How is Living+ 2023 even happening? Is another of our grueling 8-months-late end-of-year lists really necessary? Why not just throw together another Spotify playlist and call it a day? Are we really that interested in I wonder what it would look like? to justify that level of time committment? Years ago, we didn't care. We just wrote whatever and posted whatever. What happened to the spontaneity?
Feel free to observe and/or "check out" the carefully selected photos and font sizes, but the track descriptions (mostly Succession pilled) make less sense than ever.
Do not read.
#25. Sweeping Promises "Eraser"
This will age us, but no one should be reading this anyway: From the mid to late 80s, both Nickelodeon and PBS spent much of their budgets on import shows from UK, Canada, and Japan. Something about "Eraser's" super-analog vocal treatment sparks a very specific odd nostalgia for the music on some of these shows. To be fair, we first noticed this (likely unintentional) reference in a few other moments from Good Living Is Coming For You (SPs' Tascam 4-track triumph, released uncharacteristically hybrid from both Sub Pop and Feel It), like the main vocal hook in "Throw Of The Dice" for example.We'll attempt a pinpoint, but it's just not gonna happen: It's somewhere around 1985, resting between the largely recycled score on BBC's Danger Mouse (reran at 7:30PM daily on Nick through to the end of 1987) and a handful of the outside-commissioned shorts aired between the narrative segments on Sesame Street. Or something else adjacent to one of these faint TV memories. A cluttered list of possibilities could fill yet another gruellingly tedious blog post, so we'll stop right there.
#24. Sedona "Touch & Go"
Again, we're not really interested in zoning on the specific references, but "Touch & Go" would have fit perfectly on our best of 2005 - a fresh POV resting nicely alongside Avril, Clarkson, Hilary, and Jessica's catchiest summer songs. Maybe Sedona will finally release that long-teased LP sometime soon. Or maybe not. All we're saying is, take a good look at how well this formula worked for fellow pop songsmith Chappell Roan: A seemingly endless string of singles (nine total) since 2020 finally got sequenced alongside 4 or 5 new jams to comprise one of the most delightfully solid full lengths of this decade. At this point, Sedona has a strong enough back catalogue to achieve something very similar. Plus, we want that vinyl. Where's the vinyl?
#23. Yo La Tengo "Sinatra Drive Breakdown"
#22. Troye Sivan "One Of Your Girls"
#21. Dazy "Forced Perspective"
#20. 100 Gecs "The Most Wanted Person In The United States"
By the end of 2023, some intern at Fox News selected this wacky jam to segue into a commercial break during one of their cult talk shows for dumbasses. "I turned on the news and it said..." A few million boomers' first exposure to those "boing" samples may have unlocked some extreme impulsions: Hours later, both My Pillow and Liberty Mutual reported mysterious brief skyrockets in their sales figures, likely thanks to The Gecs' bonkers-as-fuck production - perhaps their finest to date.This brings us to our one gripe: The production is so hilarious and fun that it almost makes it too easy to forgive them for its lyrical laziness, settling on multiple placeholder words throughout a repeated one-line refrain that an average cheeky third grader could have made up during recess. "And it said? THAT I was?" On a 26-minute 10-song album that took them 4 years to complete, that's the best they could think of? "The #1 most wanted in the United States" sounds pretty exciting, but they couldn't think of a more descriptive word than "PERSON?" It's like getting a perfect score on the SATs and then spelling your name wrong. We prefer its smokin' bridge chant "Is it hot like that? Yeah it's hot like that" and juvenile nonsense-verses.
With compartmentalization properly adjusted, we're finally ready to entertain a few rock crits' Ween comparisons dating back to 2019. "Money Machine" is basically "You Fucked Up" for the digital age, while "Doritos and Fritos" could feasibly pass as a lost reimagining from GodWeenSatan-era. Despite these, "The modern day Ween" label feels overall inaccurate, since 100 Gecs are the first of their kind. More accurately, they occupy the long-absent major-label weirdo contingent once fulfilled by the likes of Dean and Gene, alongside Butthole Surfers, Daniel Johnston, Mr. Bungle, Flaming Lips, and The Frogs. With Alex G recently signing to a major, the space is again occupied by at least two of these bands -- not exactly The New Weirdo Renaissance, but perhaps just enough to spark other musicians' creativity in a similar direction. The freaks of Gen Z deserve more ass-kicking weirdos.
#19. The Hives "Bogus Operandi"
Who's been gatekeeping The Hives 2.0 and never told us they were still kicking ass? Without checking every Hives release since 2004, would it be crazy to call this their best song in over 20 years? Does it smoke "Walk Idiot Walk" from 2004? Was "Walk Idiot Walk" a bizarre, underwhelming choice for their 2nd album's lead single? Were we familiar with scene-club indie-dance fashion kids way back in 2004? Why was that a thing? Is the video for "Bogus Operandi" the best video of 2023? Or at least in the top 5? Should we regret not doing a videos list last year? Should we maybe just throw one together right now? Are we able to think of 10 videos off the top of the head? Would it be fair to just say "Got Me Started," "The Hillbillies," the OPN video with The Donut Hole, and "Bogus Operandi" are probably somewhere in the top 6? Was this song a huge hit on modern rock stations, and if not why not?Please limit your essay response to 100 words because we don't have all day over here.
Extra credit question: Why don't The Hives have a Bandcamp?
#18. Tkay Maidza "WUACV"
#17. Melenas "Bang"
#16. Smelter "New Skin"
#15. Troye Sivan "Rush"
#14. Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar "The Hillbillies"
Let's talk about Kendrick and Drake.Actually let's mostly talk about Drake and the underlying source of his ridicule. Why is he never taken seriously as a rap artist, gettin' in squabbles left and right? Our best guess: Drake lives in denial. He hates that he's has no control over his permanent branding as "pop star that raps," instead of a cred-worthy "rap artist." Dorky, perpetually 22-years-old, unfathomably rich and famous, he's the Justin Timberlake of rappers (minus the DUI). The boy needs to grow up, accept it, and own it, or else this identity crisis will continue for the remainder of his cultural relevance.
Post-acceptance, he can still flex some serious boasts: He's not just a "pop star" but one of the most successful mega-brands in music history. Each new release in his discography has consistantly defied low expectations, despite his cringey forays into Pinkerton-levels of therapy session TMI. The haters (us included) continue expecting a LONG overdue quality plateau, only to be met with a handful of surprisingly edgy tracks year after year, ranging from "challenging and dark" to "bouncy and fun." While nothing earth-shattering, his past decade of releases include none that completely suck. A pop star at his echelon of fame (or infamy, if the POV fits) doesn't need to seek a broad array of genuine dopeness, but it often occurs anyway.
The double-edge sword lies within his tastes and sonic choices. He's clearly a hard worker, dropping "surprise" mixtapes about once per year - a fatiguing pace preferring quantity over quality. But even his more recent drops eventually reveal some edge and dopeness, perhaps due to his desperation for an unachievable level of importance that's entirely on his terms.
He wants what Kendrick's earned - a degree of multi-platinum cred unseen since the days of The Low End Theory and 36 Chambers. But when you're that huge of a pop star, it just doesn't work that way. The degree that he flexes his practically nonexistent "street cred" consistently matches the degree to which he comes off as an oblivious dork.
This trajectory was set in place within the first 10 seconds of his breakthrough smash, 2009's "Best I Ever Had." Over a piano trickle sampling Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds' "Fallin' In Love Again," the spoken intro gives major "Lance Bass / Joey Fatone" energy: "You know, a lot of girls be / Thinkin' my songs are about them / This is not to get confused / This one's for you."
Perhaps hurting his case further, "Best I Ever Had" dropped concurrent with an uptick in Noggin's reruns of his 7-season arc on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Fans and non-fans alike will not shake this association. A child star turned rapper that "has bars" is still a former child star. Meanwhile, Kendrick studied and mastered rap throughout his upbringing in Compton. Guess who wins every single time?
#13. Bar Italia "Yes I Have Eaten So Many Lemons Yes I Am So Bitte"
It's this initial groove-layer that kept us returning, in hopes that their weak spots would eventually grow on us. But they haven't: structural nonsense, grating vocal performances, melodies and lyrics that sound drunkenly shat out at 4AM at an expensive-as-fuck home studio in posh upperclass London.
By the 2nd or 3rd listen through their breakthrough single "Nurse!," we wondered about its creation process too much to enjoy its strengths. Seems transparent enough: One band member recorded the entire song on their own, singing the catchy chorus (the best part) and leaving open space for the others' unwritten vocal parts. It's at this point when lyrics and a "first thing I could think of" vocal melody hastily come together. These pinned-on vocal takes comprise most of our frustration with this project. In a handful of instances, our "grower" theory actually worked, more so on The Twits than on their earlier LP. "Twist" is a good example: A decently structured 6/8 spagetti-western thing with vocals and lyrics that still grate but perhaps not to a degree that drags it to ruins.
Applying process of elimination, their best songs maintain the dope grooves with minimal intrusion from their most destructive tendancies. From these, we hear "Lemons" standing out enough to lock for our Top 20, thanks in no small part to a chill understated vocal performance from the best of their 3 singers (the glasses dude, looks like Adam Friedland).
With all this said, we think they show outstanding potential for future releases, pending they can critically examine their weaknesses and invest some of that inheritance money on a dope producer who can really help them shine. It might even make up for their jaw-dropping trainwreck of a live show, put on full display in their Coachella live stream a few months back. (Mercifully no longer on Youtube, they gave Salem at the Fader Fort something to aspire to.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb7PjuAdwy8
#12. NewJeans "Super Shy"
Is this the video where the entire 300+ student body of a random primary school in Americatown, USA are shown in a super-wide shot dancing in unison in front of their school? It would seem as though the NewJeans video director may have mistakenly thought this creepy-as-fuck image would make random kids say "wow that's so cool, I would also enjoy it if all 300 kids at my school were to dance as one." Luckily for NewJeans the song is catchy and fun enough that it seemed more awkward than genuinely scary. If the quality of the jam were not so hot, nothing about this image would sit well with us. But this may be testament to the song's dopeness, since we almost forgot this part of the video existed.
Here's a great idea for TikTok: The Don't-Dance Challenge. You win the challenge by just enjoying the song. Nothing against The Do-Dance Challenge, if that's your preference, but the dream keeps dreaming.
#11. Pardoner "Rosemary's Gone"
#10. Brain Tourniquet "An Expression In Pain"
#9. Beach Fossils "Don't Fade Away"
#8. Narrow Head "Caroline"
Music supervisors take note: "Caroline" is exactly the kind of emo-grunge-core we wish we could hear in an indie-film about 20-somethings coming-of-age midway through a quarter-life-crisis while navigating self-discovery, scraping to get by, trying and slacking, succeeding and failing, finding and losing love, etc, etc. It's exactly the kind of pensive, urgent, loud guitar-rock that should be Track 5 on a 15-song soundtrack full of sonically aligned newish bands like Momma, Rocket, Turnstile, Alien Boy, Young Guv, Glitterer, Dazy, Flasher, Cherry Glazerr, Milly, Ovlov, Jobber, and topped off with a couple hardcore-adjacents like Gel and Fury. Now that's a soundtrack worthy of some excitement, not only to spotlight a truly misrepresented subset of modern youth culture, but also to get these clueless airchair dumbasses to shut their traps about the "dead" or "undead" that rock is allegedly experiencing. Tell that to the packed Momma show we saw at Music Hall last year. Say that into the mic at Ovlov's frantic Market Hotel show a few months back, or at the Milly / Hotline TNT show at Baby's All Right when we were by far the oldest people in the room. (All sold out shows by the way, or close to it). The percentage of loud rock kids across the youth culture spectrum isn't exactly a huge number, but it's a much larger one than "the narrative" would have us believe. And their passion for this music is strong. (Also, most of them fuck with Deftones.)
Singles and Trainspotting are probably the two best examples of '90s soundtrack curation that spoke on behalf of a previously ignored generational subset whose numbers were much larger than assumed. The very idea that this isn't currently happening is ridiculous. For their new film I Saw The TV Glow, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun perhaps achieved the past decade's strongest attempt - a 16-song collection that reimagines the heights soundtracks could have reached in the 2010s, following the strength of 2009-era comps for Twilight and Jennifer's Body. Had its curation occurred in 2016, I Saw The TV Glow's album would fit this exact criteria. But as a 2024 release, it's showcasing a movement that's already been well-covered and packaged as its own era in the rock trajectory. Quickly glancing, we see solo-Hop Along, solo-Chairlift, Phoebe, Snail Mail, Jay Som. You'll hear their pretty/sad voices all the time on NPR and SiriusXMU. 50-something indie dudes love attending their shows. It's not necessarily the exciting, youthful bombshell we're describing here, but it's still the closest we've heard in a while. So keep them coming. The door's wide open. More hot soundtracks, pleeease.
#7. Turnstile "Everything You Know"
Here's the only song on Living+ 2023 that technically hasn't been released yet, and we're not sure why.Here's our weird anecdote: We binged through Season 3 of I Think You Should Leave about a week after it dropped on Netflix, not realizing the cheesy-sounding rock song prominently featured in episode 4 was a new song from our favorite current rock band. We saw a Stereogum headline mention something about a new Turnstile song appearing on the show, and confusion settled after realizing this same cheesy song was in fact Turnstile. A few months later while compiling thoughts and info for a "2023 TV and Movies" podcast discussion, the extended separation from our initial impression made a huge difference. Suddenly, this mysterious jam became firmly brain-stuck in one of those 3-day extended remixes, subconsiously looping over and over, both at work and during sleep.
We quickly related to the guy from the sketch, fueled with entirely unearned rebellion and youthful excitement. The Turnstile boys are keeping us young. We're dumbfounded why Roadrunner has yet to capitalize on such a great song. Perhaps some legal bullshit with Netflix?
But more than anything else in that moment, we needed a way to hear it while driving. Without a presence on any major or less-than-major streaming services, we tried an old-fashioned mp3 download from Soulseek and still found nothing. No audio extractions, no fan edits. But we did find the episode's video file. So what if we just tried that? Let's give it a shot...
A few minutes after the video file completed, we dragged it into Audacity where a very strange, unexpected discovery occurred: The audio of this episode had split into 6 seperate stereo tracks, perhaps in their respective "surround sound" channels. We're not sure exactly how that works. But even more relevant to our mission, two of these tracks contained only music with no dialogue, making it all the easier to isolate the song for our own special "fan edit." About 30 minutes later, our hasty-yet-asskicking edit was complete.
Should we share this edit with the world? Believe it, we tried. Soundcloud and Youtube immediately rejected our upload citing copyright claims, which must be why it's still impossible to locate an audio stream. The only exception we could find is the one embedded below -- a fan edit that adheres to a conventionally longer 3+ minute structure than what Turnstile likely laid to tape. It's far off enough from the original recording that Soundcloud hasn't flagged it yet, making it the only currently available version.
At least one Reddit poster seems convinced that this song, while written and performed by Turnstile, is actually the band playing a character created by Tim Robinson. The character is "The Everything-You-Knows" performing a song called "Listening." While not unfeasible, this conflicts with the song's metadata tags on Shazam and Spinitron, both of which mysteriously vanished from these 2 services at some point during August 2024. But until a more official source says otherwise, the song info is Turnstile, "Everything You Know," Roadrunner Records, 2023.
#6. Chappell Roan "Red Wine Supernova" / "After Midnight"
The ascent of Chappell Roan is by far the most exciting thing to happen in pop music since the turn of the decade. "Last summer, she was a camp counselor. This summer, she’s a femininomenon." Yeah, no kidding. We're hooked deep into this one, mesmerized by how good it feels to witness her story unfolding in real time. The underdog triumphs. Finally!Savor this moment, kids. And then brace yourselves for a possible oversaturation. A multitude of story re-tellings might arrive after the album hits #1 (perhaps in the next few weeks, symbolically overtaking Taylor Swift's position), and then re-entering at #1 after the Grammys (where she has a remarkably solid shot of winning Album Of The Year).
The story: Seeds planted upon album release -> Seeds sprout throughout her 2 months of shows with Olivia Rodrigo -> "The little sprout that could" reaches full bloom just in time for Coachella, delivering an explosively ultra-confident yet endearingly human performance, conveniently live streaming to the entire world via Youtube. By the end of the month, she's interviewed by Elton John, while Bonnaroo uncharacteristically but wisely moves her from side- to main-stage.
Seemingly overnight, she's an actual megastar, tapping into a deep level of mature listener connection envied by most pop artists whose initials aren't T.S. As the era of stan culture all but diminishes the impact of the so-called "important" musician, Chappell Roan embodies a non-superficial no-bullshit necessity. She represents so much for so many different types of people, while her palpably loveable and approachable aura only amplifies her album's bangers-per-capita (essentially 10 singles, plus 4 exceptional album tracks that any other artist would gladly drop as their lead single). Bangers, coolness, and actual importance: The ultimate triple threat of 2024.
So now that's out of the way, here's what we really wanted to dig into - the largely unexplored peculiarities of this whole thing:
- She's not a former child star, an actor, or a model. She's not indebted to nepotism.
- Nothing about this record suggests "boardroom approved."
- Released by an offshoot of Island Records who clearly had no idea what they had on their hands, the record was not well promoted upon release.
- There was no "accidental internet glitch" such as the sus Youtube algorithm push for Phoebe Bridgers' "Kyoto" video in 2020.
- Disney's endless PR cash was not on hand to fabricate auto-streaming confrontations or high-profile playlisting favors, such as those ensuring the instant success of a song like "Driver's License" by shoving it in people's faces ad nauseum.
- Initial reviews were mixed. Pitchfork cluelessly scored it a 7.2 and somewhat egregiously described "After Midnight" as "otherwise unremarkable."***
- Typically a Hail Mary promo boost for a pop record of this quality (ie Body Talk, Sucker, Emotion), an end-of-year listicle consensus barely materialized.^^^
It's not like Chappell Roan started the year 2024 from zero, but she made the absolute most of what hints of momentum she could collect and funneled all of it into an explosive live experience that doesn't need pyro, with a refreshingly sparse stage plot - just Chappell, her songs, and an ass-kicking 3-piece backing band. She built her brand almost entirely around her own self-confident stage persona, generating buzz through old fashioned word-of-mouth.
It's as close to organic as ascent-to-stardom can get these days - a success story that owes the machine virtually nothing.
***Note: While working on this very large blog post, we noticed at least 2 other music writers suggesting "After Midnight" as Chappell Roan's worst song, largely conflicting with fans' enthusiasm. We're prepared to defend. If the design of Midwest Princess functions (among a sea of enumerable functions) among the all-time greatest collections tributing the past 25 years of pop stars, "After Midnight" is a great example of homage-surpasses-influence. In this case, it's Katy Perry's Teenage Dream LP - specifically, the party jams "California Gurls" and "Last Friday Night," the latter of which we largely regret placing as our 5th best song of 2011.
^^Note: Friend-of-the-blog Maura Johnston placed it #4 on Time's list, while friend-of-friends-of-the-blog Rob Sheffield largely advised Rolling Stone's #12 placement. But at the end of 2023, nearly all the consensus instead surrounded the comparitively whiny Guts. (Boring.) What should have been 2 very high profile promo boosts felt more like two larger than average droplets landing in a gigantic listicle bucket. While this problem continues suppressing so many of the past decade's best albums, it's refreshing as hell to finally witness a genuine breakthrough side-stepping broken industry norms.
#5. PinkPantheress ft Ice Spice "He's A Liar Pt 2"
“We don’t need to repeat a verse, we don’t need to have a bridge. We don’t need a long outro.”We would prefer to never know this quote existed. On its own, "Boy's A Liar Pt 2" is one of the breeziest summer songs in recent memory, and doesn't seem deserving of analysis beyond "is it catchy? is it fun? is it summery? yes, yes, and yes." Without the fun-sucking microscopic analysis so inherent to modern pop music, it's easily one of the 10 best songs of 2023.
But since she brought it up...
This is not the first time a flawed-yet-serious jam still felt huge enough to qualify for a year's Top 10. The one that comes to mind most often is "2 On," when Schoolboy Q's distractingly raunchy bridge felt like a phoned-in stain on an otherwise perfect pop song. It's not entirely uncommon these days.
Okay, let's talk about song structure.
So PinkPantheress wants to break the rules of structural pop convention. No problem. Do what you need to do. Robert Pollard's spent the last 40 years writing hundreds of songs that experiment with convention. The difference: Pollard's also written several hundred songs that adhere to those same conventions. Are we purposely removing structural elements for its own sake, just to generate Twitter arguments? Or are we experimenting out of love for the form?
Has PinkPantheress earned the right to become a public figure who decided that she knows better than the past 60 years of successful pop songwriters?
Step one: In order to break the rules effectively, you need to listen and study to gain an understanding of why conventions work as well as they do.
Step two: Learn to create a mental image of "perfect structure." Even without the acumen to articulate why, learn how to identify a perfectly crafted song when you hear it.
Step 2.5: Step two enhances ability to ID tricks and imperfections, when they elevate dopeness, when they make a song slightly worse, when repetition works, when a motif becomes too repetitive or not repetitive enough. ID the basics of key changes and how they may or may not psychologically elevate a listening experience by introducing sounds or notes not yet heard throughout a song. ID examples of when imperfections work or don't work, whether intentional or not, both subjectively and objectively.
Step three: Perhaps the most important step for a writer like PinkPantheress who values brevity, learn to identify when a shorter song feels undercooked instead of just right, or when a longer song earns its length instead of tediously plodding.
We're only just now hearing the original "Boy's A Liar" and learned that PinkPantheress's 2nd verse was removed to make room for Ice Spice's bridge, closing with a 4-line rap cadence strongly suggesting "let's bring it on home," at a point in the song that feels only about 40% finished. The fact that PinkPantheress had an opportunity to improve the song's flow by preserving her 2nd verse feels like such a wasted opportunity, choosing instead to keep the song under 2:30 not to help it sound any better but for the sake of brevity itself.
It's still a great song, but its final version does kind of sound like something was accidentally deleted. The transition from Ice Spice's rap back into the pre-chorus strikes us as one of the most effective pop moments of 2023, making it all the more frustrating that it occurs way too early in the song.
Whoever edits Wikipedia made sure to throw in a paragraph about Rolling Stone and Vulture including "Boys a Liar Pt 2" in their notable Grammy snubs, specifically for Record and Song of the Year. Maybe it would've had a better shot if it was structured like a fully formed song instead of a demo.
Repeating a chorus doesn't have to sound repetitive. After mastering the fundamentals of pop structure, the tricks become more obvious. 2nd choruses don't always but occasionally appear with new arrangement detail, or alter half of the chorus's lyrics, or attach a post-chorus section. There's no law that says a chorus can only re-appear later in a song as an exact copy-and-paste of its first occurance. In fact, we wish newer bands would experiment with this more often. But none of this would ever occur to kids who haven't done their homework.
Stop confusing laziness with "breaking convention." Oh you don't like being called lazy? Then maybe prove you're not by learning how to fix clunky structures instead of just hastily pasting together "production + singer" and killing a dope groove dead in its tracks at the 2:29 mark for no reason whatsoever. There's a lot more to songwriting than you might think.
#4. The Tubs "Illusion Pt II"
#3. Chappell Roam "Casual"
This is somewhat bittersweet. At the time, it was very tough to choose a #1 best song of 2022, and so we ended up tying 3 songs as our Top 3. No regrets, but we wish we had known better. The November 3, 2022 review for "Casual" was Pitchfork's only Chappell blurb for quite some time. It did not receive BNM, making it somewhat of an unfindable needle in the track review haystack. We know music writers have to listen through a lot of bullshit on a daily basis, but so do we. "Casual" isn't a grower at all - its first-listen impact felt as immediate as the best tracks on Anti, to us anyway. Within the album context (track 5), its first listen revealed a truly gifted star, songwriter, and vocalist. Is that yet another triple threat? We believe it is. And hey, her singles are still on Bandcamp. Bless her.
For anyone interested, we uncharacteristically fixed the first 25 tracks on our "Waffle Party 2022" Playlist, sneaking in "Casual" and the excellent "My Kink Is Karma" (also from 2022) to positions that felt more accurate to us:
Waffle Party 2022 - Redux
1. Chappell Roan - Casual
2. SZA - Kill Bill
3. Dazy & Militarie Gun - Pressure Cooker
4. Alien Boy - Wondering Still
5. Flasher - I'm Better
6. Momma - Tall Home
7. Nilufer Yanya - The Dealer
8. Carly Rae Jepsen - Talking To Yourself
9. Sevyn Streeter - 23
10. Alex G - Runner
11. Soccer Mommy - Shotgun
12. Harry Styles - As It Was
13. Momma - Speeding 72
14. Chappell Roan - My Kink Is Karma
15. LCD Soundsystem - New Body Rhumba
16. Built To Spill - Never Alright
17. Snail Mail - Feeling Like I Do
18. Nilufer Yanya - L/R
19. Hatchie - Lights On
20. The Rubs - Yer Trouble
21. 100 Gecs - Doritos & Fritos
22. Chat Pile - Lake Time (Mr. Rodan)
23. Nas - Michael & Quincy
24. L.O.T.I.O.N. - Cybernetic Super Lover
25. The Garden - Freight Yard
#2. Troye Sivan "Got Me Started"
Amid packed daily schedules and the push-and-pull shuffle from agents and managers, it's no wonder that neither Brian Cox nor Troye Sivan have any memory of "When Troye Met Brian" - perhaps the crossover event of 2023 and a cautionary tale of jumble-fatique. Neither party recalls their agents saying "You know them, right? Quick photo. The kids will love it." Both Troye Sivan and Brian Cox sleepily replied "what? what's going on?" in unison. 16 seconds later it was done and over. The following morning, an associate first showed Troye Sivan the now-viral photo. Both were perplexed at how his pants were suddenly missing. They were both certain he had been wearing pants at the time, even slightly recalling Brian Cox remarking "hey nice pants," although they later realized this may have been sarcasm. The "blink and you'll miss it" nature of this shuffle-fatique would later influence the music video for "Got Me Started," which shows people running and eventually throwing themselves into odd choreographed positions that are technically aligned with each other but do not resemble actual dancing in the classic "pop music video" sense. #1. Kurt Vile "Another Good Year For the Roses"
If you had a good 2014 or 2015, then give yourself a pat on the back because those was the last "good" years in the history of the world. Not amazing. Not great. But "good." Since then, no one has had a good year. And if you didn't have a good year-long-stretch at some point between Jan 1, 2014 and Dec 31, 2015, we're sorry to break the news that you've been waiting longer than some other people.
The only actual non-list TMK post of 2023 was about "good music years" vs "bad music years," and an argument against the poptimist assertion that "every music year is good." (We also assessed 2022 as "okay," which we can now confidently re-assess as "very good!" See our Chappell Roan blurb at #3 for more info.)
We forgot to mention something important though: Just as how we're now experiencing a status quo fueled by hyperbolic praise of the modern era, the opposite can be equally as damaging.
Take 1996 for instance. At no other point in history has such a musically generous year met so much influential negativity, to such an unfair degree that it prematurely derailed the essence of the entire decade. Speaking somewhat broadly, the vibe-shift was practically immediate: By the end of January '97, "Wannabe" broke in the U.S,. kicking off this new era; by December '97, only the poppiest or most watered-down fuzz-guitar alternative or golden-era hiphop lingered in the mainstream. Only 3 years earlier, summer '94 felt like such a triumph with the likes of "Sweater Song" and "Loser" hijacking every Top 40 station. The end of '97 felt comparitively sleek, as if every morsel of grit, edge, and sarcasm had all but disintegrated for no good reason, as if someone of influence decided on behalf of everyone that popular music was in danger of getting too good.
How did this entire era flash by so quickly compared to the endlessness of whatever is happening now? Brat and Chappell Roan defined this past summer, but shouldn't there have been more than 2 fun or exciting moments of musical ubiquity? Can Magdalena Bay join the party, or are they too weird?
Kurt Vile says, "One day I'll sit down and write me a letter / Get my shit together." No, we actually need to get our shit together now. Like, right the fuck now.