The 2022 End of Year music lists thread

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-albums-2022/

That Guardian list of 20 songs w/three repeat artists is a firm rejoinder to people who don't like editorial meddling with the results

reading the description of that steve lacy song and imagining just how angry listening to it will make me, it is quite a powerful feeling

kinda hard to imagine that song making anyone angey

or angry

those are the songs that make me angriest!

The Wire's list is out.

1. Lucrecia Dalt - ¡Ay!
2. Moor Mother - Jazz Codes
3. Bill Orcutt - Music For Four Guitars
4. Oren Ambarchi - Shebang
5. Kali Malone - Living Torch
6. Sarah Davachi - Two Sisters
7. Billy Woods - Aethiopes
8. Björk - Fossora
9. Silvia Torozzi & Deborah Walker - Canti Di Guerra, Di Lavoro E D'Amore
10. Carl Stone - Wat Dong Moon Lek
11. V/A - Fragility Of Sounds
12. Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems
13. Aldous Harding - Warm Chris
14. Sun Ra Arkestra - Living Sky
15. Daniel Bachman - Almanac Behind
16. Horse Lords - Comradely Objects
17. Mary Halvorson - Amaryllis & Belladonna
18. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy
19. Claire Rousay & More Eaze - Never Stop Texting Me
20. Diamanda Galás - Broken Gargoyles
21. Vanessa Rossetto - The Actress
22. Coby Sey - Conduit
23. Hudson Mohawke - Cry Sugar
24. Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture
25. Horsegirl - Versions Of Modern Performance
26. Moin - Paste
27. The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention
28. Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph - Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef
29. Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV
30. Robert Storey - The Eventual Window
31. Tegh & Adel Poursamadi - Ima
32. Devin Townsend - Lightwork
33. Laura Cannell - Antiphony Of The Trees
34. Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat - Chasing The Phantom
35. Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki
36. The Lord/Petra Haden - Devotional
37. Afrorack - The Afrorack
38. Roc Marciano & The Alchemist - The Elephant Man's Bones
39. The Ephemeron Loop - Psychonautic Escapism
40. Julmud - Tuqoos
41. Alvin Curran - Drumming Up Trouble
42. N Chambers - Mirage Colony
43. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela*
44. Eric Chenaux - Say Laura
45. Tomáš Niesner - Bečvou
46. Brian Eno - Foreverandevernomore
47. Ishmael Reed - The Hands Of Grace
48. Oren Ambarchi/Jonas Berthling/Andreas Werliin - Ghosted
49. Deliluh - Fault Lines
50. Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators

*the only album on this list I voted for

great no. 1

Haven't heard it, but not that surprising - she was on the cover three issues back.

Interesting - #18 on that list was my #1 vote, none of my other votes placed

I still love Sarah Davachi’s music but have fallen behind by a couple releases - too many, with too much frequency for me to be able to absorb and appreciate them.

(But I have no doubt this one was great and I’ll get to it by 2024.)

Orcutt solo is a thing that everyone seems to love but that has never fully clicked for me. This one came closest.

Interesting - #18 on that list was my #1 vote, none of my other votes placed

Phelimuncasi was my #1. (And I suspect that Devin Townsend album at #32 to be a thumb on the scale — I know reviews editor Joe loves Townsend but I can't imagine any other Wire writers giving him the time of day.)

ha i have loved all the orcutt guitar albums but don't care for the newest one as much

Looks like the Big Thief album may end up being underrated...

I think it's weird for Pfork to call it "contemporary Brooklyn indie rock’s answer to the Beatles’ White Album or Prince’s Sign o’ the Times." Do any of the band members even live in Brooklyn? (Maybe Adrianne, for parts of the year?) It would be like a review of the White Album calling it "contemporary Liverpool post-skiffle" or something

it's funny to me how high the weeknd is on a lot of these lists when it was prob the biggest flop pop album of the year & critics haven't much cared for him in years. he made a consciously cool album qua album that was critic bait in a lot of ways & it was rejected by the public... critics at the time were like "hey pretty good record let's keep it moving" but i guess it held for ppl over the course of the year? it feels like there weren't a lot of albums for ppl to rally around this year

I thought Big Thief would do better tbh

Wet Leg too.

https://www.complex.com/music/best-albums-2022/

this top 10 is pretty boring but the complex list is one of the few mainstream publication lists i've seen that seems to reflect reality in some way... it at least acknowledges that artists like brent faiyaz, yeat, wizkid exist

the lack of mainstream rap and R&B on the pfork list is quite noticeable

I've been trying to find a way in to the Lucrecia Dalt album for a while now and it just keeps not clicking. Someone who loves it please evangelize.

^same, I enjoy the opener and then immediately struggle with it

Sudan Archives at #2 on P4k's list is a very pleasant surprise. Big Thief feels like it would have been AOTY for them a decade ago. Renaissance feels both deserving and incredibly safe?

not enough lists mentioning cash cobain and chow lee imo

except for...the new york times

factual

the real WAVY LADY

Big Thief seem to have taken a hit from the Israel dust-up and their awkward response this year? Not dramatically but just enough to drop them a few spots. Or maybe it just came out too early in the year.

https://www.cabbageshiphop.com/best-hiphop-rap-albums-2022/

A hiphop list

for... a certain kind of listener

lol

otm

It’s a no major label release allowed list with infinity knives & Brian Ennals at #1

stereogum albums: https://www.stereogum.com/2206970/best-albums-2022/lists/year-in-review/2022-in-review/

There was a time when I could get hype about an
Earl Sweatshirt release

have you heard this one yet? it’s my fav thing he’s done

Maybe I’ll try it again but upon release I couldn’t get into it.

it has the Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn collab and Makaya McCraven. other than that, whatever, not for me (#1 and 2 very good tho)

really liked the Earl Sweatshirt too

Treblezine

https://www.treblezine.com/the-50-best-albums-of-2022/

https://www.treblezine.com/the-100-best-songs-of-2022/

yeah i'm definitely surprised that the big thief album has ended up somewhat underrated by all these lists

Maybe it is partly that it came out early in the year (although you'd hope ppl would have memories) – and a bunch of the tracks were released last year, with some of them making "Best of 2021" lists ("Spud Infinity," the track that appears on the Pfork Songs list, was actually a 2021 release as well... but I guess it came out late in December, so it missed their 2021 cutoff. Whatever)

I revisited the album recently, and I'm casually convinced it's one of the better albums to be released in my lifetime, by anyone (no joke)... I understand this may not be a universal sentiment, but I certainly didn't expect to see it plopped down at #7 or #8 on these lists, several slots below Alex G or whatever.

Yeah I relistened the other night for the first time in a little while and I still liked every song as well as the shifting shape of the thing.

Meanwhile, I have a strong weakness for and bias toward jangly indie-rock, but I really don't get why Alvvays is near the top of so many lists. It's fine but unexceptional, I like the Beths album better for something sort of in the same mode. How did this get designated as an AOTY contender in 2022?

yeah the alvvays album is just extremely... fine, don't get the hype here at all

Some might recall from the "AOTY So Far" thread that the Big Thief was the only album that appeared on every mid-year list I aggregated. To what extent do individual pubs and journalists react to that and attempt to hype others, consciously or not?

To what extent do individual pubs and journalists react to that and attempt to hype others, consciously or not?

― Indexed, Tuesday, December 6, 2022 5:02 PM (fifty-one seconds ago)

not at all. those mid year lists are just things everyone does to feed the content mill... prob not very much thought put into them and i highly doubt any writer or editor thinks about those lists for even a second after the publish button is hit or is referring back to those lists when it comes to year end

Question for any journalists who submit lists to different publications. In an end of year best of, do you submit the same ballot or tweak it depending on the genres they cover? I.e. does The Wire get the same list as Pitchfork or RA etc?

Same ballot.

I'm doing 3 lists: a top 10 for The Wire, a 20-album jazz list for Stereogum, and a 50-album list for my own newsletter/site (which picks up where the 50-album list I published at the end of June leaves off). There were 2 or 3 things on my Wire ballot that will be on the Stereogum list, and some crossover with the Burning Ambulance list(s) as well.