The Best Music of 2023
I was in the car with Ye. Tupac was there guarding his manic edges. Sufjan Stevens was there too. He was working on tunes with Ye, including one that heavily sampled Led Zeppelin, and it was likely to become a hit if not for Ye‘s self-destructive tendency to spout monstrous ideas.
Then I woke up … “It’s almost 2024,” I thought. “Time for this year’s best-music playlist!”
There’s no Ye, Tupac, or Led Zeppelin in my playlist, but there is some Sufjan sprinkled among the tunes by many other artists who dare to dream. The sonic palette defies neat categorization. No overarching theme binds it. Hip-hop and indie rock rub shoulders with classical, R&B, cumbia, ambient, 2-step, techno, hyperpop, folk, jazz, various strains of Jamaican music, offbeat covers, and more.
Seasoned acts like Sufjan, Wilco, and Little Dragon make welcome returns, while De La Soul’s classic tunes finally emerge from a near-30-year copyright purgatory, earning their rightful place this year. And of course, there are fresh faces too, like Ice Spice and NNAMDÏ, whose tunes help satiate my unending desire for music that straddles the realms of strangely wondrous experimentation and accessible pop structure.
In a world spinning toward chaos, I’m grateful to these musicians for sharing their sonic imaginations. They help to keep me at once grounded and dreaming.
