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.

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):

Favorites: October 2017

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

Movies

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Netflix now puts out so many original films at this point that I've given up on trying to keep up with them almost completely, but I'll always make time for a new Noah Baumbach movie.  And you won't regret investing your time in The Meyerowitz Stories, which immediately ranks up there with his best work.  I tend to prefer Baumbach's collaborations with Greta Gerwig, but this feels like a synthesis of all that he's done before, both with and without her.  The terrain that Meyerowitz covers -- strained relationships amongst a prickly Jewish family in New York -- has been well-excavated, but this film spins itself in all manner of truthful and empathetic directions that justify its existence.  It's a modest film that feels so full -- you'll lose count of all of the dazzling threads, tiny motifs, amusing tossed-off moments, and poignant stuff of life.

Music

Bully - Losing

Bully's debut album from a few years ago took me by complete surprise.  Unlike so many of their peers whose sound feels like a loving nod to 90s alternative rock through a modern lens, Feels Like sounded like it was genuinely unearthed from 1995, at once harsh and sugary sweet in the way so many records from that period were.  This time around, the band loses some of its overt hookiness for an album that's a little more jagged and introspective.  The result makes Losing less immediate than its predecessor, but its pleasures reveal themselves upon repeated listens.  Songs like "Kills to Be Resistant," "You Could Be Wrong," and "Hate and Control" can stand right along with the best tracks from their debut.

The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

For the last few years, The War on Drugs have been my number one "I just don't get it" band.  I listened to Lost in the Dream a few times when everyone was freaking out over it in 2014, but I stood with Mark Kozelek when he dismissively called it "beer commercial rock."  The songs were solid, yet it felt like the band was being elevated by older critics who grew up on Dire Straits and similar influences.  What converted me was being able to see what makes them special with my own eyes in their KEXP performance a couple of months ago (their one around the time their previous album came out is also worth checking out).  In a live context, the space and subtlety of their sound truly shone, and it primed me to enjoy A Deeper Understanding.  I still may not be as high on The War on Drugs as everyone else, but this album has some of the most transcendent musical moments I've heard all year.

Television

Mindhunter

What I said up top about being unable to keep up with Netflix's release of original films goes tenfold for their television series, to the point where I might not be able to catch up with all of their newest offerings in time for end of the year list-making season.  I'm glad I decided to prioritize Mindhunter, whose first season I just finished and ended up loving.  The biggest draw of this show about two investigators in the 70s who led the charge in studying and classifying serial killers, is that the first and last two episodes of the series are directed by David Fincher.  He proves how much visual language can enhance a story as he brings an electrifying energy to the proceedings with his careful, precise arrangement of shots.  That kind of cinematic rhythm is needed, given that the show is entirely comprised of people in rooms having long, methodical conversations.  But it's not just a strong visual hand that's necessary for a show like this to work, so thankfully the writing (from a staff that contains Mad Men greats like Erin Levy and Carly Wray) is just as skillful and exacting.  Mindhunter is a show that's interested in the long game, where even elements that seem off in the beginning -- a flat female character here, a miscast lead there -- prove to be deliberate choices with intelligent motivation.  Even if you're not hooked by the first hour or two, stick with the show.  It's something that's ultimately rewarding enough to deserve the goodwill.


Miscellaneous

Prozac in My Apple Juice (Essay)

I'm a big fan of when writer/Youtuber Allison Raskin writes about mental health, and her Medium post for Wednesday Books was no different.  She's able to write her lifelong struggle with OCD with such wisdom and humor.

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...