I’ve always prided myself in keeping with the times and not letting my increasing age control my music habits; however, it’s still fair to say I’ve never been as engaged in music as I was in high school and college, even as I’ve increasingly gone to more concerts as a fan, writer, and concert photographer. However this year I made a goal to listen to as many new releases as I could, and though I knew I couldn’t take the time to perhaps compile an albums list (though I may try for a year end one), I wanted to at least highlight what I feel are the best songs of 2023.
To help me achieve this I felt a ‘Best Songs (So Far)’ list would help keep me on track, and so I’d like to share with you my personal list of ‘Best Songs (So Far’) from 2023, in alphabetical order.
Masego – “Black Anime”
Masego – “Masego”
Masego’s self-assured and self-titled album has a lot of highs, and one such one comes right off the bat as he delivers excellence with the track ‘Black Anime’, that despite its name is more ‘Cha-cha real smooth’ inspired than Chobits. Still with an excellent verse like “You know I was overseas / Growin’ my money trees / My life is an anime / Young Miyazaki” the title is earned as well. Overall though it is the smoothness of the track that stands apart, as Masego incorporates his trademark saxophone work into a familiar interpolation of DJ Casper’s “Cha Cha Slide.” Add to the sax Masego’s smooth voice and the smooth drum beat, and you have an undeniable groovy smash of a track.
Caroline Polachek – “Butterfly Net”
Caroline Polachek – “Desire, I Want to Turn Into You”
My introduction to Polachek was through her single ‘Bunny Is A Rider’, which caught my attention as much for its hook as its seeming reference to Of Montreal’s ‘Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider’ – my favorite Of Montreal song in fact. Though I enjoyed Polachek’s song well enough, I wasn’t yet sure what I’d think of the rest of her music because it had me intrigued but not entirely made me a 100% fan. Apparently I just needed to wait for the album ‘Desire, I Turn Into You’, because I’m already considering this one of the best albums of the year, and I struggled to choose just one incredible track for this list. One that stuck out though and that I’ve revisited time and time again already is “Butterfly Net”, Polachek’s impassioned plea to a past lover that’s slipping through her grasp as she sings.
Polachek’s vocals are unmatched in ‘Butterfly Net’, as she sings with the angst of one whose coming to know her love is gone. ‘Butterfly Net’ begins as a stripped down track, with a minimal intro that only further highlights her heartache and emotion. When the organ kicks in the song really takes off, as Polachek’s pleas only increase in earnestness, as her lyrics that are somehow evocative, beautiful, and whimsical all at once draw you in further. My only surprise is that this track isn’t one of the most played of Polachek’s; however, again her new album is a marvel all in its own, but hopefully this track will not stay buried for long.
RAYE – “Oscar Winning Tears”
RAYE’s been a presence in the British music scene for sometime; however, she’s only now released her debut full-length album, ‘My 21st Century Blues’, and what an incredible album it is! RAYE lays bear vulnerabilities in her life that one can only imagine are difficult to talk about, let alone have immortalized in an album, yet her openness, along with her incredible skills as a performer, is what has made this an immediate classic for me.
Though I recommend you check out each and every song off this new album, the one that’s stuck out the most for me is ‘Oscar Winning Tears’. This track begins as if it’s a spoken word piece, but then takes on a beat poetry/rap vibe a la early 2000s. She then punctuates that with her incredible chorus, buoyed by her wonderfully powerful and beautiful voice, which is an immediate hook that will get near anyone signing along. Her anger about this ex-boyfriend, whose “name is irrelevant, height is irrelevant”, can be a stand in for any listeners ex-, and undoubtedly if you’ve had a bad ex, you’ll connect to RAYE’s epic track.
James Yorkston, Nina Persson, The Second Hand Orchestra – “A Sweetness in You”
James Yorkston, Nina Persson & The Second Hand Orchestra – “The Great White Sea Eagle”
James Yorkston, a Scottish folk musician, working alongside Nina Persson and The Second Hand Orchestra, delivered one of the most understated yet hard hitting tracks of the year thus far with “A Sweetness in You”. The track both speaks of loss, specifically Frightened Rabbit’s frontman Scott Hutchison, while also talking of the future as he considers his kids. Notably Yorkston is contemplating the topic of suicide, and when he would tell his children that “life isn’t for everyone”, deciding of course not to tell them that, at least not yet. Lines like these, delivered sweetly and softly over minimal instrumentation, seem to reverberate louder than the music itself.
Though this is a song that may be hard to revisit due to its subject nature, you may be like Yorkston himself, who seems to imply with his line “I think of him often as I look out to the sea, and now I live by the coast”, that he’ll never truly forget his friend, and indeed maybe its important we keep songs like this in mind that emphasize while life can be beautiful, it can also be short, and hard, for many too.
Young Fathers – “I Saw”
Young Fathers – “Heavy Heavy”
Young Fathers came on the scene with a Mercury prize winning debut album ‘Dead’, which highlighted their ability to mix indie-rock/alternative hip-hop sounds together to great effect. On their fourth album, ‘Heavy Heavy’, they continue to make engaging, entrancing tracks, with my personal favorite ‘I Saw’ as the stand out.
‘I Saw’ starts out the gate with a Goldfrapp’s “Ooh La La”-like groove, and an aggressive almost sci-fi intro that hooked me in, and continues to reprise throughout the track. In between they take an almost Britpop inspired approach to the chorus, which then they layer together with the other vocals to create a great, chaotic effect that’s ultimately rather addictive. Young Fathers in doing this has created what is maybe my favorite banger track of the year thus far, and a real just fun track to play windows down while driving through the city or country.
Quasi – “Doomscrollers”
Quasi – “Breaking the Balls of History”
In the years to come, when our children and our children’s children ask about what life was like during the pandemic, I’m going to lean back in my rocking chair, interact with whatever AI overlord we have at the moment, and say “Play Doomscrollers by Quasi.” This is because though there are a great many songs that are very of the pandemic, and about the pandemic, few capture the specificity of the pandemic in a song that I actually genuinely want to listen to again and again. (Being forced otherwise to remember such years would not normally be a pleasurable choice for me personally.) Musically the track’s hooks, very Yo La Tengo meets Ben Folds Five, already caught my ear, but with such lines as “And all the kids in their virtual classes, Stuck at home sitting on their asses, And all the houses lost to fires, The anti-vaxxers and the climate deniers”, somehow both funny and tragic simultaneously, I was hooked.
“Doomscrollers” and the album its on “Breaking the Balls of History” is actually my introduction to this veteran band from the 90s; however, I feel it’s also a perfect intro as I quickly understood their musical origins through the artists so clearly influenced by them and contemporary artists alongside them. So at first where I felt this was like a blend of Bright Eyes, alongside the aforementioned Ben Folds, Yo La Tengo, and others left unsaid, now I realized it’s because that’s the world they came about in and who their immediate successors often were who were influenced by Quasi themselves. So though I’m late to the party to this creative, indie duo, I’m happy to now be present, even if it took a pandemic to make it happen.
M83 – “Earth to Sea”
M83 – “Fantasy”
M83 broke out with the poppy and infectious Midnight City, whose hooky chorus felt inescapable for several years after its release. Despite my aversion to shoegaze, synth, and ambience, literally how Anthony Gonzalez’s M83 is pitched in press releases, this track was such a bop I was sold. (Still why I don’t love the verses alas.) So unsurprisingly perhaps I never gelled with any of his other tracks, as they were too light on pop bangers, and too heavy on all the rest. That was until M83 released his 2023 album “Fantasy”.
“Fantasy” as a whole has defied my expectations, as again its a very synth-heavy, shoegazy album, which if anything I have more aversion to now than ever in general. However where his past works have just seemed fine at best, this album feels like it has a pulsing heart throughout, and where it beats the hardest is “Earth to Sea”. “Earth to Sea” is a nearly 7 minute track that somehow captivates my attention throughout (also not in principal a fan of lengthy songs.) Yet despite the track’s length it feels like its the perfect build, and that each moment is earned and requires listening from start to finish. Though not catchy in the same way as “Midnight City” is, this track I actually suspect I will return to all the more, as its a slow burn that lasts longer vs one that burns bright but fades fast.
Ben Folds – “Kristine From The 7th Grade”
Ben Folds – “what matters most”
Ben Folds has a history of making beautifully melodic songs that often hide, or at least layer, darker themes and struggles. Kristine from the 7Th Grade, off of his new solo album ‘what matters most’, is one of his latest to do so, as it starts as a melodically entrancing story about a lost connection with a friend from middle school that belies the darker truths behind Kristine’s messages that are revealed as the song continues. In some ways this is almost Father John Misty-adjacent without the sardonicism. Folds seems to at least give Kristine the benefit of the doubt though with some of the lines, including a favorite of mine “The misspellings, they must be on purpose / We went to a good school, Kristine.” Though the heavier nature of the song, sadly too relatable for many no doubt, may diminish the want for repeated listening, Folds musicality is so top notch that if you can at least deal with the subject matter it will make for a beautiful addition to any melancholic, moody playlist.
