2022 Musical Faves of the Year

Best of, shmest of. Not all 'best ofs' are always your 'favorites.' But they should be.

Ranked or unranked, music fans - I think - love to see what other music fans consider to be the “best” music (or books, or movies, or TV shows, or whatever) of a particular year. Pop culture criticism takes this approach to the nth degree, sometimes to the point of such highbrow analysis that its damn near not easy to understand. (I mean, how many Pazz and Jop year end lists have you read and at the end said to yourself - “I mean wtf do they like this record, or not?”)

For years now, I’ve always been torn between putting a list together that is my “best of” or “favorite” songs/albums of the year. I’ve had some of the most insightful music critics tell me that they’ve often put an album on their “best of list” that they’ve never gone back to listen to again, days or months or even years since they put said album on their list. Does that make sense? Nah. Sorry.

How ‘Best of lists’ should work, imo, is to convey a large critical cultural point out of a handful of representative works. For me, Pazz/Jop has always been the brightest example of this, even (admittedly) if I didn’t know what the fuck Christgau or his colleagues were talking about half the time. Greil Marcus’s “Real life Rock” top tens, for me, were always the “best of the best.”

What criteria should be considered for you to put a song or an album on a “best of” list? I ask that question annually. Are the answers to this question the same as “What makes a great record?” (or any piece of art or media/content). Maybe. Probably.

But I digress. Let’s get to the music.

And one last thing: while this is a playlist of individual songs, there’s a bunch of full albums that really stood out for me this year. They include:

• God Save The Animals by Alex G

• Blue Rev by Alvvays

• Household Name by Momma

• Farm To Table by Bartees Strange

• It’s Almost Dry by Pusha T

• Mr. Money With The Vibe by Asake

• I Walked With You A Ways by Plains

• No Thank You by Lil Simz

• A Light For Attracting Attention by The Smile

The Point: (to borrow a phrase from Chris Cillizza) - Here’s some of my favorites from the year. And yes, these are the best of.