The Albums of 2023: Long List

An end-of-year data dump. Merry Christmas to all!

For an extended celebration of my favorite albums of 2023, complete with commentary, see the previous newsletter. This one is mostly just a data dump. I keep a loosely-ordered list of all the new music I take in over a given year, and here I offer you the whole unwieldy thing.

Even with 120 albums represented, this obviously doesn’t come close to capturing all the important music released in 2023; there’s a lot of jazz and hip-hop missing, in particular, and I lack subject-matter expertise when it comes to international music, hardcore, and dance.

It’s also worth emphasizing that I’m one person with a particular set of aesthetic interests— and while I think those interests are fairly broad, I don’t make any pretense about hearing everything. Still, I hope this is a useful snapshot into what my musical year was like.

One more thing: I try to invest most of my listening time into music that fits with aforementioned aesthetic interests. If I listened to something a time or two and didn’t hear anything interesting or worthwhile, it’s not reflected in this list. In other words, most of these albums are things that I’d recommend on some level, though not quite all of them.

1. Turnpike Troubadours - A Cat in the Rain

2. Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS

3. Joe Henry - All the Eye Can See

4. Allison Russell - The Returner

5. Yusef Dayes - Black Classical Music

6. U2 - Songs of Surrender

7. Morgan Wade - Psychopath

8. 100 gecs - 10,000 gecs

9. jaimie branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

10. Low Cut Connie - Art Dealers

11. Paramore - This is Why

12. Budy and Julie Miller - In the Throes

13. Lydia Loveless - Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again

14. Brandee Younger - Brand New Life

15. Meshell Ndgeocello - The Omnichord Real Book

16. Bettye LaVette - LaVette!

17. Billy Woods and Kenny Segal - Maps

18. Asake - Work of Art

19. Butcher Brown - Solar Music

20. Sunny War - Anarchist Gospel

21. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - City of Gold

22. Brad Mehldau - Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles

23. Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World

24. boygenius - The Record

25. Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson - Loving You

26. Zach Bryan - Zach Bryan

27. Peter Gabriel - i/o

28. Sofia Kourtesis - Madres

29. Jamila Woods - Water Made Us

30. Corrine Bailey Rae - Black Rainbows

31. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit - Weathervanes

32. Cécile McLorin Salvant - Mélusine

33. Ron Sexsmith - The Vivian Line

34. Paul Simon - Seven Psalms

35. Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!

36. Noname - Sundial

37. The Hold Steady - The Price of Progress

38. The Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds

39. Bob Dylan - Shadow Kingdom

40. Tony Allen and Adrian Younge - Tony Allen JID018

41. Feist - Multitudes

42. Lonnie Holley - Oh Me Oh My

43. Joe Chambers - Dance Kobina

44. Whitney Rose - Rosie

45. Margo Price - Strays

46. Tinariwen - Amatssou

47. Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

48. Rodney Crowell - The Chicago Sessions

49. White Reaper - Asking for a Ride

50. Tyler Childers - Rustin’ in the Rain

51. Black Thought & El Michels Affair - Glorious Game

52. Iggy Pop - Every Loser

53. Rachael & Vilray - I Love a Love Song!

54. Brandy Clark - Brandy Clark

55. Harold López-Nussa - Timba a la Americana

56. Jason Moran - From the Dancehall to the Battlefield

57. Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah - Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning

58. Kassa Overall - Animals

59. Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band - King’s Highway

60. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society - Dynamic Maximum Tension

61. Slowdive - Everything is Alive

62. Josh Ritter - Spectral Lines

63. Bruce Cockburn - O Sun O Moon

64. The National - First Two Pages of Frankenstein

65. Wednesday - Rat Saw God

66. Jon Batiste - World Music Radio

67. Natalie Merchant - Keep Your Courage

68. The Tallest Man on Earth - Henry St.

69. Blur - The Ballad of Darren

70. Christian McBride’s New Jawn - Prime

71. Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy

72. The Milk Carton Kids - I Only See the Moon

73. Iris DeMent - Workin’ on a World

74. Tanya Tucker - Sweet Western Sound

75. Beverly Glenn-Copeland - The Ones Ahead

76. Gorillaz - Cracker Island

77. Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn into You

78. Ray Angry, David Murray, and ?uestlove - Plumb

79. Dinner Party - Enigmatic Society

80. Zulu - A New Tomorrow

81. Arooj Aftab, Shahzad Ismaily, and Vijay Iyer - Love in Exile

82. Leo Takami - Next Door

83. Joshua Redman - Where Are We

84. Andre 3000 - New Blue Sun

85. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

86. Chris Stapleton - Higher

87. Willie Nelson - Bluegrass

88. Nickel Creek - Celebrants

89. Rhiannon Giddens - You’re the One

90. Blue Lake - Sun Arcs

91. Janelle Monae - The Age of Pleasure

92. New Pornographers - Continue as a Guest

93. Julian Lage - The Layers

94. Willie Nelson - I Don’t Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard

95. John Carroll Kirby - Blowout

96. Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation

97. PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying

98. Kali Uchis - Red Moon in Venus

99. The Bad Ends - The Power and the Glory

100. Sam Gendel - Cookup

101. Queens of the Stone Age - In Times New Roman…

102. Wilco - Cousin

103. Ice Spice - Like..?

104. Foo Fighters - But Here We Are

105. The National - Laugh Track

106. NewJeans - Get Up

107. Yves Tumor - Praise a Lord Who Chews…

108. Van Morrison - Moving on Skiffle

109. P!nk - Trustfall

110. GoGo Penguin - Everything is Going to Be OK

111. Zach Bryan - Boys of Faith

112. Fucked Up - One Day

113. The Pretenders - Relentless

114. Dave Matthews Band - Walking on the Moon

115. Mitski - The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

116. Matchbox 20 - Where the Light Goes

117. Taj Mahal - Savoy

118. Shania Twain - Queen of Me

119. Jenny Lewis - Joy’All

120. Van Morrison - Accentuate the Positive

Addendum 1: I was honored to submit my ballot of the best albums of the year to FLOOD Magazine, then to be asked to write a blurb for our #1 selection. You can read that, along with a number of other insightful synopses, at the FLOOD website.

Addendum 2: I wish I’d had the foresight to write a think piece comparing Taylor Swift’s album re-recording project (of which I am broadly favorable) to U2’s Songs of Surrender— one an example of a young artist in search of unmarred perfection, the other an example of elder statesmen being vulnerable about the ways they’ve grown and changed. Maybe there’s still time…

Addendum 3: A couple of you have asked me if there are any particular end-of-year lists that I look forward to. The short answer is yes, lots, but here are a handful that are especially meaningful to me.

• Jon Caramanica (The New York Times)

• Stephen Thomas Erlewine (Substack)

• Nate Chinen (NPR)

• Fred Kaplan (Slate)

• Amanda Petrusich (The New Yorker)

• Giovanni Russonello (The New York Times)

Thank you for reading, subscribing, commenting, and sharing this year. I’ll be back next year. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!