You Know I'm Not Impressed at All: The 25* Best Songs of 2023 So Far
Only Kvelertak could've thought of this
Latto and Cardi B (via YouTube)
25. Asake: "2:30"
I get amapiano (rough-hewn, home-programmed) easier than Afrobeats (surprisingly overproduced/wrought, see “Yoga”). So barely half a year after I regretted not being able to jive with the excellently titled Mr. Money With the Vibe, this split the difference. Warm, wordless hook grounds the lofty sing-rapping; rude, thwonky log drum interrupts the Mr. Money vibe. Plus the runtime is damn close to the title.
24. Hatchie feat. Liam Benzvi, “Rooftops”
It was only a matter of time before Hatchie’s whole Wilson Phillips-goes-shoegaze thing grabbed me by the collar and gave me a swirlie. Until Haim takes the right drugs, we’ll have to make do.
23. Karol G & Shakira, “TQG”
“Reggaeton Music (for a Film).”
22. Chris Farren, “Cosmic Leash”
One of those skull-shouting, riff-bending choruses that bulldozes anything else you can remember about the song, followed by the only other thing you can remember about it: Another chorus! Seismic amateur-anthemism at its finest, Jay Som’s choppy drum-editing a nice touch. Fun video, too.
21. Aphex Twin, “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f”
I loved SYRO but it was impressively insular rabbit-hole stuff for a comeback, an even less melodic album proper than Drukqs, which at the time was rumored to be a hard-drive dump. From Cheetah through Collapse the now 51-year-old wunderkind appeared to regain his tune sense though and this one is such a leap forward from those that it registers as some kind of event surprise. Swathy Yo La Tengo sighs pinwheel into “Fingerbib” synths atop something new completely: fuckin’ two-step, played on a twitchy sampled kit whose rimshots I recognize from FL presets. Not exactly building his own batshit computers at this age is he? But it humanizes him nonetheless to hear him bang it all out on recognizable equipment. And humbles the rest of us.
20. The Chisel, “Cry Your Eyes Out”
I loved their first album for half-proving that Chubby and the Gang’s street-punk revival didn’t just exist in my head (half because Chubby himself is in the Chisel, too). But this is more of a song than anything on Retaliation and hence I hope their sophomore effort curbstomps The Mutt’s Nuts.
19. Sampha, “Spirit 2.0”
I missed this well-connected Drake/Yoncé/twigs/Ware sidekick-turned-Mercury-winner in 2017 when I would’ve found his affect too airy anyway. But this twitchy return’s got the detuned tones and skittering grooves I missed on the new Young Fathers and Everything But the Girl respectively. I can’t promise he’d hold my attention without the beat. But beats are so much harder to come by these days than attention-getters.
18. Kaliii, “Area Codes”
“Grindin’.” “Tipsy.” “Lip Gloss.” Every generation gets the drums-only novelty rap hit it deserves. And about a third of Ludacris’ classics hit harder removed from men’s mouths. Next up: Sexyy Red taking “Move Bitch” to class.
17. Kvelertak, “Krøterveg Te Helvete”
So light on its feet it’s almost new wave compared to the superb, chunky grandiosity of “1985,” it achieves the dry twisty thrills of better-day Metallica while ultimately shaking out to, like, Blue Öyster Cult. And if that faint plinking is a glockenspiel, holy shit.
16. Alex Lahey, “You’ll Never Get Your Money Back”
Her guitarriffic power-pop is almost too wholesome but thank Jens an auteur who leaves no phrase unturned can still charm the powers that BNM.
15. Rosalía, “LLYLM”
I dig her “Beso” duet with Rauw Alejandro but I would’ve lost the house had I bet that it would seize the Hot 100 over this catchiest thing she’s ever done which missed the chart completely despite shaking hands with both English and Coca-Cola. Peso Pluma is proof that I obviously don’t know dick about shit and neither do you.
14. PJ Harvey, “A Child’s Question, August”
I suspect the new album’s not for me, pitched somewhere between the John Parish excursions and White Chalk with a budding interest in, uh, Kate Bush English. So rather than continuing her tradition of great albums, it extends a quieter legacy of every Peej album still insisting on the inclusion of one great composition: “When Under Ether,” “The Community of Hope” (I didn’t say lyrics), even that box set had “Shaker Aamer.” Only Peej could make a prayerlike dirge this melodically indispensable. Maybe the album will even come into focus.
13. Peso Pluma, Gabito Ballesteros & Junior H, “Lady Gaga”
I know as much as Ron DeSantis about regional Mexican music other than the fact it isn’t a genre but it’s marketed as a package deal for corridos and banda and other terms I couldn’t define with a gun to my head or the tunes in my ear. I know 24-year-old Peso Pluma has somehow reached Spotify and TikTok digits high enough to put him in league with the Weeknd and Taylor Swift; high enough to give regional Mexican music its first-ever top-five hit; high enough to make me feel the need to play album number three, which is also where it perched on the Billboard 200. Wasn’t bad; I have no frame of reference. I’m impressed that something so traditional and unlikely with its hand-plucked and mouth-blown instruments has sailed past, say, Ava Max or Rosalía in commercial achievements. And I know that after my dutiful listen and looking up instantly to match a (wildly apropos as it happens) title to that hook, “Lady Gaga” got four more volunteer plays in a row. And I’m good without the lyrics, as both the original and translation contain “influencer,” the worst word in any language.
12. Queens of the Stone Age, “Emotion Sickness”
More Silverchair than Phoebe Bridgers, thank Satan. Falsettos is back, baby, and so’s the matching two-octaves-up setting on Josh Homme’s whammy pedal. What you’ve never heard before is the trial-and-error, twixt-tones grunt ‘n squeal on the verses. The Tom Morello Vanguard award for fancy footwork goes to…
11. SWAGGERBOYZ, “Peter Griffin”
Argentinian 15-year-old rappers made the hookiest thing I’d heard all Q1, about smoking a J as fat as Peter Griffin (cue lighter: click, click), beyond that don’t ask me. Their delightfully buffoonish (“Legalicen la heroina!”) late-2022 video mixtape Plug Park 1 y 2 has at least a few more hooks as infectious as “como como Peter Griffin” and plenty of beats this bright; if you can find a DL without ripping from YouTube, send it my way pls?
10. Paramore, “Running Out of Time”
The emo-rap wave made Travis Barker the conduit for some kind of pop-punk wave that’s mutated into some kind of Meet Me in the Bathroom-wave wave where people with names like KennyHoopla are pilfering Bloc Party et al. at their peril when Hayley Williams’ mercurial, unwavering conquistadors exist. Even a low peak for them towers over [gestures wildly] with rock’s premier frontperson sashaying from pulsing R&B verses to cherry-bomb choruses without breaking a sweat. Replace her benchwarming rhythm section with Barker and, oh, Meshell Ndgeocello and she might unleash a full-length tour de force like Brand New Eyes at “Hard Times”’ or “Ain’t It Fun”’s level of layered complexity.
9. Charly Bliss, “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore”
They’re such bona fide pop experts that they know being a rock band only holds them back from world domination. So like Vampire Weekend, Paramore, and the goddamn 1975 before them, they jettison unnecessary instruments and turn production over to Hippo Campus, whom I’ve refused to ever listen to. Until now. Giving the new Carly Rae Jepsen a run for her sunny money, this more recalls Len, the Canadians behind “Steal My Sunshine,” if they kept it going, phrased cogently, and expressed a full range of human emotion with chord changes not samples. Trading Letters to Cleo for McG could make them the truest 90s trash revival yet.
8. Margo Price, “Radio”
If her acid trip led us to gospel-Young Marble Giants verses that fall into that wall-of-sound chorus snapping shut on the trippy-sexy “only thing I had on was the radio,” that would be enough. But making duet partner Sharon Van Etten F-U-N for the second year going is threatening to break Feist’s great 2009 streak lifting Ben Gibbard and Wilco.
7. Latto feat. Cardi B, “Put It on Da Floor Again”
With Nicki so desperate for Hot 100 toppers she’s contributing even less to her samples than “Anaconda” and making nice with other young female rappers, credit Cardi’s A&R investments with taste. She follows the classic “WAP” and the tough “Tomorrow 2” with this bloodbath that falls between the two and couldn’t be more different from Dr. Luke’s empty “Big Energy” with damn near every line a bullseye: “They thought that I was gonna fall off / I hate to bring you bad news,” “Told them bitches meet me at the top / Think they got lost.” And those are before Cardi even enters.
6. Doechii feat. Kodak Black, “What It Is (Block Boy)”
If Coi Leray’s top-ten “Players” is a crash course in how not to sample, Doechii’s biggest sellout move to date is a masterclass in useful interpolation circa publishing-hell 2023. If you know (I didn’t) the Trillville hook, you can’t miss it, and everyone knows “No Scrubs” but not everyone will ID it refitted for the subtlest (and unless I’m really out of the loop on some Drake-gqom crossover, biggest) use of FruityLoops’ amapiano-identified DX7 synth yet. Kodak’s still a disgrace and “every good girl needs a little thug” still a nonstarter but every good weirdo-sidelines rapper needs a little $fund$ so maybe her stock portfolio will outlast that of Azealia Banks, Lil Mama, and Roxanne Shanté as long as TDE doesn’t weirdo-sideline her like SZA (who turned out fine in the end).
5. Sarah Mary Chadwick, “Shitty Town”
TFW that artist you really want to like moves the exact three inches towards accessibility/tunecraft/house-coming-down chorusness you prayed and hoped they would and not one compromise further. Bizarre that such a dour fuck-this barroom cry lives in the sweet spot, but between Joanna Sternberg’s Cluster-B Carole King and Olivia Rodrigo regaining her crown, no one thrives in 2023 songwriting like a theater kid scorned.
4. Megan Moroney, “Tennessee Orange”
Country contains multitudes, like a chord progression with this many fireworks nailing a chorus with fist-shaking gravitas to sorry-not-sorry-momma not about getting vaccinated or dating a person with pronouns listed in their Threads bio but wearing the wrong team’s colors.
3. Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire”
To make use of the infernal Pitchfork scale, this is a 9.8 with a bullet; good morning to every word except the ungodly “fame fucker,” which, fun to shout notwithstanding, is not a thing. But after giving Taylor and Hayley thick, profitable slices of Sour’s pie, I understand her not wanting to give even one bite to Brenda. Like the titular concern, it just sucks.
2. U.S. Girls, “Only Daedalus”
One hook. Fun hook. Fun to weave the mythical Greek architect into an easy-tempo disco ballad in Meghan Remy’s cordoned-off semipop timeline. Fun to make the faders go up and down on at least three tracks of harmony options. Fun to do the handclaps. Fun to hum in the shower. The car. Won’t be semi- for long if she keeps this up.
1. Ava Max, “One of Us”
Sometimes a personality would threaten the whole enterprise: A flamboyant, full-throated melody like mathematician’s code pinpointing previously unknown perfections in the microfibers of the standard pop fabric.
*Bonus Bullshit Blurb I Already Wrote Before Learning the Song Was Released in 2021:
Overmono, “So U Kno”
Far more minimal than the other brothers Tom and Ed (who isn’t?) but they earn their hypnosis with all those interlocking metallic garage sounds propelling the old-school sample and synth ripples threatening to fly off time starting with the low-pass Burial bass. Imagine if they had songs!