Here’s the playlist: my favorite songs of 2022. It’s 118 songs and about 7.5 hours long at the moment so…enjoy. As always, the songs are in some relative order, meaning I like the first twenty more than I like the last twenty, but they aren’t ranked with extreme precision. And send me what you got! I’m always adding even after I think I’m done.

And, some random superlatives and stray thoughts on the music I loved this year:

Favorite Records: Just to be clear here, it means I really liked the whole record—I’m not weighting my favorite songs or anything ridiculous like that. I’m looking for albums that were, as a whole, more than the sum of their parts.

1. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road: Their backstory is worth a read.
2. Underlands by Andrew Bird: This year was one where a lot of my favorite artists from the early 2000s made their best record in a while. Andrew Bird, Spoon, Built to Spill…these are all resurgent comebacks for me.
3. 19 Masters by Saya Grey: This album is fascinating. These aren’t songs–they’re fragments of songs, or perhaps there are just fragments of songs in each song, I can’t be sure. Blasts of noise, loose strings, distorted guitar, blown out drums…each track has a little nugget of magic.
4. Someday is Today by Living Hour
5. In the Fade by Tony Molina: This record listens like a peak-era Weezer imitation, and I mean that in the best way possible. It could have been the follow-up to Pinkerton.
6. Lucifer on the Sofa by Spoon
7. Boat Songs by MJ Lenderman
8. Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths
9. When the Wind Forgets Your Name by Built to Spill
10. Vestli by Spielbergs

Best Shoutout: “That’s my grandmaw!” from Red Moon by Big Thief

The Open Eye Award, or the music that best drowns out the coffee shop’s own loud music: Endure by Special Interest

Best Outtake: Whiskey Fever by Zach Bryan “That take fuckin’ ripped dude.” Indeed it did Zach, indeed it did.

Lyric Corner, breakup edition:

• “This may be the last time / last time I put on my shoes / go down to the corner / and buy the damn cat the expensive food / that Turkish Angora’s about the only thing left between me and you”-Father John Misty’s Goodbye Mr. Blue
• “So here we are on this stupid couch again / I never want to see you lift the corners of your mouth again” Conscious Uncoupling by Pool Kids
• “And maybe there’s an answer / I’m a Pisces not a cancer / I Wish I could be there for you / baby / But I’m just too much” –Pointed at the Sun by Hurray for the Riff Raff
• “There’s reasons for heavy hearts / This past year / I thought I was broken …I never wanna miss you this bad / I never meant to run out like that / sometimes I feel just like my dad / rushing around.” from Heavy Heart by Bartees Strange
• Basically all of Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths

Lyrics Corner, love edition:

• “I know / you’re scared /  but I’m scared too / oh but every time I try to make lunch / for anyone else in my head / I end up dreaming of you…show me the place where he inserted the blade” from The Place Where He Inserted the Blade by Black Country, New Road (alternate category: favorite lyric about making a sandwich that’s really about love)
• “and it’s just /  been a weekend / but in my mind / we summer in France with our genius daughters now / and you teach me to play the piano.” from Good Will Hunting by Black Country, New Road

Lyrics Corner, degen edition:

• “I’m sorry that I told your sister’s boyfriend / he was history’s greatest monster….I’m sorry I threw up on your bath math / and demanded / another glass of wine / and your sister’s number” from Letter of Apology by Wilder Maker
• “I’m going back to him / I know my therapist’s pissed” from Sepsis by Blondshell
• “if this is the bottom / then I’ll show you around” from Running with the Hurricane by Camp Cope
• “It’s plain to me to see / you have bought yourself a boat / since the last time / you and me spoke” from You Have Bought Yourself a Boat by MJ Lenderman
• “I wanna take you to the supermarket / I wanna buy you all the shit that you need / I think I like it at the supermarket / but now security keeps asking us to leave / we got too high, high, high, high, high” from Supermarket by Wet Leg
• “It wasn’t a pizza / that poisoned him in Utah / with a hotel bill to prove / three thousand dollars / on just five dudes…oh, he looked so sick / it was all over the news / but it wasn’t the pizza / and it wasn’t the flu / yeah, I love drinking too / I love drinking too” from Hangover Game by MJ Lenderman

Worst band names with the best records (tie): Jockstrap & Viagra Boys-Cave World

Song(s) that I most hate myself for liking: Anything by Harry Styles (but specifically As it Was and Music for a Sushi Restaurant)

Most Credible Japandroids imitation: The New Year’s Resolution by The Spielbergs

Best podcast about a song: Song Exploder on This is a Photograph by Kevin Morby. This was already a song I liked. This podcast turned it into one I loved. I can’t say anything here that isn’t explored better on the podcast. Go listen.

Don’t Listen to this with yr Mom Award: Casual by Chappell Roan

Favorite Motif: “Billie Eilish-Style” from Black Country, New Road’s “Ants From Up There”

Best musical moments in song:

• When the horns come in on Heavy Heart by Bartees Strange
• The layered introduction of new instruments in This is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
• The drop at 2:17 in Concrete Over Water by Jockstrap
• All of the guitar in Pomeranian Spinster by Alvvays and Simple Glyphs by Wild Pink and Held by Spoon
• The way Zach Bryan sings “eat at your bones and drive your young mind crazy” in Something in the Orange, his alliteration in Corinthians (pullin’ pints of pesky Pendleton)”
• The tempo change in Chaos Space Marine by Black Country, New Road, at about 2:23
• The chorus in Strung with Everything by Animal Collective

It’s really, really hard to write a good love song, but they did it award: Big Time by Angel Olsen (either version)

Best Adam Peindl Recommendation: Looks like I was able to ignore most of them. We both like Dry Cleaning, but he likes the wrong songs.

Most 2022 Lyrics: “Things are shit / but they’re gonna be okay / And I’m gonna see the otters /  ‘There aren’t any otters.’ / ‘Well we can check.’” from Kwenchy Kups by Dry Cleaning