What a year for music – any of my top half dozen could have been number one another year. But these are my favorites, with pop idols, guitarists, rap poets, disco visionaries. All these albums keep giving me new surprises. Double-digit years are always pivotal for music: 66, 77, 88 and 99 were four of the greatest musical years in history. (11 and 55 were also shocks. Y2K wasn’t as hot, but at least it had a really good Madonna album.) 2022 was more like Neil Young’s 22 than Taylor Swift’s, but minds sick sounds from this list continued to open private dream spaces. Goodbye to the year of Feelin’ 22. Take anyone you like when you’re ’23.
20. Blackpink, Born Pink
Jisoo, Lisa, Jennie and Rosé come out like glam queens on Born Pink – it’s the biggest album they’ve ever had. K-pop’s “Lovesick Girls” are out for blood, when Rosé screams “I’m so rock & roll!” she’s not kidding. “Pink Venom” is a perfect explosion of Sunset Strip hair metal cosplay; even the title sounds like the name of a bar band that plays covers of Poison and Motley Crue at the nastiest dive in town. But the killer is “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” a guitar-heavy freestyle synth horn and crazy hormones. The only jump is the weepy ballad, but that’s only because Blackpink sound more like themselves when they’re making fun like they know they’re the prettiest girls in the room. And they always are.
19. Pusha T, he’s almost dry
So… artistic evolution. A great idea in theory, right? But then there’s Pusha T, the Lemmy of coke rap, who’s still making big records while staying in the same dope playground he shut down years ago when he was “Grindin'” with the Clipse. King Push calls himself “the Dr. Seuss of cocaine,” and if it feels like he’s been here before, it’s because he never left. (As he once said, his specialty is “Nosetalgia”). It flexes with guest shots from Kid Cudi, Jay-Z, Pharrell, his brother Clipse No Malice. But Lil Uzi Vert has the best line, on “Scrape It Off”: “Like, what the fuck is a roof?”
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18. Yes, yes, yes, cool off
Karen O lends her soulful testimony to Cool It Down, making it feel like a rocker from the SZA album. (Which is high up on this list, obviously.) The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are the unkillable vampires of New York’s indie era Meet Me In The Bathroom. As Nick Zinner told me in 2013. “Nobody thought we’d last long enough to make ONE album, including us.” But Karen, Nick and Brian Chase have their own unique juju punk, and they’ve never made a less than amazing record. (Mosquito gets unfairly put to sleep, mostly because of the ugly cover art, but even that had the glam-disco “Despair”). The YYYs flaunt it all over Cool It Down, dancing to the apocalypse. The show’s finale: “Blacktop,” which mixes Eno’s synth sex and Dylan Thomas’ poetry, as Karen testifies: “I sang in my chains like the sea!” Twenty years from “Lengua Negra” to “Blacktop”: that’s 7,300 dates with the night, and not a dull moment in the lot.
17. Mom, name of the house
Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman, two best friends in their early 20s, make a real corker of a summer guitar record with Household Name. Like much of the coolest music in 2022, it’s the sound of young women stealing everything worth stealing from Pavement or the Breeders or Veruca Salt, but with their own heartfelt twist. The best way to start the morning this year was to play Household Name and feel energized for today as if it were a new adventure.
16. FKA Ramilles, Caprisongs
FKA Twigs kicks off Caprisongs with the sound of a cassette popping up, as she says, “Hey, I made you a mixtape.” Never a bad way to start a love story, even if it’s about Twigs learning to hug. When she asks, “Do you want some of my mystique?” the only answer is yes.
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15. Black Star, No Fear of Time
I totally understand why you thought the Talib Kweli/Yasiin Bey reunion was a letdown, but as a nineties bitch who has prayed for this album on more floors than I care to count, I don’t share your dismay. (Hell, what could be more authentically ’90s than disappointing everyone? How about you refuse to release it on streaming services?) The Brooklyn underground rap duo made history with Rawkus classics like “Definition,” but 25 years later, they’re trying to take their moment into the future. Bey (fka Mos Def) sums it up on “No Fear of Time” when he says, “Let’s build an ark and keep floating.” The album ends with a sample from the late Greg Tate, one of the truest minds ever to write about music, whose opinion I had to write about almost exactly a year ago. Tate gives a (typically) mind blowing talk about the art of rap; the song ends with him saying, “I mean, one of the things we know about MCs is, man, they just have phenomenal memories.” His voice echoes through the space—“phenomenal memories, phenomenal memories”—and echoes into the future. The past isn’t dead, or even past, or as Tate said, “hip-hop is ancestor worship.”
14. Water damage, repeater
Probably my favorite 22 minute psych noise-punk drone of the year. And that’s just Side One. Austin collective Water Damage laid down a monstrous groove (two drums? Three?) with amps moaning in sweet feedback agony. The band’s motto: “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation”. Their excellent debut album comes in handy for those days when you just want to get a few clumps of cat hair out of your brain. Like the Stooges’ Fun House, but without the fun or the house. The second side is a bit faster.
13. Vince Staples, Ramona Park Broke My Heart
The Long Beach MC has built one of the brightest careers of the last decade, with classics like Prima Donna and Big Fish Theory, the self-proclaimed “gangsta gone Gatsby.” She raps about love gone bad, but Ramona Park isn’t a woman, it’s the neighborhood she grew up in with the sound of gunshots. Staples goes from the summer fun of “Lemonade” (featuring Ty Dolla $ign) to “The Blues,” where he faces the final curtains with the confession: “Money made me numb.”
12. Wet leg, wet leg
The Big D of a Wet Leg debut still feels fresh even after a year of heavy rotation. Truly a band the world has been waiting for: Isle of Wight’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers shower sarcastic kisses, guitars, sex, revenge, bubble baths. Best Exit Line: “If you were better for me, I might consider firing you.” Also, finding out that everyone has been mispronouncing “chaise lounge” all these years? bomb More please.
11. JID, The Forever Story
Five years after breaking out with The Never Story, the Atlanta MC delves into his origin story, uncovering his street life and family history for a hard-hitting memoir. “Sistanem” is a painful chronicle of making peace with a distant sister, who admits: “I’m not the only one affected by the poison in the mind”, trying to unload “misogynistic mentalities”. He exorcises those mindsets on his Ari Lennox duet “Can’t Make You Change,” admitting that “TLC would call me a bush / When I was / But now I’m getting it, slow as shit.” In the 7-minute memoir “2007,” he recalls growing up to the sound of his idol J. Cole, with Cole and JID’s father helping him tell the story.
10. Ribbon Stage, Hit With The Most
Ribbon Stage goes for punk on its effervescent debut Hit With The Most. They’re three wise guys from Brooklyn/Olympia: guitarist Jolie MA, drummer Dave Sweetie, singer/bassist Anni Hilator. They released their album in the basement, DIY style. (Credits say, “Mixed by Captain Tripps Ballsington.”) But the tunes are irresistible. “Playing Possum” is about listening to the Velvet Underground all night (“Left the 45 on / Another Mo Tucker song”) to recover from a breakup. Yet they reject the pain: “It’s made me harder to like / And I liked you more when I was 18.” Punk rock, what a concept!
9. Sudan Archives, Natural Brown Prom Queen
LA-based violinist and author Brittney Denise Parks unleashes a constantly inventive collage, with songs at the heart of her life as a twenty-something black artist with a fearless sonic imagination. These songs are full of moody R&B, hip-hop loops, gospel handclaps, electro glitches, Sudanese folk violin. But she makes everything sound like her, from “Selfish Soul” to “Milk Me.” Best gardening line of the year: “Only bad dogs on my trellis.”
8. Craig Finn, A Legacy of Rentals
The Hold Steady frontman set out to capture the classic vibe of “Wichita Lineman” for an entire album: widescreen pop beauty, full of lush strings, but a cold-eyed sense of doom. It sounds like an impossible task, but he achieves it in A Legacy of Rentals, with producer Josh Kaufman, singer Cassandra Jenkins and a 14-piece orchestra. Finn sings about capitalism and addiction as if they were the same thing, with a cast of dealers and bums and hustlers, with lines like “The devil makes his money on the small deals” or “His dress all made of daffodils / The sticker on his skateboard read “Speed Kills.” Craig Finn has been rock’s most impactful storyteller for years, but he’s still in the game.
7. Horsegirl, modern performance versions
Horsegirl emerged from Chicago’s bustling indie scene this year with their own fresh sound. These three Gen Z ladies may still be too young to hit the bars, hence their teenage lament, “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty).” But if you’re a guitar fiend, Horsegirl delivers the noise you’ve been…