Good end-of-year albums lists are a dime a dozen (though a dime a dozen is better than Spotify’s payouts)—any nerd willing to put in a thousand hours can make one. Good end-of-year song lists, being much harder as well as less clicked on, are scarce these days, with certain major publications settling for the “pick a favorite song from each album and put them in random order” method, which at least beats the “put four Beyoncé songs in the top ten” approach. Even Billboard, which has, like, numbers to rely on, screwed up by not really knowing what a “year” is (a problem I can admittedly relate to), declaring 2022’s biggest hit to be “Heat Waves” when all lived experience pointed towards it being “As It Was”. So what appears below is the fruit of my comparative listmaking advantage: I’ve made annual lists of this length or longer since my teens and thus have decades of dumb mistakes to learn from (top tenning Mariah the Scientist last year, now that was a stretch in retrospect.) I haven’t seen many lists with more international breadth—Chuck Eddy’s is one, and despite my having completely different foundational aesthetics from him, I look forward to ripping off that one in 2023 as much as I do his 2021 list here.
Though “Beautiful Monster” snuck on me to claim my favorite melody of the year, while Let’s Eat Grandma made up a lot of ground late with a song, in the tradition of Mac McCaughan, designed to appeal to people who wait until December 31st/January 1st to finalize year-ends, my number one spot has a two horse race since June. “Feel My Rhythm” is not only formally impeccable, it’s gigantic, claiming all of Western history (or at least the good bits) as now part of the world’s heritage. “Kwaku the Traveller” is messier—Black Sherif starts to run out of ideas in the second verse and spends most of it smoking—but it has a force of personality achieved maybe a few dozen times in recorded music. In the end this is a forward-looking blog, so I went with the song that showed a path forward rather than the one that looked back. But they’ll have a shot at a rematch on my end-of-decade song list (speaking of comparative listmaking advantage.)
Anyway, here’s what I most enjoyed listening to outside the context of albums in 2022. Nobody had a 2015 Young Thug-tier year so no one gets more than two entries. A couple of really songs are allowed because they were reissued this year and it isn’t totally embarrassing that I didn’t get to them previously. Nothing from my top ten albums made the top ten here, although it was hard to deny Tom Zé now that I can tell you the phone numbers of four out of the five NYC borough fire departments off the top of my head. Some kinds of terrible men are allowed on the list while others are verboten. Not much rock and no actually popular rock, save for Demi Lovato continuing her run as the era’s top producer of absolute fluke great singles. Lots of African and Korean pop besides the top two—for all the valid complaints about streaming, it’s made it much easier for audiences to find music from outside their home territories, and for artists around the world to earn those lucrative (1/300ths of) Greenbacks. The Spotify streams of the Harry Styles (2 billion), Lizzo (half a billion), and Gayle (nearly a billion) songs on the list outnumber those of the other 94 entries combined, which shows there’s no way for a per-stream payout model to be just: “ABCDEFU” isn’t 360,000 times better than Side Pony’s “All the Time in the World” (in fact, the Side Pony song is a bit better, that’s what the ordinal numbers next to them mean.) In a futile attempt to battle inequality, songs with fewer than 50,000 Spotify streams are bolded. The five brave artists—Lewis/Stampfel, Homebody Sandman who would’ve won the best Bach rip prize in any other year, Rempis/Ra, Burnt Sugar, and Zoh Amba—who kept their peak work off Spotify get links. Buy their stuff.
Black Sherif: “Kwaku the Traveller”
Red Velvet: “Feel My Rhythm”
Let's Eat Grandma: "Happy New Year"
Phelimuncasi, DJ Nhlekzin: “I Don’t Feel My Legs”
StayC: “Beautiful Monster”
Tommy Womack: “Call Me Gary”
Kabza De Small, DJ Maphorisa, Tresor: “Soro”
Ina Colada: “Komplett am Arsch”
Berwyn: “I’d Rather Die Than Be Deported”
Em Beihold: “Numb Little Bug”
Celestine Ukwu: “Tomorrow Is So Uncertain”
Tom Zé: “Metro Guide”
Billlie: “Ring X Ring”
Yahritza y Su Esencia: “Soy el Unico”
Gonora Sounds: “Go Bhora”
Lizzo: “I Love You Bitch”
Mount Westmore: “Big Subwoofer”
S.G. Goodman: “Work Until I Die”
Khaligaph Jones, Dax: “Hiroshima”
The Beths: “Silence Is Golden”
Hatchie: “Quicksand”
Monaleo: “Beating Down Yo Block”
Bella Shmurda, Olamide: “Vision 2020”
Vincent Neil Emerson: “Learnin’ to Drown”
Muni Long, Saweetie: “Baby Boo”
Konke, Musa Keys, Nkulee501, Skroef28, Chley: “Kankane”
GloRilla, Cardi B: “Tomorrow 2”
Raye: “Black Mascara”
Gogol Bordello, H.R.: “The Era of the End of Eras”
Pharrell Williams, 21 Savage, Tyler the Creator: “Cash In Cash Out”
Superchunk: “Endless Summer”
Tems: “Free Mind”
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: “Museumplein - For Amsterdam”
Girls’ Generation: “You Better Run”
Emperor X: “Communists in Luxury”
Selo i Ludy: “I Want to Break Free”
Focalistic, DaVido, Virgo Deep: “Ke Star” (remix)
IVE: “After Like”
Kendrick Lamar: “The Heart Part 5”
Harry Styles: “Matilda”
StayC: “Young Luv”
The Front Bottoms: “More Than It Hurts You”
Big Boogie: “Pop Out”
The Range: “Urethane”
Hayley Williams: “Trigger”
DJ Black Low, DJ La Bengwa, Licy Jay, Menate Entertainment: “Sbono” (vocal mix)
Tom Cardy: “H.Y.C.Y.BH”
Blackpink: “Pink Venom”
Summer Walker: “4th Baby Mama”
Mon Laferte, Banda Femenil Regional Mujeres del Viento Florido: “Se Va La Vida”
Armani White: “Billie Eilish”
Selsikäs-Suklaa, Dosdela: “Tuplavuoro”
Gunna, Future, Young Thug: “Pushin P”
Mavins (Crayon, Ayra Starr, Ladipoe, Magixx, Boy Spyce): “Overloading (Overdose)”
Lizzo: “About Damn Time”
Kimberly Kelly: “Person That You Marry”
África Negra: “Vence Vitoria”
Yat-Kha: “Kazhanda-daa Olbes-le Bis”
Halsey: “So Good”
Lalalar: “Abla Deme Lazim Olur”
Allison Russell: “Persephone”
Michael Spyres, Marko Letonja, Orchestra Philharmonqiue de Strasbourg: “Largo al factotum”
Encanto Cast: “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”
Joshua Ray Walker: “Gas Station Roses”
Juçara Marçal: “Crash”
Kelsea Ballerini: “Heartfirst”
Steve Lacy: “Bad Habit”
Praise: “All in a Dream”
The Buoys: “Drive Me Home”
Anz: “Unravel in the Designated Zone”
Kenny Chesney: “Everyone She Knows”
Chung Ha: “Killing Me”
Side Pony: “All the Time in the World”
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber: “Repatriation-of-the-Midnight-Moors OAKANDA rmx-2”
Gayle: “ABCDEFU'“
Demi Lovato: “Substance”
Parris, Eden Samara: “Skater’s World”
Momma: “Speeding 72”
Tom Cardy: “Business Man”
Buck 65: “Part 2”
Sudan Archives: “Chevy S10”
Keiino: “End of Time (Taste of Heaven)”
Sarah Mary Chadwick: “Flipped It”
Pheelz, BNXN fka Buju: “Finesse”
Lil Durk, Morgan Wallen: “Broadway Girls”
Harry Styles: “As It Was”
Sho Madjozi: “Jamani”
Pusha T, Kanye West: “Dreamin of the Past”
Kizz Daniel, Tekno: “Buga (Lo Lo Lo)”
Flume, MAY-A: “Say Nothing”
Hitkidd, GloRilla: “F.N.F. (Let's Go)”
Hyyts: “Twice in a Lifetime”
James Brandon Lewis Quartet: “Resonance”
Empress Of: “Save Me”
Dylan: “Nothing Lasts Forever”
I bow to your list-making fortitude. I suspect there is much pleasure to be found in these songs, something like 78 of which I don't think I heard. If only you could be put in charge of a pop radio station that kept your faves in heavy rotation - I think that would be a pretty cool thing to hear.
I am humble in your path. I submit my singles list. It was whittled down far more than most. Even tested and somewhat tweaked. Yet, there are still songs I wish to add. Isn't that the way it is. Thank you.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0LuGqO0dLLRdwQjUv7vTk1?si=cabd19ce2514428a