"Article published in Rolling Stones Magazine.
IN 2023, MUST-HEAR albums kept piling up at an insane rate. Olivia Rodrigo proved the truth-bomb punk-pop of her 2021 Sour was no fluke. Boygenius blew first-album expectations out of the water. Lil Yachty traded in his boat for a space cruiser. Zach Bryan released an album of deeply personal songs that subverted country-bro masculinity (and still packed arenas). Underground rapper Billy Woods and beatmaker Kenny Segal teamed up and went deep. Paramore raged back; Victoria Monet led an R&B resurgence; Mitski reimagined the American gothic. And on and on.
With a few noted exceptions (including Miley Cyrus, Drake, and the, um, Rolling Stones), this wasn’t a huge year for blockbuster releases by mega-stars, but that only made more room for newer innovators — from sci-fi-reggaeton mastermind Tainy, to Afrobeats greats like Asake, Burna Boy, and Mr. Eazi, to breakout country hero Megan Moroney. They all gave us music to live in, and records that will be resonating long after this year is out.
Check out the top ten rankings below:
1 - SZA, ‘SOS’
If there was ever any doubt that SZA was a key voice in her generation (which the five years since her 2017 debut, Ctrl, could very well have sown), SOS decimated it. Her second LP was cunning and full of surprises. She rocks! She raps! She takes rumors and rumblings about herself head on! But its staying power outshone its shock value. The album came out in December, 2022, after we’d published our 2022 list, but it made its mark in 2023, riding high on the charts all year (including a record-breaking 10 weeks at Number One), dominating the cultural conversation on a level no 2023 release could compare with, and earning nine Grammy nominations.
On SOS, SZA seamlessly contorts disparate genres around her raw emotion and gifted verbiage with the sense of control she pined for on her first record. Who else could sing “You were balls deep, now we beefin’” as the second line of an acoustic-guitar ballad? The album moves from peak to peak. “Snooze” is easily one of the best R&B songs of this century. If “F2F” came out in 2004 and misogynoir wasn’t a thing, it would have had her headlining Warped Tour. “Smoking on My Ex Pack” earns her the Wu-Tang reference of her stage name. This fall, when we chose her for the cover of Rolling Stone’s Grammy Preview issue, we saw the ingenuity, creativity, and bravery that made SOS so special in a crowded field: “I’m here to do better all the time, and maybe better than you if I have to,” she told us, “because that’s just the way I’m built.”— M.C.
2 - Boygenius, ‘The Record’
On The Record’s “Without You Without Them,” the boygeniuses harmonize, “I want you to hear my story and be a part of it.” The trio delivers on that wish with personal declarations of love (“I remember who I am when I’m with you” on “True Blue”), cheeky sophistries (“Will you be a nihilist with me?/If nothin’ matters, man, that’s a relief” on “Satanist”), and the simple confidence of being a boygenius (“You make me feel like an equal but I’m better than you” on “Letter to an Old Poet”). Whether set against folky, grungy, or Simon and Garfunkel-y backdrops, each song maintains an intimacy that makes you feel included — and that’s the whole point, after all. —K.G.
3- Tainy, ‘Data’
Data — Tainy’s first album as a solo artist — is an expedition into the deepest contents of the super-producer’s brain that lets his maze of creative references stretch out in front of you. The album snakes through the years Tainy spent as a precocious teenage whiz kid, making beats for the biggest names in Puerto Rico. But it also melts in stories of sci-fi dream girls, pink-haired androids, and tech dystopias, told over unpredictable soundscapes that include Sech wailing over Nineties guitars and Bad Bunny rapping over Eighties synths. Masterfully sequenced and brilliantly built, Data becomes a sharp, crystalline vision of the future that’s only lived in Tainy’s mind up until now. —J. Lopez
4- Lil Yachty, ‘Let’s Start Here’
On the year’s most brilliant reinvention, Lil Yachty upshifted from pop-rap naif to psychedelic explorer, pulling up beside you in his space cruiser to see if you’re up for sharing a sunset or two before the clock runs out on humanity. Let’s Start Here luxuriates in verdant prog-scapes (“The Ride”), sunny funk escapades (“Drive Me Crazy”), slo-mo epiphanies (“We Saw the Sun”). What makes it such a fun listen beyond the first initial shock of its experimental newness is the great songs at its center, and that Yachty makes sure to maintain the teen-hearted whimsy that’s always been at the center of his appeal. —J.D.
5 - Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Guts’
On Guts, Olivia Rodrigo captures the insurmountable challenges of coming to fame while coming of age, with its romantic betrayals, vampiric exes, and fair-weather friends. Throughout the album’s heart-tugging ballads and sneering pop-punk cuts, the 20-year-old maintains a cutting lyrical precision — while unafraid to poke fun at her own shortcomings and social faux pas — that has cemented her as one of her generation’s best pop songwriters. As if to push herself out of the predictable path of “torch singer” and reject the well-mannered vision of femininity she skewers on “all-american bitch,” she delivers the full emotional breadth of teenager girldom through manic screaming, sarcastic sing-speak, and rage-fueled grit. —M.H.K.
6 - Paramore, ‘This Is Why’
Hayley Williams, Taylor York, and Zac Farro made their return on This Is Why as masters of existentialism, and their deep familiarity with impending doom and self-destruction made from some rich emotional mining. Set against expertly executed post-punk and New Wave, they explore their fascination with the complexities of the human condition. Williams wonders about what it means to be a good person who isn’t able to save everyone, including herself. As the first album in the band’s 20-year career that was made with the same lineup as their last one, it was the first new Paramore LP that didn’t require them to rebuild themselves from ruins. What better way to begin building on that newfound foundation than by using the external world as a lens for self-examination? —L.P.
7 - Mitski, ‘The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’
Mitski is a master storyteller — able to make music with a cinematic scope and novelist’s eye for detail. The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is another evolution: a mix of quotidian-yet-elliptical lyricism, classic country accompaniment, daring orchestral movements, and the musician’s unique brand of storytelling. Mitski channels images of love, nostalgia, and the aftertaste of disappointment into a collection of impressionistic vignettes steeped in rural loneliness, like an arty singer-songwriter update of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. —B.E.
8 - Billy Woods and Kenny Segal, ‘Maps’
Is there a writer on Earth working better in miniature than Billy Woods? From the assisted suicide that closes “Kenwood Speakers” to the instant-classic aside “Delivery fee was oof” from “Rapper Weed,” Maps packs more darkly funny vignettes between its covers than a Lydia Davis collection. And yet the rapper’s second full-length with Kenny Segal stuns primarily as a whole: a 45-minute travelogue, full of layovers and longueurs, the steam of new food and strange beds, with a yawning, apocalyptic chasm at its center. Woods sees America with X-ray eyes, like he couldn’t close them if he wanted to, making the return home — and that astonishing final verse — that much sweeter. —C.P.
9 - Victoria Monét, ‘Jaguar II’
Victoria Monét did a lot of behind-the-scenes work en route to her debut — including contributions to Grammy Award-nominated records, a brief stint in a girl group, and independent solo releases. Jaguar II shows just how much effort goes into making excellence seem effortless. She takes her seat at the throne of R&B’s latest resurgence on “On My Mama,” a certified instant classic. She’s at home alongside her contemporary Lucky Daye on “Smoke,” but also next to reggae legend Buju Banton on “Party Girl” and Earth, Wind and Fire (plus her daughter Hazel) on “Hollywood.” Monét is reviving the excitement of the days when R&B’s biggest stars would regularly go head-to-head with pop titans — and Jaguar II is a knockout of epic proportions. —L.P.
10 Zach Bryan, ‘Zach Bryan’
On this year’s biggest country album, Zach Bryan’s heartland rock (“Fear and Friday’s”) and stomp-and-holler folk (“East Side of Sorrow”) is just as arresting as his classic country duets (“I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves) and intimate front porch gems (“Smaller Acts”). In many ways, he’s a traditionalist, but blessedly not so much when it comes to the ways he exhibits and excavates his own masculinity. Zach Bryan feels like a counterweight to the rising tide of hyper-online, reactionary manhood, the perfect rallying cry rising out of “Overtime”: “And I want to stay humble, I want to stay hungry/I want to hear my father say that he loves me/I never gave a shit about being arrogant anyway.” —J. Blistein
CONTRIBUTORS: Jonathan Bernstein, Jon Blistein, Mark Braboy, David Browne, Nelson C.J., Tim Chan, Mankaprr Conteh, Jon Dolan, Brenna Ehrlich, Jon Freeman, Andre Gee, Maya Georgi, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, Joseph Hudak, Jeff Ihaza, Maura Johnston, CT Jones, Michelle Hyun Kim, Ernesto Lechner, Julyssa Lopez, Leah Lu, Angie Martoccio, Tomás Mier, Larisha Paul, Clayton Purdom, Mosi Reeves, Noah Shachtman, Rob Sheffield, Brittany Spanos, Simon Vozick-Levinson.
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