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.
Ear candy for gettin' riggity-wrecked on Purple Urkle. Always blazin' at least 18 jams in a row. The apparent Obama Kush royalty exclusively gathers four dudes who all had hits during 1994 rapping over a beat that sounds derivative of 1994's most frequently sampled artist (P-Funk). 1994 was also a landmark year for B-Real since it's the last time he rapped over a song that didn't suck. Yes, it's a nostalgia jam, but it's also fucking hilarious, a great party song, and simply better than what the young generation of new-backpackers have been cooking up. 
*Song intro starts playing* 
Here we have the first ever Hot Mix apparance from the death metal band whose lead singer sounds most like a wild boar out in the wilderness rolling around in shit and fucking and just living. Wild boar give zero fucks about net neutrality. There's no First Amendment out in the wild. Every classic death metal band who debuted between 1985-1994 has yet to expand upon the sound that made them classic, and yet no one would dare refer to any new metal resembling these bands as '90s retro throwbacks. Nothing changes for this genre because a step outside of brutality would be less brutal than continuing.
"The band KISS was a big fan of Dolly Parton, and when the song “I Will Always Love You” was released in 1974, Ace Frehley asked Dolly Parton if they could record a version of it for Hotter Than Hell, their second studio album. Dolly went to visit KISS in their studio in August of 1974 to watch them record it (the photo is from that 1974 studio visit). Unfortunately, the song was cut from the album. While she was at the studio, Dolly did help write the lyrics to ‘Hotter Than Hell’ with Paul Stanley, but didn’t want to be credited for fear of alienating her fan base. Rumor has it that one of Dolly’s tattoos is a KISS logo."
CT homies gonna work it out. Upon the release of "Oncoming Wave," Connecticut may have discovered its second-greatest heel, immediately following all-time champ Vince "God" McMahon, whose been keeping the Stamford economy booming with his hard work and spectacular pectorals. He's a genius, and definitely tough to beat. But with only a single track comprising their entire discography (EDIT: their 2nd song finally arrived in April 2018!!), New Haven's Heele may have given Vince a run for his money. "Oncoming Wave" fuses Faith No More, Failure and Nine Inch Nails into a brooding godzilla monster, fed up with the riffraff of knocking down skyscrapers, breathing fire and reaping havoc. Godzilla actually loves puppies and wants to be a veterinarian. Godzilla has feelings too.
"Be careful what you wish for." Was this the moral of "Morty's Mindblowers?" We're having trouble understanding Summer's newfound boredom with playing a crucial role in Rick's adventures. They could have figured out a more thoughtful character expansion without resorting to "I don't get paid enough for this shit." (The swearing has grown out of control too. The world doesn't really need a cartoon version of The Big Lebowski.) Aside from the bullshit coda, we're disappointed in Roiland & Harmon for lying to viewers in the Season 2 commentary falsely claiming "Interdimensional Cable" would be Rick & Morty's own version of "Treehouse Of Horror," an "anything goes" concept reserved for the 8th episode of each season. But instead we got "Morty's Mindblowers," a lazy dumping ground for abandoned story fragments and unripened concepts. Sadly, episodes 9 and 10 closed out season 3 with arguably their 2 worst episodes yet. The characters have all grown too developed too quickly, and it already feels like self-parody. The excitement of the S1/S2 setting seem impossible to revisit at this point. It's possible that Summer's popsicle stick is Rick & Morty's shark-jump, and everything's all but perfectly set up for a frustrating bleak journey to episode 100. We can't wait until Morty says "cunt-fucker" and Rick spends the entire episode breaking down the 4th wall even further. So edgy, guys. Prove us wrong please.
The comparisons to My Teenage Dream Ended feel most apt during "Track 10," the year's most-current / least-retro song and the heart and soul of 2017's most daring pop release. Its own song title suggests "deep cut" designation. We would not recommend playing this for the kids down the street when they sweetly ask (in a deep British accent), "Tell me, what does the new Charli XCX sound like?" If Pop 2 is Charli's Sgt Pepper, "Track 10" is its "A Day In The Life," the epic finale densely and succinctly scrolling through its own record's uncharted perimeter, exhuming its extremes, proudly lining them up all in a row. By doing so, Charli XCX earns her album title and not a moment too soon. Poptimism 2.0 seems damn good and ready for the future. Taylor, Katy, Justin and Miley are the past; it's time for fresh voices. The possibilities widen further. 
Is this a first? Both sides of Otoboke Beaver's 7-inch from 2017 are tied in the top 20. We usually prefer to separate a-sides and their respective b-sides whenever possible. Alongside a third 19-second track titled "Mean," Otoboke blasts through the Love Is Short!! EP in what feels like a singular 5 minute experience. With effortless hooks firing left and right at breakneck speed, they barely break a sweat. It's NBD. 
Poptimist music critics still refuse to admit that loud guitars existed before and after the '90s. Even now, seven years after Yuck's self-titled debut, bands like Charly Bliss - far more indebted to 2000s influence - are still receiving the "'90s-retro" tag. And while the chorus of "I'm Only Happy When It Rains" does admittedly resolve to a major key... And while we're aware that the '90s was not entirely 100% doom and gloom, Charly Bliss mixed together a blend of sweetness that simply did not exist in the '90s. Letters To Cleo, Bif Naked or sElf (in their sugariest moments) are as close as it got. Instead, try "Stacy's Mom," The Click Five's "Just A Girl," Josie And The Pussycats, early Paramore, Sum 41 (Charly would nail an "In Too Deep" cover) or "The Green Album." (NOT "The Blue Album.") It's all smiles and structural precision, directly descending from the 2000s pop explosion. Do your homework, kids. Also, every song called "Glitter" is usually amazing.
Coordinates. Rockets launching. Exploration. Mars. This record sounds amazing btw. For more information, why not check out the following...
Silent Barn has announced that its doors are closing within the next few weeks. [Note: This was written in April.] And with those sad words, we wonder "What will become of Particle Mace?" Actually we weren't thinking of Particle Mace at all until it came time to write this blurb. The arcade game that currently stands next to Silent Barn's stage will eventually end up somewhere. We think it should join Aye Nako for all of their upcoming tour dates. In "Particle Mace," Jade lays down some sick Courtney snarl. (We definitely hear way more Hole in Silver Haze than the majority of the other albums in the past 5 years that mindless bloggers have tagged with "sounds like Hole" just because it includes loud guitars and a girl singer.) Also, we started an Aye Nako interview for this very blog back in 2015 that never got finished. We plan on re-starting this Q&A at some point, but from what we remember...
Hey Twitter brats: Shit on Yeezus all you want. "Kanye's worst album," etc. It's too bad you feel that way since Post-Yeezus has been completely owning for 5 years strong. We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, DAMN. Guess what? Those are all Post-Yeezus. And in December 2017, these records were joined by a handful of the tracks from No_one Ever Really Dies (the best N*E*R*D since In Search Of...) including album highlight "Rollinem 7s." Pharrell sounds like he's heard Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" one too many times. 2/3s of the way through, the tempo changes, breaking into an equally dope B-section featuring some HOT purposely off-pitch mumbles. And when the original A-section returns, there's Andre 3000 adding some extra frosting on the cake. It's not like 3 Stacks was needed to make the song any better, but let's not forget Rule #1: When Andre is down to throw in a bonus verse, you ALWAYS say "YES."
Hüsker Who? (Just kidding. Their extremely large boxed set from last September was pretty dope, and we still haven't heard the whole thing yet.) Xetas are a rare modern punk trio combining necessary monster riffs and pummeling abrasion with extended epic pop structure. "The Gaze" sonically nails unending frustration with street harassment, a social epidemic as old as time that realistically won't disappear within our lifetime, but could seriously benefit from a severe beat down. The pist vox tag-team of Kana and David reserve their energies for the individual moments of attack. Raw is war.
The realest pop record of 2017 did not pander to iHeartRadio's data research and inadvertently exposed how heavily the machine relies on big press campaigns backed with major label dollars. A decade after Nelly Furtado followed the 3rd biggest song of 2006 with the 9th biggest song of 2007, her 2017 album completely missed out on the Billboard 200 albums chart with zero charting singles and failed to appear on any blog's end of year list. It's almost as if she was trying to sneak under the radar, like she craved anonymity while still creating art the way she wanted to. It's possible that she didn't want to be a star anymore. Either way, the lack of support this album received from blogs and end-of-year lists might be the ultimate example of how broken the music business is.
Aside from Dopesmoker, EW's Dopethrone LP from 2000 is probably the heaviest and most brutal stoner metal record of all time. A half-dozen albums later, they are less brutal but more melodic, entering a post-Uncle Acid stoner landscape sludgier and sleazier than ever. Less shouting and more notes. A few reviewers noted that Electric Wizard "brought the fun back" to stoner metal? Whoever said this probably hasn't heard Blood Lust, but we sense some influence. Stoner metal is inherently largely indebted to late '60s culture as it is, so the best way to indulge this might be re-imagining The White Album as a proto-metal record. 
We know the picture shown here is of Bobby from Twin Peaks, but instead we wanna talk about Sean Astin who played Bob in the 2nd season of Stranger Things. The evolution of Sean Astin is an anomaly among Hollywood trajectories. In the mid '80s, he appeared in a "celebrity" episode of I'm Telling, a game show that was essentially The Newlywed Game for siblings. The weird thing about this episode is that he appeared as the sibling of Mackenzie Astin from The Facts of Life. He wasn't on the show promoting anything, so this happened either before his then-signature prepubescent role starring in beloved 1985 blockbuster The Goonies, or the episode happened so long after Goonies premiered that he was no longer considered famous. Either way, it took until 1992 before his next prominent role co-starring with Pauly Shore and Brendan Fraser in Encino Man. Instead of using this opportunity to ride the momentum, he once again stayed quiet, sporadically appearing in low stakes indie films like the romcom Dish Dogs circa 2000. He was then granted a new signature role via the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, more or less cementing his legacy. He was no longer the leader of The Goonies. But once again, he chose not to capitalize on his momentum, staying quiet once again for over a decade until Season 2 of Stranger Things this past Fall. We suspect he will continue these occasional appearances, probably waiting another seven years before starring in anything else. We figured "Bobby" is probably about Sean Astin's role as Bob from Stranger Things and the t-shirt they sell at Target that says "Bob is the new Barb." Or maybe it's about Bobby from Twin Peaks and his relationship to Major Briggs. That is also a possibility.
"Hey jerk, you're not supposed to put 2016 songs in a 2017 list." Okay, well we did. We admittedly don't stay sharp with charting country music, and we occasionally allow our end-of-year lists to grant backdated one-year extensions in extreme circumstances like Maren Morris' Hero LP, despite that she performed "80s Mercedes" (and "My Church") on an episode of SNL from mid-December 2016. [Note: We just searched for about an hour and were unable to locate any photos of John Cena with Maren Morris at SNL aside from 
One of Merle Haggard's final shows was playing Riot Fest Chicago in September 2015 - not the greatest venue for the last time many would hear him sing "Silver Wings," unless you actually WANTED to hear the insane noise pollution of 2 or 3 other side-stages of punk and alternative bands intruding in the distance - bands like GWAR, The Dead Milkmen, Babes In Toyland and Faith No More. Recorded at Omaha's legendary ARC Studios, David Nance's cover attempts to harness this insanity, carefully layering drops of acids over the surfaces of bases. Immediately from its lovely intro chords, the combination bulges intensely; by the time the guitar solo slithers over the brim and oozes from its pores, we realize he's created an uncontrollable monster sonically twice-removed from 
The Impossible Dream LP sounds like a "best of power-pop" mix CD someone might have burned for themselves in the early 2000s. It starts with a Nerves song. Then there's an Elvis Costello song ("Ruby"), a Ramones song ("Judy," 
Of course she spits hot fire on the mic. Of course she's a good rapper. Based on her one verse in "Lemon" (among the most underrated of 2017), she is already as good or better than 99% of current viral Soundcloud rappers. This should not have been a surprise since she can apparently do anything really well (including attaching her name to a brand of lipstick that seemingly every lipstick-wearing person has universally praised as the greatest of all time). She should probably consider following Anti with a Watch The Throne-style Rihanna & Pharrell collaborative rap LP (since a huge part of the reason why she sounds so dope is chemistry under Pharrell's direction). Not to stir up "Lemon" vs Lemonade debates, which seem almost impossible to avoid, but Beyonce can't rap (and Anti is still album of the decade by our count).
There's some serious darkness and desperation in "Hey Jealousy," strengthened within one of the song's final lyrics, "Hey jealousy, she took my heart..." Doug Hopkins saving his open-ended lyric for the end doesn't seem too far off from Alex G's "If I fuck up..." closing out "Proud." There are no other words to the song. That's just how it ends. It's the year's most gigantic self-doubting open-ended lyric of 2017. The true heart-sinker. What if we all fuck up? What if everyone tweets all of their tweet drafts right now? Will we all spontaneously combust? Is "combust" even a word? We can't remember the last time (if ever) that an artist had two songs in our top 10 without also placing in our top 10 albums. Yeah, it was THAT kind of year...
Infinite timelines; infinite possibilities. In 30-40 years, after Rick Sanchez's portal guns and interdimensional cable boxes become top sellers at Warget (the forthcoming Walmart/Target hybrid), back issues of Billboard from 2017 should reveal that we live in the only timeline when "Bring It Back" wasn't as ubiquitous as "Shape Of You," which would have probably annoyed just as many people. In those timelines, "weird" did not spend the past two decades slowly dissolving out of existence. Until turning 20 this past August, Lil Yachty labelled himself on social media as "King Of The Teens." Teens are supposed to be weird and awkward, and so Yachty's genuine, youthfully naive strangeness unintentionally adds to his brand. Sound familiar? Aside from Lil B, he might be the most infamously "outsider" artist to emerge from the trap era, and "Bring It Back" might be the best example. A Frankenstein hybrid, "Bring It Back" cherry picks from the past 40 years of pop history combining moments that have almost no right to be standing next to each other. 808s and Heartbreak initially sets the tone, while Phil Collins' gated tom fills and Chic's upper octave rhythm guitar make way for Miami Vice's epic sax solo. Yachty is calling "Bring it back!" to a time that never existed, removing a contextual rose-colored gel from the lens. 