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 2016

On December 29th, my "20 Favorite Albums of 2016" 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 (with one exception, I limited myself to one song per artist):