2023 was the year where I felt like we didn’t live in a post-pandemic society, but a post-apocalyptic one. It’s just an apocalypse more like The Leftovers than Station Eleven or The Last of Us. The bad part of this mild apocalypse is that it didn’t really fix anything, it just made everything slightly worse. The good part (you know, beyond not losing more human life)  is that the internet still functions (ed: still not clear that this is good) and thus I am listening to and sending you music. 

Here’s the playlist. 

A few comments about the list:

• As always, these are my favorite songs, not the best ones. It’s a playlist designed to be idiosyncratic to my tastes. If you don’t like something, go back to the bar, get another drink, and try again. 
• The playlist is already shuffled, I’d actually recommend you just hit play. Generally, the stuff I like the most is toward the top. Think of it like this: I burned 5 CDs of my favorite songs for you (1-20, 21-40, etc.), and I recommend the first CD first. 

Awards:

• Annual “What is it that you would say you like about this song?-Michelle” award: Dumbest Girl Alive by 100 gecs
• Bman Travis Nexus: Marrow by Pry 
• First Soccer Mommy song I’ve actually liked: Lose You by Bully (feat. Soccer Mommy)
• Most blatant pandering to my father-in-law: Modern Girl by Bleachers
• Best Preview for their next record: Alibi by Hurray for the Riff Raff (last year this would have been Sepsis by Blondshell)
• Vann Joines good vibes award: Strawberry Chainsaw by JAWNY
• Adam Peindl award for ignored recommendations: All of them except Wednesday
• Best Bridge: Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo

Favorite lyrics:

• “We saw John Daly / singing ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’”-Knockin by MJ Lenderman
• “My belief in a good god / is ruined / now I can say whatever I want / like: I was relieved when the family dog died” –Good God by Daffo
• “You got a new tattoo / of an old tattoo” –Free From the Guillotine by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
• “My pastor told me / ‘When you leave / all you take / is your memory’ / and I’m gonna take mine of you with me” –The Grants by Lana Del Rey
• “Your mom called / I told her / you’re fucking up big-time” –A&W by Lana Del Rey (but really this whole song)
• “What you don’t really understand / I’ve got magic in my hand / stars in my eyes / I’m a different kind of woman / if you want some basic bitch / go to the Beverly Center and find her” –Sweet by Lana Del Rey
• “Take that box of self-deprecation / lock it and put it on a shelf / Then wait five days / take that box / throw it in the fire” –I’ve Got Me by Joanna Sternberg
• “My weekly dinner / of popcorn and coke / every Friday / like Communion / that I took as a joke / that tallied the weekends / when time had no hands / to count the passing / of the days spent / with no decisions / or plans” –Hurtin’ or Healed by A. Savage
• “I got a girlfriend / she’s got a snakeskin purse / and a walk-in closet / chock-full of My Chemical Romance shirts / Told me about BDSM / now I think I might burn in hell / we’re staying up all night / writing dirty emails on AOL” –My Sister in Jesus Christ by Slaughter Beach, Dog
• “I wish that I could tell you / what I’m thinking about / oh I wish that I could walk / into your house / No on else around ‘cept for you and me / those summer windows open / breathing deep”-Summer Windows by Slaughter Beach, Dog
• “Oh I wish that I could tell you / that I could use a hand / oh I wish that I could write it / like Townes Van Zandt” –Summer Windows by Slaughter Beach, Dog
• “If you think I’m stupid now / you should see me when I’m high / and I’m smarter than I look / I’m the dumbest girl alive” –Dumbest Girl Alive by 100 gecs
• “Every daughter / of god / has a little bad luck / sometimes” -Bath County by Wednesday
• “But it’s getting longer babe / the list of things I’d do for a buck / if I only had a Pepsi now / for all the coke spilled in this truck” –Flashes of Orange by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
• “There’s a blackened space / between the back of my head and the back of my face / I lie in bed with a book of answers / but I doze off and I lose track of my place” –Flashes of Orange by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band
• “Big songbirds don’t cry / they just get the blues” –Big Songbirds Don’t Cry by Superviolet
• “Oh when it / it all ends again / what if I tell you that / you’ll be playing in my head / cause you’re a summer hit / and I’m singing it” –Slugs by Slow Pulp 
• “Kiss / City / I think my kind is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty” –Kiss City by Blondshell
• “How many roads / must a man walk down / ‘til he learns / he’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse / til it burns / I wouldn’t be /  in the seminary / if I could be / with you.” –Rudolph by MJ Lenderman
• “No hard feelings / no regrets / no passing blame / or late-night texts / we’re runners up / out of frame / and I’m so proud / of how close / we came” –How Close We Came by Dan Croll
• The opening bars to Soft Landing by billy woods and Kenny Segal are real gift:

Excuse me, uh, on those drinks?

It’s 2-1-1 on those daiquiris

It ruins the whole day 

When my baby mother mad at me

Spliff could probably jump your car battery

Birds-of-paradise in the menagerie

A single death is a tragedy

But eggs make omelets

One weird thing about getting older that no one told me about (I promise this isn’t about mutual funds): You’ll have these artists you used to love, and they’ll keep releasing music, but you won’t like it as much. And yet you keep listening to it, giving it chances, and going back to it. Sometimes it rewards you, sometimes it doesn’t. I listened to and vaguely enjoyed records by Wilco, The National, and The New Pornographers, but you won’t see any of their songs on this list. I’m not here to cast aspersions on these bands, I just prefer to think we’ve moved out of alignment. That said, there are a few records that rewarded loyalty:

• Mitski’s new record (too long to type) was my favorite since Puberty 2, and I think Bug Like an Angel is a triumph
• The Lana Del Rey record…more on that below
• Sufjan Stevens’s Javelin: Look…sad music and sad songs aren’t for everybody, but if you want one, goddam he wrote some bangers this year. Sample Goodbye Evergreen, which I cannot read as anything but a farewell to his partner who died this year (“Goodbye Evergreen / you know I loved you / but everything heaven-sent / must burn out in the end”), or Javelin for the more opaque (“Searching through the snow / for the javelin I had not / meant to throw / right at you / for if it had hit its mark / there’d be blood  / in the place / that you stood”)
• Kurt Vile’s single, Another Good Year for the Roses, is my favorite music by him since 2009’s Childish Prodigy. 
• Similarly, I thought M. Ward’s new record, supernatural thing, was his best since 2006’s Post-War.  

My favorite records of the year: 

I think Hotline TNT is what people wished The War on Drugs sounded like. Don’t listen to Cartwheel on your laptop speakers. Get in your car, turn it up loud, and drive for a while. I listened to this a bunch while driving back and forth to Pennsylvania this fall. 

Bully’s Lucky For You crept up on me— I didn’t realize how much I liked it until I saw how many songs made my final list. If you have any memories of the 90s, I think this will resonate. 

Joanna Sternberg’s voice won’t be for everyone, but she wrote some great songs, and you’re missing out if you dismiss her because of her voice. 

Olivia Rodrigo’s record this year, GUTS, wasn’t as much of a revelation for me as SOUR, but the exception is probably “Vampire,” which showcases all of her best talents, including the knack for writing a perfect bridge. 

A late find for me was Dancing on the Edge by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band. All the songs are 6+ minutes long, but instead of that being annoying, I feel like I discover new lines and features each time I listen. Free from the Guillotine has both my favorite non-sequitur opening line of the year (“you got a new tattoo / of an old tattoo”) and expresses existential crisis, making it one of my favorite songs of the year. 

I only saw a couple of concerts this year, and one was Wednesday, touring their record Rat Saw God. The Asheville band wrote a nearly perfect record, with standout track being Chosen to Deserve, which has a guitar riff that sounds like peak Hootie and the Blowfish (this is a compliment). The conceit of this song is fantastic— “We always started by tellin’ our best stories first / So now that it’s been a while / I’ll get around / to tellin’ you all my worst” —and feels true in a new way, which is all I could ever ask of art, really. Bonus points for the dogwood tree (North Carolina State Flower) reference. The guitarist of the band, MJ Lenderman, released a couple of singles this year that also rank among my favorites. 

Spotify informed me that my most listened to record this year was Indigo De Souza’s All of This Will End. The cover of the album is hideous, but the songs are not. It’s a great record by another North Carolina artist. 

The record of the year, of course, then, is Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There Were Tunnels Under Ocean Boulevard. Maybe I am a sucker for records with long names (hello, Fiona Apple!), but really I’m in the bag for everything this record does. The hypnotic melody as she sings “So you think there’s a chance / for us? / Should I do a dance / for once?” The references and reverence for other music (refs. Rocky Mountain High, Ain’t no Mountain High Enough, Hotel California, Girl from the North Country, Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop, and probably others I’ve missed) that paints a rich tapestry of musical history where you can almost feel the rivers and valleys of the United States. And her voice, her fucking voice, is perfect, I can hear it every time I try hopelessly to sing along. I’m still, today, almost a year later, finding new things about this dense record. It’s still the one I keep coming back to, the record of the year for 2023.