The 2023 End of Year music lists thread

That Gioia list is the only interesting one of these I've seen, big thanks for that

Whenever I see Hackney Diamonds topping a list I have to rub my eyes. Like, really? Really?!

If you hang around long enough people will often go from thinking you're passè to hoping you have a comeback. And you can't hang around much longer than the Stones have.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/the-50-best-spanish-language-albums-of-2023-1234922548/

Karol G , Grupo Niche, Tainy, Diego Raposo y mas

I split album lists in half at Burning Ambulance: I post a list of 50 in July, and another 50 in December. So here they both are.

Half-Year Roundup

Year-End Roundup

Boomkat End of Year Charts 2023 have just dropped:

https://boomkat.com/charts/boomkat-end-of-year-charts-2023
loads of individual lists to explore

Boomkat Albums Of The Year 2023 - top 100
https://boomkat.com/charts/boomkat-end-of-year-charts-2023/2314

Laurel Halo takes Album of the Year
Laurel Halo — Atlas (Awe)

boomkat eoy charts rule

boomkat, new discovery

16. Hysterical Love Project — Lashes (Motion Ward)

Motion Ward’s ambient incubator drop shimmering shoegaze dream-pop and smudged downbeats for lovers of HTRK, A.R. Kane, Perila - issued in a limited CD edition. Pairing Kiwi musician Ike Zwanikken with vocalist Brooklyn Mellar, Hysterical Love Project subtly muddle the foggy memory banks of late ‘80s/early ‘90s shoegaze/dream-pop with prompts from Balearic downbeats and canny compression techniques that lend it a patina of micro-dosed psychedelic sensuality. Perfectly strung out on a late night tip, it flows from the bed-ways lullaby pop and back-combed partials of ‘Miracle-Mouthed’ to the beautifully out-of-reach gauze of ‘Cement’ via delectable highlights of ‘90s trip-pop in the slow-motion acidic lather and forlorn vox of ‘Ionian Sea’, and dreamily headlong wind-tunnel motion of ‘Boyracer’, while ‘Come 2 Me, My Baby’ and ’Sever/Strike’ are unmistakably redolent of HTRK, and likewise the weightless strums of ‘Lavender’ that show they can transfix attention without the beats. Definitely one to watch

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4MC6wQDwPcHwIiqxQBW4E3?si=kFfAKQDbS2SVkIbEJ3pF6w

So many guest lists! My record shows up in the CS & Kreme list (#17). <3

https://boomkat.com/charts/boomkat-end-of-year-charts-2023/2285

that rules jordan, they have great taste

Boomkat is a treasure trove each year

JR Moores' blog (Spinal Bap) top 5 of 2023:

https://spinalbap.blogspot.com

Death to false lankums!

wow that is effortful

Mixmag
20 OF THE BEST DANCEFLOOR BANGERS FROM 2023
https://mixmag.net/feature/best-dancefloor-tracks-bangers-2023-dance-music-club

funny, i just skipped over it— the guy is so conservative (and i hate his brother so much) that i just assume our tastes have nothing in common.

alas, there are some good records on there , tho the inclusion of the Stones (among others) gave me pause. one thing you can say about Boomers is that they’ll lick the boots of other Boomers even when it’s clear that it’s just Mick’s toenail fungus back again

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, December 20, 2023 8:01 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Gioia's list is the best list every year. but yeah, i don't really like him otherwise

100 albums for one year feels like too much…there just aren’t that many high quality releases worth remembering each year.

― zacata, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:34 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

5-10 feels about right

― zacata, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:34 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is otm for how i experience music

you guys get lost looking for the “i hate music” forum?

that Boomkat list was pretty good!

The metal-and-other-loud-noises site Your Last Rites has put up a bunch of lists; Dan Obstkrieg made metal, jazz, electronic music and "other" lists, and one of my label's releases — Diego Caicedo's Seis Amorfismos — was on the latter.

https://yourlastrites.com/2023/12/20/best-of-2023-dan-obstkrieg-how-can-i-keep-from-singing/

100 albums for one year feels like too much…there just aren’t that many high quality releases worth remembering each year.

― zacata, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:34 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

5-10 feels about right

― zacata, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:34 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is otm for how i experience music

― budo jeru

Me too, I struggle to list 100 albums I truly loved in a one decade let alone a single year. With songs is different but I usually buy 8/12 albums per year and those are the ones I keep playing. 8 records a month feels to me like I wouldn’t really put in the time they deserve. In retrospective there’s albums from previous years that I end up loving that were off my radar on their year and I appreciate the effort on this huge lists but there’s not enough time for me.

That said it’s not a quality problem for me. I do think there’s 1000+ high quality releases per year, it’s more of how overwhelming it is the quantity of them and a matter of personal taste, for me 2023 was big on R&B and ambient albums and I ended up very fixed on those sounds this year… I’m sure there were great quality jazz, rock, hip hop, country, etc albums in 2023 but I wasn’t paying attention.

with pitchfork it made sense they would do 100 album/song lists since they also rated on a scale from 1-100

but all these other publications? can't help but wonder if it's a clickonomy internet ad revenue thing

seems to me a stronger statement to rate 10 than 100 albums

that said I look forward to the top 77 and usually the best stuff is found in the lower reaches

Philip Sherburne's end of year list:

https://futurismrestated.substack.com/p/futurism-restated-the-best-of-2023

you guys get lost looking for the “i hate music” forum?

― kissinger on my list (voodoo chili), Wednesday, December 20, 2023 7:46 PM

It's got too many notes.

with pitchfork it made sense they would do 100 album/song lists since they also rated on a scale from 1-100

but all these other publications? can't help but wonder if it's a clickonomy internet ad revenue thing

seems to me a stronger statement to rate 10 than 100 albums

that said I look forward to the top 77 and usually the best stuff is found in the lower reaches

― corrs unplugged, Thursday, December 21, 2023 3:20 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Longer lists = more artists who can share links on social media

That’s too cynical a view and I’m sure it’s true for some publications but most of the artists in Boomkat’s top 100 are in general not big enough or don’t have that much presence in social media (if at all) to really make it a factor.

Boomkat is literally a store

Boomkat feels like an old school record store in that sense, it's a business but it's highly curated and they have a pov. Like they're constantly doing the High Fidelity "watch me sell this record" thing.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_8Lk7-UkV9BI/S6ULFiZ6mFI/AAAAAAAABwY/4-cjuffET-E/s400/high-fidelity-beta-band-3.jpg

Watch me sell four $40 splatter vinyls of George Clanton's 'Ooh Rap I Ya'

There is no way that's too cynical a view.

Websites are sending artists little "best of 2023" graphics to share on social these days, aren't they? Or has that been happening for years?

I mean I know boomkat is a store but those look like actual good records that are being recommended and not albums that have been on the bin for months and they need to get rid of.

I suppose that behind some of those 100 records there’s selections that benefit them in some ways - but there also seems to be genuine push for albums their staff loved.

I am glad Pitchfork also did additional lists with blurbs like the Latin one they did—

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-music-latin-spanish-artists-2023/

(my record popped up on a few other guest lists including Purelink's, life goal achieved to have made a Boomkat-friendly record tbh)

https://boomkat.com/charts/boomkat-end-of-year-charts-2023/2384
https://boomkat.com/charts/boomkat-end-of-year-charts-2023/2298

that said I look forward to the top 77 and usually the best stuff is found in the lower reaches

― corrs unplugged, Thursday, December 21, 2023 2:20 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

to be clear, me too, in part because it's the product of many people. i also think it makes sense for publications to publish a top 50 or 100, because they are organizations composed of many people. i was only speaking of my own ability to hear and process music over the course of the year. one brand-new record every 3.5 days is way too much.

This isn't rocket science, gang. When print magazines had to depend on ad revenue, they had the freedom to do top 20 lists and call it a day.

Now that revenue is based on gaming Facebook and Google, they have to try every trick in the book
--Creating as many chances as humanly possible for artists/publicists to share on social media
--Dropping lists in November to beat the rush
--Creating a facade of authority by commissioning a bunch of blurbs no one reads
--Putting it all in unwieldy multi-page formats

Brooklynvegan
Indie Basement: Top 40 Albums of 2023
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/indie-basement-top-40-albums-of-2023/

Basically this is the combined canon aesthetics of 90s NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press magazine and 00s onwards 21st century Pitchfork.

Aimed at Gen X

Top 40 Albums Listed

Number 1
Girl Ray - Prestige (Moshi Moshi)

plus a further 100 Albums listed

And here’s a 130-song Best of 2023 playlist featuring songs from all 40 albums plus 90 more songs for a nearly nine-hour survey of the year via Indie Basement,

Spotify link:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4xOn9JERqTYFAovabdjV97?si=9E2u4MsPRG6Q9xxeyv3aew&pi=e-bAJBomOqRISl

But boomkat is not a print magazine that depends on ad revenue.

ha, this is rather timely.

top 100 lists are for part time slacker lightweights, make way for:

Consequence 200 Best Songs of 2023
https://consequence.net/2023/12/200-best-songs-of-2023-list/


the only published list that includes:
Slipknot, The Beatles, Chat Pile, Ice Spice, Dolly Parton, Chappel Roan, Baroness, Kylie, Judas Priest, Mick Jenkins, Chelsea Wolfe, Tems, Ihsahn, Burna Boy

Number 1 Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine

Spotify playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4wO5FsxL2pS28qvIka1uSA?si=hMsxy7IgTt6ZNLPlXw-pAA&pi=e-fsjhYs2WQU68

good to see The Beatles getting some love on these lists, finally

Songs and Albums are a whole different beast, though! 200 songs is like 16/20 albums.

Man I still truly don't listen to many songs divorced from albums, never got into playlist mode on that level. Moreso with dance music, but I'm still usually listening to an EP or whatever.

Good point Moka, however if that was applied to ILM yearly poll tracks voting it would need to be significantly increased.

Something that I advocated for during the last decade re: improving the nominations and voting methodology, that unfortunately was not actioned.

In recent years I have provided nomina
tions, but not voted due to the limited restrictive voting allocations.

In December you start with your personal faves, then you listen to further suggestions i.e Expanding your listening experiences and then comes the reductive and restricted ILM poll voting system - it's just not fit for purpose. It's stuck in a stale methodology that's 15 to 20 years out of date.

I chalked up 179 different music genres according to 2023 Spotify wrapped. Listening to multiple genres each day is how I enjoy listening to music. More voting allocations particularly for tracks is required.

that’s funny, that isn’t the way i listen to or enjoy music at all

I'm finding I get less out of these lists every year. I listen through these lists and find myself thinking, "yeah, I respect the craft and all, but how does anybody actually love this? Most of it is in one ear and out the other. I'm old, though. These lists aren't meant to appeal to me.

I love music

Am I remembering wrong or did P4K used to have much longer song and album lists at the end of the year?

Meaning, the authoritative lists. (Before they added the genre lists)

On another note: I’m finding some great stuff via the eoy charts by artists on Boomkat, there’s so much though. If anyone has any particular favorite lists please share because I doubt I’ll go through each one.

Grizzly Butts (Soon to be Mystificationzine) The Top 75 Albums of the Year

https://mystificationzine.com/2023/12/21/the-top-75-albums-of-the-year-2023/