This year I decided to segregate genres with my year end list. Each year I reiterate how absurd ranking
music and making lists is, but you know what? I think it’s also true that it’s a practical way of processing
the utter DELUGE of new music that falls on us every month of the year, and there’s a certain satisfaction
to showing the world what music is rolling around in your psyche. Here are the Best Pop Albums 2023. I find there’s a certain psychic toll to being online these days, and of course music often provides an essential counterpoint; escape and healing and all that good stuff. We hope you can find a few treasures below
10 CARLY RAE JEPSEN : The Loveliest Time
Best moment : “Psychedelic Switch” is the apex obvs, but I love the strangest song on the record “After Last Night,” a glitchy piece of Rostam-produced baroque aughts pop in the vein of “Genie in a
Bottle” that Carly transforms into a characteristic moment of starry-eyed romantic realization.
God she’s good
RIYL : synth pop, dance-pop, prog pop, Grimes, Dua Lipa, PC Music,
Rostam, M83, Charli XCX
Best songs : “Kamikaze” / “After Last Night”
Companion LP : Kylie Minogue – Tension
09 JESSIE WARE : That! Feels Good!
Best moment : Jessie closing the record with a stunner that boasts horn stomps and a groove that goes
so hard it should be illegal. It’s all about “These Lips” – they can turn milk to gold, they can soothe body
and soul, they’ll take you to places you never thought you’d go, they’re wanted in a hundred countries
(maybe more!!). It’s a winking gesture, knowingly ridiculous and we love that
RIYL : Kylie Minogue, Sade, Haim, Robyn, Roisin Murphy, disco, dance-pop, synth-pop
Select gems : “Adore You” / “Remember Where You Are” / “Save a Kiss”
Companion LP : Kylie Minogue – Tension
08 ROISIN MURPHY : Hit Parade
RIYL : DJ Koze, Jessie Ware, Goldfrapp, Robyn, Romy, Kornel Kovacs, deep house, downtempo,
Balearic beat, psych house
Best moment : So many great ones. I’ll try to keep this short but I can’t lie and say Roisin’s anti-
trans debacle didn’t take the wind of my sails regarding this album, #RoisinMurphy is a queer
icon and art pop/disco goddess, but yknow. A 50 year old white woman being out of touch?
Imagine. Should we have been surprised? No one wants her cancelled – we just need some
perspective and if Roisin’s a true a queer icon I hope we get that eventually. People need loving
spaces to have open convos but good luck to us all finding those spaces online
Ok but the music tho! Hit Parade is easily her best; DJ Koze + Roisin forever. We need a music
video for “Free Will” perhaps the apex of the record. And I love the winking, joking quote from
Koze in the album notes when asked what was the best part of working with her: “there was no
sweet spot. It was all hell”
Fav Songs : “Free Will” / “Fader”
Companion LP : Romy : Mid Air
07 LANA DEL REY : Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
RIYL: Weyes Blood, Nelly, elegant doom, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter
Best moment : Lana lingering in her grief on “Fingertips,” singing about the death by suicide of her uncle, whose funeral she missed because she was performing for the Prince of Monaco. I mean, you really can’t make this up. Where is her mother? She’s a lacuna, an ellipsis in a later verse: “What kind of… was she to say I’d end up in institutions?” Del Rey sings. “What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away,” she cries, and suddenly, it’s no wonder she’s having second thoughts about motherhood on the same song.
Best songs : “A&W” / “Peppers (feat. Tommy Genesis)”
Companion LP: Jess Williamson – Time Ain’t Accidental
06 KELELA : Raven
Best moment : The midpoint highlight “Contact” with Kelela’s delicate melodies over a scuffed jungle beat and warped synths that give way to a sweet rush of lust. So glad to have her back after five years!
RIYL : Shygirl, Rochelle Jordan, FKA twigs, Pinkpantheress, Solange, drifting ambient pop, pensive sex
jams
Select gems : “Contact” / “Closure”
Companion LP : Pinkpantheress – Heavy Only Knows
05 YEULE : softscars
Best moment : On opener “x_w_x” yeule raging about their coping with existence (“Feel too much,
medicate/ Overwhelmed, isolate”) and their own man-machine creation story. “God created man/
Motherboard, wires and/ Blood, bones, flesh, breathing/ Suicide engineering!” they scream. On the other
hand, yeule’s lyrics are sprinkled with reminders that a digital body can be as flawed as a physical one via
rust, malware, and malfunction. What a breakthrough
RIYL : Eartheater, My Bloody Valentine, Cecile Believe, Purity Ring, Grimes, Billie Eilish, Arca, art pop,
glitch pop, ambient, post-industrial
Fav Songs : “softscars” / “dazies”
Companion LP : Eartheater – Powders
04 JESSY LANZA : Love Hallucination
Best moment : Jessy drawing on Janet Jackson’s frisky sensuality more than ever on “Marathon,”
a spangled standout originally written as a demo for another artist. It’s transforms it into
something buoyant and outwardly lustful; the sultry workout peaks with an ecstatic, surprising
sax solo she played herself. (“Show me you can run it like a marathon,” sung in a sweet melody,
ranks among her most memorable refrains.)
Select gems : “Don’t Leave Me Now” / “Marathon”
Companion LP : Tirzah – trip9love…???
RIYL : Janet Jackson, Junior Boys, Kelly Lee Owens, Tirzah, Kelela, Annie, Night Jewel, electro-pop,
club-pop, footwork, synthpop, crisp 808s, make-out jams
03 CAROLINE POLACHEK: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
Best moment : Caroline unironically singing the phrase “that is bae,” on “Pretty In Possible,” while building the song around a scatty vocal melody seemingly inspired by “Tom’s Diner.”
RIYL : Chairlift, Charli XCX, Weyes Blood, Lorde, Oklou, Kelela, Kate Bush (sorry but it’s true), art pop,
fantastical pretentious beauty
Select gems : “Fly To You” (feat. Grimes & Dido) / “Blood and Butter”
02 FEVER RAY : Radical Romantics
Best moment: Trent Reznor serving creeping industrial groans that makes Karin Dreijer’s weird thrill of
revenge fiction come to life on “Even It Out,” a small act of cosmic reckoning: “This is for Zacharias/Who
bullied my kid in high school/There’s no room for you/And we know where you live!” And then they ratchet up the intensity; “I do things methodically,” they sneer, slicing up the word as implied violence: “M-m-m-m-m-methodically.”
RIYL : The Knife. Nine Inch Nails, Austra, Royksopp, Robyn, Zola Jesus, art pop, post-industrial,
darkwave, synth pop
Select gems : “Shiver” / “Kandy”
01 AVALON EMERSON : & the Charm
Best moment : The thumping kicks and sequenced arpeggios on “Dreamliner” evoking the
mechanical techno of her back catalog, but then the groove gradually subsides, making space
for a playful synth melody that carries the song’s second half. Through it all, Avalon’s cool,
muted vocals serve us both pointillist tone color and hummable melody – a reminder that, for a
musician with vision and skills, you can have it both ways
RIYL : James Holden, The Magnetic Fields, Sofia Kourtesis, Two Shell, Yaeji, dream pop, downtempo,
Balearic beat, ambient pop
Select gems : “Astrology Poisoning” / “Karaoke Song”
Companion LP : JAM CITY – Jam City Presents EFM