The Best Albums of 2022 – Year End List

15. SZA — SOS

SZA’s 5-year hiatus since 2017’s CTRL was an agonizing limbo for many music fans. Her debut was one of the most impactful and celebrated R&B records ever, but SZA’s association with Top Dawg added an element of concern as to when her next release would be (and if it would ever happen). The label is notoriously dysfunctional, and in many ways is now solely dependent on SZA’s mainstream success after Kendrick Lamar announced he was going independent after his latest album.

There’s a lot to love in SZA’s long-awaited return to the spotlight. “Kill Bill,” “Blind,” and “Snooze” show her in familiar form: diaristic lyrics and alt-R&B production, paired with super appealing melodies and a memorable delivery. “F2F,” “Nobody Gets Me,” and “Special” show SZA in a different light, adopting rawer, more specific narratives over pop-rock instrumentals.

Other highlights, like the highly-anticipated “Ghost in the Machine” with Phoebe Bridgers and the fiery opening track prove that she is at the top of her game as a writer and performer, far above most other R&B artists. Those latter two tracks also shed light on her feelings about celebrity status, a welcome perspective we hadn’t heard from her on CTRL.

In an odd way, however, the excellence of many individual songs on this album takes away from its impact as a whole. SOS feels unfortunately tainted by record label influence and the “streaming era” as we’ve come to know it. It’s hard to say that the album in its entirety is a flawless or purposeful piece of art. 23 songs at around 70 minutes is simply too long.

You could separate this album into 10 modern rap-influenced songs and 10 Frank Ocean-influenced songs with a few left over for an indie/rock-influenced EP. While a song like “Low” is catchy and exists in good fun, does SZA’s first album in five years need a club record with Travis Scott adlibs, or could this have been a single released in the last few years?

It’s clear that there are many great tracks here (three of them being singles tacked on to the end of the album), but the acutely disappointing issue with SOS is that these songs have very little connective tissue — lyrically or sonically — aside from being sung by the same person with a singular perspective. For many who’ve been waiting, SOS will be more than enough, but with more intention, I think it could have been the best album of the 2020s so far. Instead, it presents like a playlist of mostly great songs by SZA, one or two for every mood you could be in, meant to be shuffled and enjoyed for 20-30 minutes at a time before moving on to something else.

14. Taylor Swift — Midnights

Taylor Swift’s tenth studio album may not turn into her most popular work, nor her most artistically dignified (see folklore), but it is one that’s true to its minimal aesthetic in a pretty experimental way. She hones in on an infectious bedroom-pop meets synth-pop sound with frankness. Hits like “Anti-Hero” and “Karma” only contain a handful of sounds, but they present as purposefully and melodious as any “complicated” pop tracks on the radio today.

Although “Vigilante Shit” really makes me want to turn this album off, nearly every other track is handled with as much care and minimalism as the hits. Centered around a broad and well-captured concept about late-night overthinking, Midnights has a private, inward energy that feels reflective of our “post-pandemic” pop music scene.

13. Danger Mouse & Black Thought — Cheat Codes

Danger Mouse and Black Thought are both prolific and groundbreaking in their own regard, so their collaborative album was anticipated with great hype from the hip-hop world. It did not overpromise and does not overdeliver — it is a well-executed and impressive alternative rap album.

For some background, the last “rap” album Danger Mouse released was with MF Doom in 2005, but his resumé extends much further. From Broken Bells, his band with The Shins’ James Mercer, to Gnarls Barkley, his band with Ceelo Green, to producing Gorillaz’ Demon Days and most of ASAP Rocky’s A.L.L.A., Danger Mouse has had a career that deserves much more recognition from the public than it has gotten. On the other hand, The Roots’ founder, Black Thought, has reached a god-level status among hip-hop fans that needs little explanation.

These two came together for a straightforward example of sample-based rap that incorporates both typical loop structures (“No Gold Teeth” or “Strangers”) and expansive sound design that’s more in line with an indie record (take “Sometimes” or “The Darkest Part”). For anyone who loves hip-hop, this is an album that should be on repeat.

12. Ethel Cain — Preacher’s Daughter

Ethel Cain is the most-talked-about not-talked-about artist out today. There’s an element of her underground popularity that seems heavily based on cult fanhood and a lack of mainstream listener recognition. Regardless of these tropes of modern internet fandom, however, her debut album Preacher’s Daughter is a successful exercise in the cultivation of aesthetics and their impact on the way music sounds to listeners.

From her Southern gothic Instagram branding and forehead tattoos, to her nostalgic songwriting about a time none of us existed in (and 7+ minute ballads that extend a 13-song album over 75 minutes), Ethel Cain has created a very interesting world for her listeners. Take “A House In Nebraska” or “Thoroughfare” as examples. Many artists simply cannot create the immersive and graphic detail that Ethel Cain can, specifically with Americana as a musical reference-point and haunt as a mood. Anyone crafting such engaging narratives and packing 10+ genre influences into a record is something very special.

11. Kendrick Lamar — Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

After dropping “The Heart Part 5,” it looked as if Kendrick Lamar was going to address the big topics — race, class, America, family, religion, generational trauma — on behalf of his culture. But for the first time, he turned strictly inward for almost an entire album and confronted the impact of these factors on himself. More so than ever before, Kendrick acknowledges the prophet-like expectations placed upon him and rejects them, both explicitly (“Savior”) and implicitly (“Worldwide Steppers”).

We see Kendrick confront fatherhood, personal and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober” is one of the most powerful songs I’ve ever heard), and the inconsistent nature of morality, rarely claiming to speak for anyone else and instead revealing the reasons he shouldn’t have the right. In that acknowledgement of his own inherent flaw, however, Kendrick proves the exact reason why he’s always been the best-suited artist to speak on the big topics, not because he is a prophet, but because he has a complex and lucid understanding of what it means to be human that very few of us possess.

10. MJ Lenderman — Boat Songs

Ashville-based rocker MJ Lenderman described Boat Songs as a project about chasing fulfillment and happiness. Oftentimes, he may not end up grasping that happiness, but the way he presents the day-to-day chase — say, by going to a butcher shop (“Tastes Just Like It Costs”), childhood memories of Michael Jordan (“Hangover Game”), or boat purchases (the aptly-titled “You Have Bought Yourself A Boat”) — is enough to inspire some nostalgic joy in anyone.

His twangy, crunchy take on indie-rock nears the country realm in terms of genre, but it upholds an novel personality free of either genre’s unfavorable tropes. It sounds a bit like vintage Van Morrison with more distortion and less bad politics. Packed with fuzzy guitar solos, a lax vocal delivery, and individualistic and distinct lyricism, Boat Songs sounds like a nonpareil summer drinking day by the water and a sentimental sunburn.

9. Steve Lacy — Gemini Rights

Steve Lacy first stepped into a dim spotlight as the guitarist of Odd Future spinoff, The Internet. As his solo artistry took form, he began producing for artists like Kendrick and Solange, eventually releasing his debut project in 2019. Gemini Rights blends his R&B, indie, alternative, and funk sensibilities into a distinct, 21st-century take on pop guitar music.

Not only is his knack for pop songwriting on full display (“Bad Habit” lives at the rare intersection of Actually Good Song and TikTok Song), but his crisp taste as a producer shines through as well; this album is anything but a waste of time. He packages ten sunny records in a concise 35 minutes, turning away from the industry standard 20-song album in favor of being a tastemaker. He told Zane Lowe its short length was intentional, so that his audience could “make a decision to want to keep playing it again.”

The value of brevity alone is enough to rank Gemini Rights above many other 2022 releases, but his animated singing and summery and indulgent songwriting make it all the more addicting.

8. Harry Styles — Harry’s House

Harry Styles has existed on the fringe of serious musician for nearly his whole career — not in the sense that he doesn’t take his art seriously, only that he could not escape the boy-band, child star aura that One Direction had left him with. This is less to do with his diehard fans, which have never seen him in any light other than godly, and more with a wider audience of critics and non-pop fans. 2019’s Fine Line positioned Harry Styles for an escape from his past, and Harry’s House cemented that transition.

This album is a lively and varied exploration of personal experiences through the lens of Japanese city pop: a leisurely subgenre that combines R&B, soft rock, pop, and disco, among a few others. Harry encapsulates this style with consistency, great ease, and most importantly, endearing confidence. His charm may play a part in having 521,000 first-week sales in the US (only second to Taylor Swift), and his androgynous “renaissance” style may play a part in selling the most vinyls in a single week of the modern era, but his talent as a consistent songwriter and magnetic performer shines through above all else.

7. Oso Oso — sore thumb

The Long Island rock band Oso Oso were originally named osoosooso but opted to change their name because there were too many misspellings on tour flyers. That anecdote epitomizes founding member and lead singer Jade Lilitri’s off-the-cuff take on indie, emo, and pop punk — an act first and think later mentality.

Oso Oso sounds influenced by bands like Pavement, Third Eye Blind, Fall Out Boy, and Peach Pit. sore thumb is filled with the normal tropes of these emo and indie pioneers — songs influenced by restlessness and boredom (“nothing to do”), drugs (“computer exploder”), catchy pentatonic riffs, whinier singing, wall-of-sound mixing — but instead of being defined by them, Oso Oso uses them to inform a far more heady and adult intersection of indie and pop punk.

This album has an unusual melancholic energy that pokes through in the songwriting. Take the line, “Nothing says love like a Gatorade.” All at once we’re given something that feels youthful, a bit sad, druggy, and both immature and mature at the same time? Another lyric, “Don’t know what I want, just need it” repeats in “fly on the wall” and despite its vagueness, the way Lilitri delivers it makes it purgative. sore thumb is an example of what happens when artists wear their influences on their sleeve but are determined to not be derivative. It is possible to do both.

6. Beyoncé — Renaissance

When Beyoncé announced her seventh album Renaissance, the world didn’t know what to expect. It would be her first solo album since 2016’s Lemonade, the most critically-acclaimed and personal of her career. The lead single “Break My Soul” was released 4 days later, and it became clear that Beyoncé was not referring to the colloquial European renaissance that is typically associated with the term, but instead a journey back through the post-1970s black dance music scene, a period highly influential but unfortunately unaddressed in the mainstream despite its clear influence on modern house music.

This “post-1970s” connotation is important to clarify. Many associate disco with a popular era of American music, but it developed a homophobic and racist political opposition, resulting in an event called Disco Demolition Night. For a brief summary: white men were angry at queer and black representation within the genre and organized a 50,000-person event at the White Sox stadium to blow up a crate of disco records, culminating in a riot.

While the music speaks for itself, the political angle of Renaissance is its most intriguing aspect. Beyoncé wrote that creating the album gave her “a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world…a safe place, a place without judgment.” While the explicit context was the COVID-19 pandemic, her experience creating the album mirrors why disco and club spaces became escapist havens for marginalized communities in the 1970s and 80s. Artists and venues in these scenes were pioneering inclusivity. Clubs like Warehouse in Chicago or Paradise Garage in NYC were spaces of unabashed self-expression; small pockets outside of a mainstream culture that was stunting expression in a particularly nefarious way for black and queer communities.

Celebratory and joyous music aside, Renaissance is most impressive in its ability to retrofit dance and house music in both sound and spirit, bringing not only the sonic energy of this era into modern frame, but more importantly, the political intention behind it.

5. Alvvays — Blue Rev

A few notable inspirations of Alvvays third studio album: The Smiths, a Canadian alcoholic beverage called Rev, shoegaze, and surrealist author Haruki Murakami. The chaos among these influences is reflected in the hugely fun Blue Rev, which might be umbrella’d under indie pop but traverses through 40 years of indie subgenres and has a majorly rockish character. Indie rock and shoegaze are most notable, the former reflected in Molly Rankin’s sticky melodic lines and the latter in the atmospheric vocals and effect-heavy guitars.

What separates this album from other indie releases of the year is its expansive and experimental nature. Structurally, the songs embrace discontinuity — they flutter and jump around in intensity and instrumentation. Lyrically, Rankin writes as if she journaled every emotive phrase that occurred to her in the last five years and retroactively stitched them into something coherent. Melodically, the album soars boundlessly through dramatic belts and glossy whispers. It’s all over the place in the best way, and one listen to “Very Online Guy” will exemplify that. Idiosyncratic and radical to its core, Blue Rev is the one of the best ~indie~ records of the year for its ingenuity, density, and electrifying energy.

4. brakence — hypochondriac

I hesitate to use the term “genre-bending” in any critical context, but if one album had to claim that descriptor, it would be brakence’s sophomore LP hypochondriac. So much of modern music is based on combining production elements from different genres, and all music is based on some degree of imitation, but brakence and guitarist Wyatt Otis mix their emo, trap, indie, EDM, folk, and pop influences in a mindblowing way that will go on to define our musical era’s latest concoction, hyperpop.

hypochondriac is a 52-minute tour de force that's most prominent instrument is the computer, which brakence uses to warp, pitch, and manipulate vocals, guitars, and keyboards to unrecognizable states. This robotic production style is contrasted with tangled, math rock guitar by Wyatt (take, “bugging!” but it’s really extended throughout everything) and brakence’s ear for emo melody (“teeth”) and tongue-in-cheek lyrical melodrama (again, take “argyle” but it’s really extended throughout everything).

These sticky melodic elements are backed by alternating digital and live drums, the former interpolating pop grooves like drill (“5g”) and dancehall (“stung”), the latter opting for a straightforward indie feel (“venus fly trap” or half of “deepfake”).

Tethered by a tripped-out internal dialogue that describes losing yourself in your art to process pain and spiraling further as a result of it, this album is heavily reliant on cinema and narrative grandiosity to inform its ambition. This risk pays off in full, as hypochondriac is as uncompromising as it is satisfying, and truly sounds like nothing I’ve heard before.

3. Alex G — God Save the Animals

Alex Giannascoli has been the topic of much indie lore since he started releasing music under (Sandy) Alex G on Bandcamp around 2010. Since then, he’s reached a sought-after balance of popularity and obscurity, worshiped in some circles and entirely unknown in others. God Save the Animals is Alex G’s strongest and most inventive project to date, showcasing his knack for incredible 90s-style melody with the added element of highly experimental computer-based production. It’s an impeccable mix of analog and digital elements that interface in complete harmony.

In terms of effects, anything goes. “S.D.O.S” and “Cross The Sea'' feature vocal pitching that sounds like a malfunctioning T-Pain, yet they manage to alternate logically with more straightforward indie-alt cuts like “Runner,” or the Elliott Smith-like “Early Morning Waiting.” Tracks like “Ain’t It Easy '' combine this droning delivery with autotuned vocals and guitar chords that sound like Nirvana’s “Something In The Way” without the Boss DS-1 pedal.

Similarly, “Blessing” sounds like a Nine Inch Nails vocal with moody guitar á la Modest Mouse’s “Dramamine'' during the verses and Oracular Spectacular synths during the outro. “Immunity” closes with a minute of digital lofi jazz chords and transitions into “Headroom Piano,” which is best described as indie-grunge-jazz fusion — sounds ridiculous, I know.

How can all of this be possible within one cohesive album? Simply put, Alex G has proved himself to be one of the ingenious producers in modern music. God Save the Animals seamlessly combines decades of alternative music into a new hyperindie genre that only a generational talent can pull off successfully.

2. The 1975 — Being Funny in a Foreign Language

Matty Healy is a bit of a divisive figure. In promotion of his fifth album he told The Guardian,

“If you’re still making music in your 30s, you’re either wadded or good, and I’m both.”

The most famous criticism levied against him revolves around his pretension and perceived arrogance. He’s been called wordy, a know-it-all, a prick, etc. On Being Funny In A Foreign Language, this “pretension” reveals itself to be a valuable part of his worldview when he reflects inward; he is observant about nearly every aspect of himself and he writes about it without inhibition.

“Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Calling his ego imagination?”

What’s most unique about this album is that Matty strips down many of his previously heady observations around love and life into simple and direct lyricism: “I’m in love with you.” He seems to find catharsis in these simple expressions. The desires he explores as he questions his needs are backed by sparse orchestral productions from Jack Antonoff that make everything feel poignant and real. “Do you think I have forgotten about you?”

There’s less beating around the bush, less intellectualization, less social commentary, and more feeling. And ironically, by writing songs about himself, he may have made his easiest and most accurate social commentary yet: love, whether of oneself or of someone else, is a universally painful, beautiful, and confusing experience.

For the first time, reading between the lines isn’t needed on a 1975 album. Being Funny is a feat of personal honesty communicated through personal questions and blunt statements. This openness fashions a truly beautiful 11 songs that can make you miss things you never had and love people you don’t know. By tackling such a big topic through an inward turn, Matty Healy and The 1975 have crafted an almost flawless exploration of love.

1. Black Country, New Road — Ants From Up There

Four days before the release of Ants From Up There, Black Country, New Road’s lead singer Isaac Wood announced he was indefinitely leaving the band. Via screenshot Instagram post, he wrote,

“I have bad news which is that I have been feeling sad and afraid too. And I have tried to make this not true but it is the kind of sad and afraid feeling that makes it hard to play guitar and sing at the same time.”

His departure came as a shock to any followers of the 7-piece Cambridgeshire post-punk group, whose sound he helped define with his deep timbre and strained, spoken-word vocal performances. This technique is best categorized at sprechgesang, an expressive middle-ground between singing, talking, and some yelling.

His writing is made up of day-to-day specificities, abstract metaphors, and meta pop culture references (“She had Billie Eilish style”). Isaac Wood is in a class of his own as a songwriter, and Ants From Up There conjures even more emotion knowing that he won’t be singing with the band anymore.

BCNR’s second album is a borderline religious experience, transcendent in its cathartic and cleansing nature, both lyrically and instrumentally. Many moments on the record build to such towering intensity that it is hard to know what to do with yourself. Turn it down? Turn it up, turn it off, or lean into it and feel something alongside it? Listen five minutes into “The Place Where He Inserted The Blade,” or two and a half minutes into “Good Will Hunting,” or the last four minutes of “Snow Globes.” There’s a legitimately overwhelming emotional fervor that spans across this album’s 59 breathtaking minutes.

Of their experimental style, sometimes deemed post-punk or even post-rock, drummer Charlie Wayne actually said the records are “more conceptually pop than sounding pop,” and it’s quite clear that BCNR do not sound pop. Their instrumentation incorporates elements of jazz (even some free jazz elements on the end of “Good Will Hunting”), chamber pop, folk, punk, and rock.

Any “pop” is buried deeply within the arrangement, rearing its head in the chorus of “Chaos Space Machine” or the verse melodies on “Bread Song.” The band cited Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish as a huge inspiration for this album, along with Funeral by Arcade Fire and even the song “White Ferrari” by Frank Ocean. This funny mix of influences shows just how unconventional this album is to its core.

Ants From Up There is a profoundly-written piece of music, tackling themes of codependency, loneliness, desperation, emotional expectations, growth, and romantic hope. The long, passionate arrangements often feature moments of intense beauty, both lyrically and musically, presented boldly and in great opposition with popular structure and sound. The 12-minute closing track, “Basketball Shoes,” plays as a medley of motifs (pay specific attention to the concorde jet references) from the rest of the album. Isaac writes:

“And I’m feeling kinda normal with a packed lunch
Train rides don’t hurt much these days
We’re all working on ourselves
And we’re praying that the rest don’t mind how much we’ve changed”

Having not spoken much about the meaning behind this album (which grows deeper for me upon each listen), this small piece of plastic in a sea of dense lyrics is enough to share. All at once, it’s crushing and hopeful, specific and abstract, open and concealed, heartbreaking. Ants From Up There is so many emotions as one, presenting as a feeling entirely new and philosophically relatable that might never be harnessed so viscerally again in a musical work.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Yeat — Lyfë
Fontaines D.C. — Skinty Fia
Ravyn Lenae — HYPNOS
Weyes Blood — And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow
Father John Misty — Chloë and the Next 20th Century
JID — The Forever Story

The 15 Best Albums of 2022