hatful of Hollow, Louder Than Bombs, and The World Won't Listen.  And just as everyone has always been saying, they really do contain some of the band's best songs.  Most collections like these are inessential, but you're missing out if you've never heard songs like "Sheila Take a Bow" and "Unloveable."

Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche

I had also never really listened to The Avalanche, an album of songs that didn't make it to Sufjan Stevens' masterpiece Illinois.  I love Sufjan's recent changes in style, but a part of me misses that lush orchestral sound he was working with during his 50 States project.  This record is very clearly a collection of outtakes, but even his toss-offs have a million interesting ideas in them, and something like "The Pick-Up" is up there with some of his best work.

Television

American Vandal

There was something that irked me about American Vandal, which caused me not to watch it last year.  Even with all the effusive praise it was given, I was convinced I wouldn't like it, due to my general apathy for true crime shows and podcasts.  My stubbornness ended up being unwarranted, because I loved it once I finally watched it.  The show builds off of its premise -- excavating the ins and outs of the case of a bunch of penises being drawn on all of the faculty's cars in a high school parking lot -- and goes deeper and deeper into the silliness.  But it also delivers a story that's terrifically constructed, making great use of the engaging high school world it sketches out.

The End of the Fucking World

Every week there's a new Netflix show that the internet insists I have to watch.  The overwhelming amount of content makes me want to give up on checking any of them out.  If there's one to prioritize over the rest of the deluge, however, it's British import The End of the Fucking World.  The less said about it the better -- just know that it's got an extremely original voice and two fantastic performances from Jessica Barden and Alex Lawther.

Other

Ellen Pompeo's Hollywood Reporter profile (article)

I never thought I'd be recommending an article about Ellen Pompeo, of all people, but the profile on her that came out earlier in the year was hilariously candid.  She's an icon.

Hayley Ever After (blog)

Hayley G. Hoover is one of my favorite internet people, and I've missed her work ever since she stopped making videos on Youtube.  Her new blog fills that HGH hole in my content diet.  Even when she's talking about things I think I won't care about, I always find myself lost in her delightful writing voice.

We Are Okay (novel)

I loved Nina LaCour's YA novel Hold Still when I was in high school, but I hadn't read any of her books since then.  Reading We Are Okay, her highly praised 2016 novel about a girl isolates herself in her freshman year of college after a traumatic event in the previous summer, felt like being greeted by an old friend.  LaCour's writing is so gorgeous, and even though this is a sparse story, it's also full of complex shades of love, grief, and loneliness.

50 Great Songs From 2017

On December 29th, my "20 Favorite Albums of 2017" list drops, but there's so much good music out there that one list couldn't fully represent what the year had to offer.  It's hard to make an album that's consistently great from start to finish, especially in an age where individual songs are given more and more importance.  So this list is intended to pay lip service to some great standalone songs.  All of these come from albums that won't be on my top 20 list, either because it's a great song on a mediocre album, or one on an album that's good but not quite good enough to crack the top tier.  So, without further ado, here's a list of fifty standalone songs, listed in alphabetical order (I limited myself to one song per artist):

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2015

2015 felt like a more enjoyable year for music than 2014.  There's always good stuff to find in any year, but there was more of it this year and it was better.  I could stretch my list out to 40 albums and it would still only consist of records I liked quite a bit.

This year also had more albums that seemed to grab the entire internet at large.  Of course, the one that towered above the rest was Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, which is currently running laps around everyone else on end of the year lists.  But there was also stuff like Sufjan Stevens, Jamie xx, Tame Impala, Deafheaven, and Father John Misty.  There was even a jazz album that the big blogs loved! (I haven't had the time to sit down with Kamasi Washington's triple album The Epic in full, but the bits I've heard of it certainly make the praise seem warranted.)

My top 20 only represents a fraction of the diversity of greatness we saw in 2015, but I'm still satisfied with how it turned out.  There's rap, punk, R&B, pop, old favorites, exciting newcomers, and an out-of-left field choice or two.

The rules: Due to the constant changing of the way music gets released, anything can be an album for the sake of this list.  You especially have to play fast and loose given the fact that many rap mixtapes function as albums anyway.  So LPs, mixtapes, 40-minute songs, EPs if they're good enough -- they're all albums to me!  If something got released in another country in a previous year, but got an American release this year, it works on a case-by-case basis (although there are no examples of that this year).  Otherwise, the eligibility window is that the album has to have been released between January 1, 2015 and today.  That means that D'Angelo's Black Messiah, which came out at the very end of 2014 but has appeared on many publications' lists this year, will not show up here.  (Plus it was my number 5 last year, since I actually wait until the end of the year to finalize my lists.)  So now with that bit of business out of the way, on to the actual list...

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day

I'm not much of a crier when it comes to music.  Maybe it's because I tend to not be a lyrics person, favoring the instrumentation of songs over the words.  Or maybe I'm just a heartless, soulless bastard.  Even if I do get a little teary-eyed, it's usually due more to outside circumstances than the actual content of the song.  ("Call Me Maybe" isn't sad, I was just having a bad day!)  However, the one song that makes me verklempt on a pretty consistent basis is Sufjan Stevens' "Casimir Pulaski Day."

Illinois, Sufjan's most universally praised 2005 album, is a towering achievement; an ode to the storied Midwest state featuring a litany of brilliant and beautiful songs.  It's an album that's clearly the work of an artist at his peak and it's never more apparent than on "Casimir Pulaski Day," which starts with spare beauty and slowly builds to a cathartic conclusion.  The story of the song, loosely based on the real life of a friend of his, is about a girl who's dying of bone cancer.  Left with a terminal diagnosis, the speaker and everybody around him is left to watch her waste away.  There's such a helplessness and desperation that fills every line, which contain mundane but evocative details.  When tragedy strikes, you somehow become hyper-aware of everything -- an untucked shirt, untied shoes.  Yet at the same time, the sequence of time is a blur.  Sufjan recalls details in a frenzied order; one minute he's recollecting the two together in her room, the next he's recalling a moment where he breaks down in a bathroom.

Sufjan Stevens is a famously religious man and he laces his lyrics with Biblical references and a strong sense of faith.  From the outside, that can seem like a big turn-off, but what makes his songs so universal is that his faith could be substituted for any abstract form of love and also because his faith is not blind.  Some of his best songs are undercut with a quiet doubt that's niggling its way to the surface.  Doubt is indeed very prevalent in the most powerful passages of "Casimir Pulaski Day," as this event sweeps up the whole community, whose united efforts ultimately prove to be futile:

"Tuesday night at the Bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens"

Eventually, his friend passes away, and Sufjan still holds strong sensory memory to the first Monday of March, when she finally goes.  When somebody you love dies, you're overcome with a flurry of emotions, winding and twisting inside of you.  Anger and doubt begin to settle in.  What kind of God would let this happen?, you ask.  "Casimir Pulaski Day" closes on my favorite passage, which perfectly encapsulates the doubt that the speaker feels when he's supposed to take comfort in his faith:

"All the glory when He took our place

But He took my shoulders and He shook my face
And He takes and He takes and He takes..."

The song lasts for another 90 seconds or so, with an instrumental coda.  In a way it feels like a funeral procession, its swelling horns contrasting Sufjan's defeated tone.  The song plays on, the senses linger, but she is gone.