Our Annual Report kicks off with our list of the Best Albums of 2023. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and interviews about the best music, film, and TV 2023 had to offer. You can find it all in one place here.
If you follow music closely, you’ve probably heard the question a lot this year: Where have all the big albums gone?
There are a couple of ways to think about this. The first is simple: The best albums haven’t gone anywhere, you just didn’t hear them in 2023. That’s why you’re reading this list (thanks!). But that feeling — the broad sense that it’s harder to agree on music these days — might signal the death of the musical monoculture.
For a few odd decades following World War II, Americans mostly read the same news, watched the same movies and TV shows, and listened to a similar range of music. This shared political and artistic identity, sometimes called monoculture, probably peaked in the US in 1983, when 106 million people tuned in to the last episode of M*A*S*H. Things had changed dramatically by 2019, when the finale of one of the most popular shows on TV, Game of Thrones, drew 19 million viewers. The Ringer declared Game of Thrones “The Very Last Piece of the TV Monoculture,” and that might have been too generous; even then, most people’s attention was split elsewhere. Now we spend more time in front of screens than ever before, and the algorithms all but ensure no two of us ever see the same things.
But music had proved an exception. Beyoncé is an international sensation, BTS are breaking records set by The Beatles, and Taylor Swift is on target for the highest-grossing tour of all time. Granted, rock and hip-hop have both been healthier, but Kendrick Lamar is still headlining festivals and Bruce Springsteen is still selling out stadiums. Music remains universal — at least on the surface.
With apologies to a few BTS solo projects and Taylor’s Versions, none of those artists put out albums this year. And the military enlistment of BTS has left an even bigger hole in the ranks of Gen Z superstars. Ten years ago, Swift, Selena Gomez, Kendrick Lamar, Hayley Williams, Justin Bieber, and so many others had recently broken out. Olivia Rodrigo put out a great album this year, but what about her peers? Does she even have peers?
Perhaps this is just an odd time in music as a younger generation finds itself. Or perhaps we now get our music in too many different ways to agree on much of anything. It takes a big audience of agreeing people to create new superstars. And without big audiences, albums that “feel” big may be a thing of the past.
Then again, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. It ensures that lists like this are different from each other, and perhaps makes them better resources, too, as more of the greatest records come from less-known artists. We certainly didn’t mind; even with fewer household names, 2023 was one of the finest years for music we can remember. Check out the best albums of 2023 below.
—Wren Graves
Features Editor
50. PJ Harvey — I Inside the Old Year Dying
On her 10th studio album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, PJ Harvey strives for newness without veering off too far from the familiar. Revisiting her 2022 epic poem Orlam made room for a personal and transformative record, a testament to her genius. All 12 tracks are written in the same rural Dorset vernacular and follow the protagonist’s coming-of-age story, alluding to Harvey’s desire for reinvention. While her captivating poetry remains at the forefront, the backdrop of eerie field recordings and minimalist instrumentation allow for a more tranquil effort; tracks such as “Prayer at the Gate” and “Lownesome Tonight” have gentle tones, while “All Souls” and “A Noiseless Noise” are rather chilling. Yet it still stands strong amongst her previous concept-centric entries, making PJ Harvey’s first proper release in seven years well worth the wait. — Sun Noor
Stream via Apple Music
49. Deeper — Careful!
Deeper’s third album and their first for Sub Pop is knotty, frenzied, and utterly crisp. The Chicago post-punk quartet write itch-scratching guitar riffs with an almost scientific precision, but their evolving structures and impressive full-band dynamics act as an element of surprise. Vocalist Nic Gohl conjures singular, evocative images, alternating between tension and release sometimes within the same couplet. As an album titled Careful! suggests, there’s a wariness that characterizes many of these songs — still, they find ways to burst with clarity, control, and catharsis. The climax of lead single “Build a Bridge” seems to say it best: “It’s the right kind of rhythm.” — Paolo Ragusa
Stream via Apple Music
48. Baroness — Stone
For the first time in their two-decade career, southern metal mainstays Baroness have used the same lineup for two consecutive albums. The newest addition, lead guitarist Gina Gleason, sets the tone early with a twisting guitar solo on “Last Word,” simultaneously seeming like nothing Baroness have done before and like a perfect encapsulation of their modern sound. Stone is as pummeling and tuneful as just about anything in their discography, so here’s hoping this isn’t the last we’ve heard from this configuration. — W. Graves
Stream via Apple Music
47. André 3000 — New Blue Sun
Many times throughout New Blue Sun, you’ll hear melodies that could only have come from the same genius as “Hey Ya!” and “Ms. Jackson,” and you can imagine, if you like, the radio hits that might have been. But André Benjamin could not bring himself to make that kind of music anymore, as he lays out in the title of the album’s opening track, “I swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” Through almost the entire 87-minute run time, you can hear that literal wind blowing, as his flute and ambient soundscapes mediate on themes like “Ants to You, Gods to Who?” and “…That night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther…” Love it or hate it — and it’s easy to love — New Blue Sun will be talked about for decades to come. — W. Graves
Stream via Apple Music
46. Troye Sivan — Something to Give Each Other
Initially, Troye Sivan’s third album might just seem like beats designed to be dropped into a sexy night at the club — and it delivers that, no question, especially with opening track “Rush.” However, it’s a more introspective musical experience than you’d expect, with songs like “Can’t Go Back, Baby” and “One of Your Girls” speaking to the pop artist’s soulful side. Sivan has something to say about the world, but he’s also not afraid of a good time, and those two facts blend together into an elegant whole here. — Liz Shannon Miller
Stream via Apple Music
45. Asake — Work of Art
The 2023 album from Nigerian singer-songwriter Asake sounds like summer itself. The Afrobeats artist knocks it out of the park with Work of Art, a meticulously cohesive listen that hooks the listener from the beginning and refuses to let go. There’s only one guest appearance on the project — on the now Grammy-nominated “Amapiano,” which features Nigerian rapper Olamide — while the remainder of the album is an invigorating journey through warmth and water, with Asake alone as our guide. Even as the seasons turn cooler, his is a lead you just can’t stop following. — Mary Siroky
Stream via Apple Music
44. boygenius — the record
Phoebe, Lucy, and Julien are the biggest names in folk rock since Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (R.I.P. and all respect to the “little bitch.”) On the supergroup’s debut album, the record, they sound self-aware about this fact, critically engaging with inspirations such as “Leonard Cohen,” Sheryl Crow (“Not Strong Enough”), and a predatory “special” older musician (“Letter to an Old Poet.”) The your-turn my-turn approach to sequencing works because each of them does so well with their turns, and tunes like “Not Strong Enough,” $20,” and “Emily I’m Sorry,” seem destined to go down as classics. — W. Graves
Stream via Apple Music
43. Sprain — The Lamb as Effigy or Three Hundred and Fifty XOXOXOS for a Spark Union with My Darling Divine
One of the grandest statements of the year, Sprain’s The Lamb as Effigy is a towering, challenging, artful monolith. Clocking in at 96 minutes and taking queues from ambient, contemporary classical, sludge metal, slowcore, and more, the record constructs its own self-contained universe of sonic anxiety. At times, it’s crushing, at others, sublime — but throughout, it’s utterly stunning. It seems likely that The Lamb as Effigy will be Sprain’s swan song, and if that’s the case, what a glorious project on which to go out. — Jonah Krueger
Stream via Apple Music
42. Margaret Glaspy — Echo the Diamond
Critical consensus claims there’s been a void in the New York City scene since the Meet Me in the Bathroom era. If we take that for granted, it means artists like Margaret Glaspy are being criminally slept on. With her third full-length, Echo the Diamond, Glaspy has delivered an immaculate amalgamation of the city’s finest moments in blues, grit, and Americana. Self-produced alongside her partner, Julian Lage (whose The Layers, which Glaspy also produced, is up for a 2024 Grammy), it’s rough enough to platform the authentic rawness of Glaspy’s vocals and crisp enough to elevate the lyrics’ soulful sincerity. Those looking for artistry in NYC again best press play. — Ben Kaye
Stream via Apple Music
41. L’Rain — I Killed Your Dog
There’s a reason most horror film fanatics are more receptive to watching a human decapitation than an injured house pet. On I Killed Your Dog, L’Rain leans into grotesque, real-life terrors, apparently flirting with the most extreme pains humankind can inflict on one another – but more often than not, she’s her own villain in these stories. Through spellbinding, soulful dream-pop, L’Rain explores what we can only assume are just some of her darkest thoughts. She even envisions her own corpse propped up with sunglasses on, but that’s the last of her worries: “I just need a piece of brain/ That I am missing in my head,” she murmurs through a creepy vocoder on “I Hate My Best Friends,” calling to mind a zombie’s dinner as much as a bout of helpless despair. Either way, L’Rain implies she doesn’t feel human, making these earthly trepidations all the more perturbing. — Abby Jones
Stream via Apple Music
