The 100 Best Albums of 2023

Dominic Fike’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics about sex, struggle, and the endless search for serenity pour out across zealous raps and acoustic-guitar rock ballads on his sophomore album, Sunburn. From the vantage point of his hard-won success, the singer and songwriter reflects on the pivotal encounters he experienced while climbing to the top — the nights he spent sleeping in cars, the time that passed while his mother was in prison, the way substance-abuse treatment and heartbreak both altered his personhood. His internal monologue across the album aches and stings, marking his greatest artistic proclamation yet. —L.P.

Seventeen albums into their run, Yo La Tengo remain giants of pastorale-noise. This Stupid World has a mood that makes it feel distinct in the band’s esteemed catalog. As its title implies, it’s openly downcast, tinged with images of mortality and the struggle to make something out of whatever time we have while we’re here. “Prepare to die/Prepare yourself while there’s still time,” Ira Kaplan sings like an indie-rock grim reaper on “Until It Happens,” a tetchy acoustic song with a droning organ that sounds like a polite warning siren. But a record this beautiful makes easing toward the abyss feel a little less painful. —J.D.

Recorded amidst the controversy surrounding the ongoing YSL, A Gift and a Curse was a radical shift compared to last year’s relentlessly upbeat DS4EVER: The party is over, and he’s sitting in an empty house all alone. But Gunna is still able to remind us of the real reason why we appreciate him in the first place: the way his velvety-smooth, mellowed-out approach to rapping about the finer things in life works in tandem with a glitzy, exciting sound that’s all his own. A Gift and a Curse is the painful reflection of this tragic period, but it’s also a striking testament to his resilience. Gunna is still him, despite everything he’s facing. —M.B.

The danger of describing L’Rain’s third LP by its constituent parts is that you might miss how fun — and, indeed, funny — it all is. Yes, the multi-instrumentalist is still wielding found-sound recordings, creating collages of audio burbles and blooms that drift between genres and forms. But this is an anti-experimental project, full of mordantly funny lyrics (see: the title track) and musical cues (like the jagged indie-rock guitars of “Pet Rock”). The result is one of the year’s slipperiest delights, constantly evading grasp, like a joke from a dream you can’t remember. —C.P. 

Fuse is Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn’s first collaboration since 1999’s underrated gem Temperamental, which topped off the amazing Nineties trilogy they began with Amplified Heart and Walking Wounded. Everything But the Girl’s trademark style of ghostly electro-pop hits home, with Thorn’s melancholy voice floating through the glitchy beats. Fuse picks up right where Temperamental stopped, as if they’re hitting play on a cassette they’ve kept on pause for 24 years. But they keep it fresh, using the latest digital effects to warp, filter, and mutate Thorn’s voice into a deeper, more dolorous instrument, which suits the adult tone of the songs. —R.S.

There’s no one better than Kylie Minogue at describing the uncertainty and desire of being in the moment — her 2023 hit “Padam Padam” resonates because we know that heart-fluttering sensation is a war between thrilling and terrifying. This happens all over Minogue’s 16^th studio album, Tension. “One More Time” is a groovy disco-house number about rekindling an old flame, while “Green Light” sweetly seeks consent for sexual congress. In “Hands,” she mines Doja Cat and raps her verses with total commitment. It’s nice to know she’s learning some new tricks, but it’s equally nice to know she’s still aces when it comes to singing about romantic possibilities. —J.F.

Joy’All is the latest volume in an ongoing drama we might call The Many Loves and Losses of Jenny Lewis. Coupled with the album’s Music City vibes (think Elvis Country or Nashville Skyline but with silkier vocals), Lewis’ wit and candor find more legroom on Joy’All than on previous albums. The country-rock feeling complements the album’s best songs: When Lewis sings about screaming “I want you back” on “Essence of Life,” the steel guitar wails, too, and on the upbeat “Cherry Baby,” they create a sweet yacht-rock texture that makes “I fall in love too easily with anyone who touches me, fucks with me” almost suitable for radio. —K.G.

The exciting mainstream country debut of 2023 belonged to the Georgia-raised Megan Moroney, whose Gen Z iteration of three chords and the truth involves plenty of SEC football and social-media scrolling: “Did you mean to double-tap that spring-break throwback from 2016 in PCB?” she sings in the note-perfect opener, “I’m Not Pretty.” But Lucky is also an exercise in mastery of tradition, from the Shania-style romp of the title track to the devastating piano ballad “Mustang or Me.” —J.B.

2023 was a dreadful year for reggae records, with most of Jamaica’s brightest lights taking the year to tour instead of putting out new music. But even in a banner year, this album would be a standout. With Winta James, Jamaica’s very best producer, at the controls, the rhythm tracks are flawless, timeless. But it’s Samory I’s vocals that take Strength to instant-classic territory, the highest of heights. It’s not just that every bar is tucked into the deepest part of the pocket. It’s also that Samory somehow manages to be vulnerable, broken, triumphant, plaintive, and passionate all at once — all in the same chorus, even. It’s enough to make you shake off a down year, and look forward to ‘24. —N.S.

Some of the ingredients that comprise U.S. Girls’ eighth album are new motherhood, Greek mythology, and the classic sounds of Hall and Oates, plus Carly Simon — but artist Meghan Remy makes her songs personal enough that they sound original. “Only Daedalus” could be sung by Michael McDonald just as much as Remy, but her chilled delivery of “Only Daedalus coulda thought of this” feels unique. “Futures Bet” boasts a fuzzy synth-pop vibe, and there’s even a song, “Pump,” about breast pumping. It all makes for a blessed mess. —K.G.

Chicago-area singer-songwriter Kara Jackson is a former National Youth Poet Laureate who blends country folk, Seventies chamber pop, and sparse folk strumming on her stunning and adventurous full-length debut, the grief-stricken Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? Jackson’s writing is both immaculately crafted and deeply funny: “Every man thinks I’m his fucking mother,” she sings on “therapy.” With its series of five-to-eight-minute songs, Jackson’s LP is one of the most daring singer-songwriter statement of the year. —J.Bernstein

On the long-awaited follow-up to his 2019 mixtape, Navy Wavy, Detroit rapper Veeze spins his bars in a muddy whisper that’s by turns intoxicating and maddening, forcing you to listen closely to his riffs on familiar themes of pleasure and power. He blurs his words, but not so much that you can’t decipher his best lines, like when he says on “No Ski Ski,” “Whack a n*gg*, throw him in the river, that’s pollution.” Old heads skeptical of young street stylists like Veeze will take comfort in “You Know I,” a jumpy re-imagining of DJ Uneek’s “Thuggish-Ruggish-Bone” beat. For the rest of us, there’s the delight in hearing a talented prospect come into his own. —M.R.

Beloved dance DJ and producer Kaytranada is not new to rap collabs — in fact, he’s an ardent hip-hop head, having made whole projects with low-key MCs Buddy in 2017 and IDK just last year. However, he seemed particularly pumped about his union with Aminé, even fusing their names for a debut album. Kaytraminé is top tier for both artists — Aminé raps at his coolest and most charming, while Kaytra tapps into the perfect balance of groove and grit, and both stars attract and gel with a bevy of the games’ best names, including Pharrell, Snoop Dogg, and Freddie Gibbs. —M.C.

Less than a year since his highly acclaimed debut, Mr. Money With the Vibe, the Nigerian singer-songwriter ups his game even further on his sophomore LP. Amapiano drums and bass lines, shakers, and synths coupled with guitars, saxophones, and violins permeate the album. Asake’s blend of amapiano and Afropop (created with his go-to producer-engineer Magicsticks) has placed him at the forefront of Nigerian artists who have adopted a similar stylistic approach. Having already proved that his international breakthrough was more than earned, he solidifies his status here as a street-pop superstar. —M.M. 

Since forming in 2016, Water From Your Eyes have paired noisy yet winsome music with winky, tongue-in-cheek lyrics. The Brooklyn duo’s latest hits a high point, making chaos work in their favor. “Everyone’s Crushed” finds Rachel Brown varying the phrase “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts” (also “I’m in love with everyone and everything hurts” and “I’m with everyone I hurt and everything’s love”) over more dissonant guitar loops that don’t quite match up with the rhythm. At times, it sounds like they couldn’t find the right vocal pitch with a compass, but you still want them to find their way and get there. When things come together, it can be quite stunning. —K.G.

Even if Drake wasn’t at his best on For All the Dogs, he’s still one of the best. His one-liners remain sharp. His couplets still bite with snark. He can still bend rap conventions to his will (like his amazing run of similes on “What Would Pluto Do”). Some argued the album felt disjointed, but impeccable beat-smiths like Sango, Southside, Conductor Williams, and Bynx lifting from dance, trap, soul, rage, and other branches of hip-hop show the range of pop-rap. Another oft-missed uniting factor is its sense of juvenility — from the child’s drawing on the album cover to the colorful berets Drake wears in the video for “Another Late Night” to his compelling but combative raps on growing up in the game and giving up on love. —M.C.

An ode to queerness and reinvention, the Australian singer’s third LP, Something to Give Each Other, is a pristine slice of pop heaven underscored by hints of longing and sadness. Sivan has spoken at length about how he struggled in the aftermath of a bad breakup, but here he turned his heartbreak into healing on the dance floor, drawing from synth-pop, house music, and Nineties-esque club cuts. The result is a 10-track anthology that perfectly captures the deeply felt exhilaration of love — and lust — lost. —T.C.

The five-headed hype machine that took K-pop by storm with their 2022 debut come back even sleeker and smarter with their second EP. This time, NewJeans tap into a nostalgic goodie bag of Y2K-era R&B and U.K. garage/drum-and-bass sounds that puts Get Up in line with recent coups by FKA Twigs and PinkPantheress. (Danish club-pop dreamer Erika de Casier, who co-wrote two-thirds of the EP, is another apt reference.) Even in that context, the sheer concentration of super-elastic hooks and retro-futuristic production on songs like “Super Shy,” “New Jeans,” and “ASAP” is remarkable. Put this up against any other 12 minutes in pop this year, and NewJeans are the odds-on favorites. —S.V.L.

Bad Bunny spent most of 2023 saying he was going to take a break after almost two years of album releases and nonstop touring — and then he couldn’t help himself. The prolific Puerto Rican hitmaker surprised fans with Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, a collection of blustery, shit-talking trap tracks that got his deepest frustrations with fame and fickle fames off his chest. Setting his moody soliloquies to baroque beats and haunting melodies, Bad Bunny channels a weathered Godfather-like figure on songs like “Nadie Sabe” and “Monaco.” But in between, he’s as rambunctious as ever, boasting about money, girls, cars, and the bright side of stardom. —J. Lopez

Call it the upward spiral: Model/Actriz’s debut traces a path from hard-edged industrial depravity to something like emotional repair in its final moments. Still, it’s a hell of a journey getting there. Tracks like “Mosquito” and “Crossing Guard” locate the kinky kick of percussive mania, while second-half freakouts like “Pure Mode” lay screeching locomotion over singer Cole Haden’s blood-soaked confessionals. The release, when it comes, is worth the pain. —C.P.

Over the course of the year, Miley Cyrus has had hits with purgative power ballads and candy-coated odes to America, she’s made forays into synth-pop, psychedelia, country, and art rock, and she’s played with the public’s idea of what someone in her position owes the world. Her eighth album, Endless Summer Vacation, which was teased by the coolly resilient statement of independence “Flowers,” is like a recap of her 15-plus-year career, with Cyrus breezing through genres with the ease of a well-seasoned tourist. —M.J. 

The latest from the Colombian American pop star blends styles and genres so deftly that placing a box around her music feels antithetical to its ethos. Over 15 tracks, Kali Uchis reveals that her own knowledge of love is overflowing, with songs that examine and revel in the emotion in all its forms. There’s “Love Between…,” a bedroom-pop update of the glimmering 1970s bedroom cut, the Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins-produced R&B of “Endlessly,” and the full-on club jam “Fantasy,” a duet with Uchis’ IRL boyfriend Don Toliver. —M.J.

Caroline Polachek knows her way around a pop song — she’s written for Beyoncé and Travis Scott, collaborated with next-wave artists like Charli XCX and PC Music, and toured with the likes of Dua Lipa. On her second solo album, the former Chairlift vocalist uses her encyclopedic musical knowledge and formidable voice as vehicles for flipping the concept of the “perfect pop song” in unexpected ways. “Fly to You” manages to stuff drum-and-bass beats, glittery synths, fluttering woodwinds, the velvet-voiced singer-songwriter Dido, and the synth scientist Grimes into an arresting four-minute capsule of the emotions surrounding a long-awaited reunion. When she does rein things in a bit, the results are even more stunning. —M.J. 

North Carolina’s Wednesday delivered an indie-rock gem on their fifth album, rootsy and noisy in pretty much equal measure. If you’re a fan of boygenius or Big Thief, you’ll like singer Karly Hartzman’s fearless, anxious songwriting. And if you’re a fan of migraine headaches, you’ll love the band’s knack for busting out My Bloody Valentine-levels of refined amplifier torment. There’s a Flannery O’Connor story collection worth of Southern fucked-up-ness going on here. But Wednesday are just as interested in sucking you in with a walloping guitar banger as they are in delivering unsparingly honest snapshots of the ruralburban coming-of-age experience. —J.D.

Amaarae has been wild and thorough since her excellent 2020 breakthrough, The Angel You Don’t Know, featuring the luxurious and lusty “Sad Gurlz Love Money,” which quickly went viral and attracted a remix with the similarly decadent Kali Uchis. On Fountain Baby, Amaarae doubled down on the thrill and amps up the danger, pulling influences from Afro rhythms, Asian standards, and punk-rock rage for a brooding adventure through her world. —M.C.

One of American music’s best songwriters hit another peak with his brutally beautiful ninth studio album. The songs on Weathervanes tremble with anger, desperation, and fear; characters wrestle regret and unhealthy appetites, struggling to cut losses in the wake of bad choices and cascading consequences. Jason Isbell’s stories glint with memoir and headlines as they put human faces on head-count epidemics: mass shootings, opioid addiction, Covid-19. Even the love songs are bruised and weary, chilled by cold truth. Inextricable from all this is the 400 Unit, as essential here as Crazy Horse or the Heartbreakers to Neil Young or Tom Petty’s great moments. —W.H.

On her fifth LP, Kesha is tired, angry, and vicious. She unspools her feelings as she can across 13 scorched-Earth tracks that present an artist pulling herself back up from the brink of madness. Working with producer Rick Rubin, she has found a psychedelic middle ground between the sleazy synths of her 2012 breakthrough, Warrior, and the rootsy Southern rock of 2017’s Rainbow and 2020’s High Road. She may never find the rainbow she once sang about, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t radically advocating for her own happy ending. The album even ends with “Happy,” a weary but lovely ballad dedicated to life not turning out the way you hope. As she sings on that song, she’s gotta laugh so she doesn’t die. Even that is its own kind of victory. —B.S.

It takes 97 minutes to listen to Christine and the Queens’ moving, three-act pop opera, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, but you need months to understand it fully. On the album, the French artist (let’s call him Chris for simplicity) summons celestial bodies, pays tribute to his late mother, flirts with 070 Shake, navigates acid rock and dubby detours, samples Marvin Gaye and Pachelbel’s canon, and divines some of the catchiest melodies of his career. Releasing Paranoïa, Angels, True Love in all its grandeur is a bold move since attention spans for pop music couldn’t be shorter. But the album is a full statement and requires a time commitment to appreciate it. —K.G.  

Everyone can appreciate some sonic wandering, but sometimes, as is the case with Atlanta rapper Young Nudy, there’s a benefit to knowing what you’re going to get. On Gumbo, Nudy sticks to his braggadocious, hunger-inducing script and succeeds across a 13-track canvas that places him further up the ranks of hip-hop’s “best ear for beats” board. Gumbo’s producers have crafted a project that’s immersive but never overpowering, leaving room for Nudy’s distinctive, rubbery voice to be the centerpiece of the music. —A.G. 

The core of Ocean Blvd is about Lana Del Rey trying to get a closer look at herself, flipping the story as we have come to understand (and maybe even misunderstand) about what she’s trying to tell us. Through stories of her family, a failed relationship, her conflicting desire of being both seen and hidden, Del Rey exposed more than just who she is, but why she is who she is. Songs like the excellent “A&W” — named in reference to the phrase “American whore,” not the root beer — and “Fingertips” are two sides of the same life-storytelling coin. Each ponders sexual development, an estranged mother, and the harrowing reality of carrying trauma deep into adulthood. —B.S.

“Don’t ask me shit about work, ‘cause I’m on my Champagne shit,” Janelle Monáe advices. Indeed, The Age of Pleasure is a half-hour fever dream that feels like a hazy stretch at a sun-dappled gathering of people whose stunning beauty is matched by their alluring personalities. Beats from all over the map flow into one another; snatches of dialogue slip into the mix; the lyrics are focused on feeling good, whether through carnal pleasure or being comfortable in one’s own skin. The album’s 31-ish minutes are exquisitely wrought, as smoothly mixed as a top-tier set from a DJ with an infinite collection that includes Fifties doo-wop sides and cutting-edge cuts from the African diaspora. —M.J.

Detroit hip-hop maximalist Danny Brown and rap-electronic eccentric JPEGMAFIA explore a radical, perhaps slightly unhinged, form of honesty.  On “Fentanyl Tester,” the sample of Kelis’ “Milkshake” sublimates into a stuttering trap rhythm, replete with a roaring, subterranean bass, until it all vanishes and a blissful breakbeat ushers in Brown, mid-sprint, rapping about copious consumption. Brown’s verse seems to tumble out of him. “Fell on my knees when I caught a felony/Tell me who there for me/Think I need therapy, sent God a text but his message turn green,” he raps on “HOE (Heaven on Earth).” Like deciphering an ancient cassette tape, distorted right up to the point of destruction, Scaring the Hoes is, in fact, a little scary. And that’s what makes it so compelling. —J.I.

On her fifth album, U.K. singer Jesse Ware zeroes in on the many pleasures of dance music. Bodies and bodily sensations are emphasized, while inhibitions are shaken off in pursuit of ecstasy. That! Feels! Good! is even brighter and funkier than its acclaimed 2020 predecessor, What’s Your Pleasure, full of big brass and grooves that amplify the feeling of joy. “Why does all the purest love get filtered through machines?” she wonders on “Begin Again.” It’s a plea for renewal and human connection, the kind that the dance floor is uniquely equipped to provide. —J.F.

Every track on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a Greek statue frozen in some tragic visage of horror. Anohni’s voice sounds delicate, angry, and exhausted, as she grieves — for the unfulfilled promises of civil rights, for friends lost to drugs and depression, for the immolation of a world succumbing to ecocide. Where Anohni’s best music in the past paired her voice with a piano and small arrangements, here fuzzy guitars that recall classic rock and soul buttress her, making her voice work a little harder to transmit her messages. You feel the burden she’s carrying as it crushes her back, and quite often it is beautiful. —K.G.

Becky G’s third Spanish-language album, Esquinas, is a gorgeous exploration of what it means to be Mexican American — and how it’s shaped who she is as a pop star and as a person. The music is a little unexpected: Album-opener “2ndo Chance” is a ballad dipped in nostalgic synths that morphs into a brooding acoustic burner with Gen Z heartthrob Ivan Cornejo. In fact, the whole album is a parade of new, first-gen talent. What’s most striking here is Becky’s sense of maturity, both lyrically and vocally. Esquinas is anchored in her actual experiences, something that’s going to give voice to so many diaspora kids eager to also embrace their 200 percent heritage. —J.L. 

Each track on Javelin, Sufjan Stevens’ 10th studio album and first since 2020’s sprawling The Ascension, begins delicately. He croons mindful ruminations over quiet acoustic arpeggios, evoking his much-beloved 2015 album, Carrie and Lowell, or the more hushed moments on albums like 2005’s Illinois, which established Stevens as a major indie songwriter. Then the songs swell — or rather, burst — into larger cacophonies of sound, as if to balance each point of introspection with an aural representation of its respective, unbridled emotion. The production is immense, yet every layered instrument and rackety beat feels meticulously deliberate, deepening the impact of some of the finest songs of his career. —L.L. 

A feeling of bucolic self-acceptance is at the emotional center of the sprawling Mañana Será Bonito, the Colombian pop superstar’s strongest effort to date. The album begins in epic, post-breakup mode. She finds a supportive sonic partner in producer and compatriot Ovy on the Drums, a digital architect able to inject a sense of purpose into the most-tired reggaeton backbeat. The autobiographical “Carolina” floats in a honeyed layer of Afrobeats smoothness, and the brief, encyclopedic musical references throughout the LP add context to her innovations. —E.L.

The Chicago rapper and poet put her music career on pause after her 2018 album, Room 25, to devote herself to revolutionary politics, community activism, and her Noname Book Club. It’s been a long wait, but Sundial is exactly what you were praying the new Noname album would be — eloquent, furious, funny, cerebral, bristling with rage and revenge. Sundial is the sound of an artist who hasn’t lost any of her passion for making music — or making trouble. “I ain’t fucking with the Super Bowl or Jay-Z/Propaganda for the military,” she declares on “Namesake,” denouncing artists for collaborating with the NFL. As she says, “Go Beyoncé go!/Watch the fighter jet fly high!/War machine gets glamorized, we play the game to pass the time.” —R.S.

The debut full-length from this Missouri-born pop phenomenon — or, as she puts it in her gleefully fun album’s shake-it-off leadoff track, “femininomenon” — Chappell Roan is a wildly ribald, extremely hooky thrill ride through sexual and personal awakenings. Despite the beauty-queen cover, a good chunk of this spiky, soulful album’s charm comes from Roan leaning into the unprettier side of finding oneself, whether she’s delighting in watching an enemy destroy themselves on the stretched-out “My Kink Is Karma” or plumbing the emotional depths of a situationship on the shimmering “Casual.” Roan combines brutal honesty with unbridled passion in a way that sometimes startles, but always sounds luscious. —M.J.     

Countless artists try to revive the Nineties, but few do it better than Sabrina Teitelbaum, whose debut is a stunning mess of emotional fury and female outrage à la Live Through This and Exile in Guyville (Teitelbaum is even touring with Liz Phair this fall). Six of the nine tracks were released as singles (the excellent “Salad” and “Joiner”), but listening to the album in full is crucial to understanding Teitelbaum’s genius: She’s not just evoking another era, she’s reinventing it. —A.M. 

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.