Best of 2022: Music
Last year I didn’t make a best-of list for music because I lost track of time and it was already the second weekend in December. Kaitlin and I were in the process of buying our house, so there was a lot going on.
In lieu of a standard Top 10 list, I want to walk chronologically through the year and highlight the albums I listened to most. I don’t know about you, but listening to music with a subscription service has changed my relationship to albums. In the past, when I bought CDs, I’d stick with albums for a long time. But with Apple Music I’m constantly hearing new music. It’s easy to give something a try because I don’t have to pay for it. That means I’m constantly adding albums to my library, which means albums I listened to a few months ago get bumped further and further down the “Recently Added” list. It’s lovely having access to every album ever made, but that just makes it harder for albums to stick with me longer than a couple months.
So, here we go: My favorite music from 2022.
I started the year with an album that I very quickly had to stop listening to: Bo Burnham’s Inside. My sister and her husband suggested we watch Inside over Christmas last year. It’s a great special with great music, so I eagerly added the album to Apple Music. However, too many of the songs were too catchy. Parts of “Comedy” or “White Woman’s Instagram” or “All Eyes on Me” would get stuck in my head for long stretches of time. Now, there are worse songs to have stuck in your head, but it got to the point where I was actually a little concerned — I’d hear these songs as I was trying to go to sleep, and that’s when I decided I had to stop listening to the album. So listen at your own risk! (“White Woman’s Instagram” is my favorite track on an album full of bangers — it’s catchy, funny, has a great turn, and is just a perfect song.)
There are three albums I associate with the first quarter of the year. The first is Ludovico Einaudi’s Underwater. Einaudi is an Italian composer whose seven-album Seven Days Walking was my favorite album from 2019. Underwater is a stripped down Einaudi album — just him and the piano. There are lots of great, soothing tracks on this album (such as the opening track, “Luminous,” or the Philip Glass-esque “Flora”), but as a whole it isn’t one that stuck with me very long.
Next up was Mitski’s Laurel Hell. Her 2018 album Be the Cowboy was a pretty distinct departure in sound, going from the more aggressive rock-pop of Puberty 2 to something more akin to art pop/disco/rock. I was curious to see where she'd go from there, and Laurel Hell feels like a natural extension of Be the Cowboy that’s maybe a little more grounded in melodic pop. It’s a good album, and it’s one that I wish I had given more attention to over the year, but alas, it got buried. Some of my favorite tracks: “The Only Heartbreaker” and “Love Me More.”
The one album from earlier this year that did stick with me was EXES’ Don’t Give Up on Me Now. It’s a thoroughly pop/indie rock album full of catchy tracks like the opening “Spiritually Enlightened at 29” and slower tunes like “I Still Love You” or the closing ballad “It Was Supposed to Be Us.” As with most pop albums, there isn’t anything super deep going on here, but that’s not what I’m looking for when I listen to pop — I just want something catchy, and this album delivers.
Moving to the second quarter of the year, Sharon Van Etten’s We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong feels like a return to her older, more subdued sound. This makes sense, as it's one of the many pandemic albums released this year. This is a perfect example of an album where I don’t dislike any of the songs, but there aren’t a ton that I really love, so it wasn’t one I put on often. Of course, going back to listen to it now, I’m realizing I like more songs than I thought — sorry, Sharon! The most energetic track, “Mistakes” is my hands-down favorite, although I really like “Anything” or the opening song, “Darkness Fades.”
Another pandemic album I enjoyed is Florence and the Machine’s Dance Fever. Out of all the albums on this list that either directly or indirectly reference the pandemic, I think this is my favorite. When Florence is on, she is on. The opening one-two punch of “King” and “Free” is both excellent and illustrative of the kind of aural shifts you can expect while listening to Dance Fever: the first track is a slow build that reaches a climax and then slows down again, while the second track feels like a four-minute sprint. The album as a whole has a lot of contours like that, and in general I like more than I dislike, although it does make for an uneven listening experience.
In June we took a trip out to California. We got to spend a few days with one of my uncles and two of my aunts, plus a couple of my cousins. What I didn’t know is that my one uncle is a huge fan of BTS. Like, HUGE. To the point that we listened to four BTS songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over again: “Dynamite,” “Permission to Dance,” “Butter,” and “My Universe.” Of the four, “Permission to Dance” is my favorite, so if you’re looking for a place to start with BTS, I’d suggest that.
In July I watched kogonada’s movie After Yang. I’ll talk more about that when it’s time to discuss my favorite movies, but one thing I loved about it was its music. I immediately added After Yang’s soundtrack and spent a lot of time listening to it. Most of the songs are beautiful ambient melodies by Aska Matsumiya. The opening track (“In My Breath”) is more piano-driven, and the Ryuichi Sakomoto track “Memory Bank” is also a standout. There is one completely jarring song, though, but I love that it’s included: “Welcome to Family of 4” plays during the film’s opening credits, and it’s a frenetic techno dance with a pounding beat. I appreciate that it’s only the second track on the album, because the rest of the time you can relax and calm down.
Another album I had to stop listening to because it got stuck in my head was Matt Berry’s Witchazel. Berry is a talented comedic actor and writer, but I didn’t realize until this summer just how talented of a songwriter he is, too. I introduced Kaitlin to the amazing BBC series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and in the last episode Berry sings an incredible song. I tried to find that song in Apple Music and instead found Berry’s extensive discography, Witchazel being a favorite of the ones I sampled. There are some comedic songs on here, like the George Harrison-eque ballad “Woman,” but then there are some straight-up amazing songs, like “Take My Hand.” This is the song that eventually got so stuck in my head I had to stop listening to the album.
Kaitlin introduced me to NoSo’s Stay Proud of Me after hearing their music on Pandora. It’s a dreamy, guitar-driven album full of catchy hooks. With only 10 songs and clocking in a little over 35 minutes, Stay Proud of Me is a short album that breezes by like the airy guitar riffs found in these quietly upbeat tunes. NoSo is a trans Korean-American musician, and they wrote these songs between the ages of 20 and 24. First, it’s amazing how mature these songs are coming from someone so young! Second, you can tell as you listen to Stay Proud of Me that it’s a deeply personal album. If I were to do a more traditional Top 10 list, there’s no question this album would be one of the ones at the very top. Some of my favorite tracks: “Suburbia,” “Sorry I Laughed,” “Feeling Like a Woman Lately,” and “David” (which, for the longest time, I thought was about THE David — you know, the statue by Michaelangelo — but Kaitlin pointed out that the lyrics don’t really support this interpretation, sadly).
Queens-based musician Julia Wolf’s Girls in Purgatory came out last year, but I just found out about it late in the summer. The most straight-up unabashedly pop album on this list, Wolf writes short, catchy songs with great beats. “Falling in Love” comes out of the gates swinging as she sings, “Fuck falling in love, I’m way past it.” “Bottle of Advil” is my favorite track. It’s also the slowest and quietest song on the album, the one where she pares it down to just a guitar and her voice. There are 10 tracks on this album, but only eight of them are songs, so this feels more like an EP than an album. I look forward to her next album which comes out in just a little over a month.
As we entered the last quarter of the year, I found myself listening a lot to Alberto Giurioli’s Life. The best way I can describe this modern classical album is: cinematic. Many of the tracks have a sweeping, almost grandiose vibe to them. They feel like they’d be perfect for a movie. “Rising Above” is a perfect example of this, with its swelling strings and frolicking piano. The title track also feels like something you’d hear as a character faces a crisis. According to Apple Music, my most played tracks of 2022 all came from this album, which makes sense — I often put it on as background music during work these past few months. It’s also great music to write to.
My friend Adam recommended I listen to The Beths’ Expert in a Dying Field. He said the title track is the catchiest song he’s heard all year, and it’s hard to argue with that. This was another album that I had to stop listening to because so many of the songs would lodge themselves in my brain. Or at least I tried to stop listening to it, but unlike the others I’ve mentioned, this one I would return to over and over. Really solid female-fronted indie rock songs that kind of remind me of another band Adam recommended to me a few years ago: Martha. (In fact, Martha’s Please Don’t Take Me Back is another favorite album of this year even though it only came out a month ago. So thanks, Adam, for those two recommendations!)
While everyone was listening to the new Taylor Swift album, I was listening to a different young white woman: Gracie Abrams’ This Is What It Feels Like. If you’re looking for quiet, melodic, sad songs, then look no further than this album from last year. “Rockland” and “Better” are good places to start.
Alela Diane’s Looking Glass is the more mature, folk/Americana spin on Gracie Abrams. Diane is back with her signature mix of quietly haunting guitar and piano ballads. Her 2018 album Cusp was one of my top albums from that year. I still need to spend more time with Looking Glass, but my initial thoughts are that it’s a very good album, just not one I like as much as Cusp. “Howling Wind” is a standout track, as are “When We Believed” and the opening track, “Paloma.” In general, the first half of the album seems stronger than the second half.
Finally, First Aid Kit’s Palomino came out in early November. This Swedish folk duo (two sisters!) has always been known for their harmonies, and they don’t disappoint. The opening track, “Out of My Head” is one of my all-time favorite First Aid Kit songs — it’s an incredibly catchy song that captures that ‘60s/’70s folk vibe they’ve been perfecting for several albums now while adding a dance-like energy. I really hope this is a direction they explore more in the future. The only problem with putting your best track at the start of your album is that the rest of the record doesn’t feel like it hits that same high. There are definitely other standout songs, such as “Ready to Run,” “Angel,” and “The Last One,” but then there are several songs that feel less than amazing. Overall, a so-so album in my opinion, although when it hits it hits hard.
And that’s been my year in music, more or less. I only listened to the new Beyonce album once and need to give it more time. I also want to give Tegan and Sara’s Crybaby a few more listens, although my initial thoughts are similar to Palomino — strong highs, but inconsistent. I was mostly disappointed by The Mountain Goats’ Bleed Out after loving the singles released before the album dropped. The Afghan Whigs’ 2017 album In Spades is such a great album, but their 2022 follow-up, How Do You Burn? wasn’t nearly as interesting. Arcade Fire’s We is fine but wasn’t one I gave more than a few listens to.
What about you? What did I miss this year that I should go back and listen to? Let me know in the comments below!
