The Best Songs of (But Not Necessarily Released in) 2023

I listened to a lot of music last year. Most of it was released in 2023. Some of it was released in 2022. A couple came from 2021. And … perhaps one or two were from 2020. Doesn’t matter, if I heard it for the first time last year, it counts as a 2023 song.

I listened to a lot, so if you like rock, pop, metal, hip hop, r&b, punk, stoner rock, post-grunge, jazz, indie, alternative, indie-alternative, reggaeton, jpop, ska, dream pop, soul infusion, viking metal, fairy doom metal, funk-rock revival, and the inevitable return of the 90s, … well then, there’s not much else that you could be listening to, because I listen to everything.

Here are 147 in ascending order of greatness, starting at amazing and ending with *angel choir*

For best results, follow along here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Rdd0i5vBJpixhmob7VNEe?si=aafe138fbc014f79

And if you don’t have Spotify, … well, tough tuchus.

THE GOOD

THE GREAT

101. “Rigor Mortis Radio” – the Hives
||60’s surf rock shoved into a morgue drawer||

100. “Meeting the Master” – Greta Van Fleet
||Prodigal cousing of Zeppelin’s “Thank You”||

99. “1066” – Bloodhound
||Viking metal at its finest||

98. “Fallin’ With Me” -the Struts
||Here’s that catchy neon pop rock you ordered||

97. “This Is” – Elle Mai
||Respect for a classic R&B revival||

96. “New England” – Kid Kapichi
||Less “tribute to the cornerstone of America”, more “lethal takedown of the whole Brexit situation”||

95. “The Summoning” – Sleep Token
||We’re hearing prog-metal evolve before our very ears||

94. “Rescued” – Foo Fighters
||I keep waiting for the Foos to be boring, but dammit they’ve done it again||

93. “Face Down” – Present
||Hard rock with a soft landing||

92. “Delirious” – swim school
||”Get out of my pool, you punks!”||

91. “Short Month” – Norman Sann
||Urban lamentation about the relegation to irrelevance on the calendar||

90. “Bad Things” – I Prevail
||The hard rock resurgance begins now||

89. “Hate Thy Neighbor” – Hyphen
||Sometimes, in order to get your point across, you have to be extremely blunt||

88. “Tearing Your Life Away” – Guilt Trip
||Heavy metal with a leaner structure remains undefeated||

87. “Makeshift Happy” – Errorr
||Who invited the shoegaze revivalists, and how long can they stay?||

86. “’Til the Anarchy’s Restored” – Flogging Molly
||It may have the country western twang, but it’s still punk as hell||

85. “Lucifer on the Sofa” – Spoon
||Loung style indie rock croons and swoons its way to the top||

84. “Take it Back” – Jawny, f/ Beck
||Sounds like vintage Beck… hey, waitaminute!||

83. “Chainsaw Blood” – Vaundy
||Japan rock acts have dusted off the remnants of riff rock that America dropped, and they turned it into gold||

82. “Nowhere, Ohio” – Can’t Swim
||Florida is getting old, let’s all take jabs at Ohio now!||

81. “Lucerne Valley” – Hawthorne Heights
||That awkward moments when a band you thumbed your nose at when you were young drops a banger this many years later||

80. “Yo No Soy Celoso” – Bad Bunny
||Never thought this would happen, but to be fair that Latin samba inspired beat has a little more to do with it than Mr. Bunny’s vocals||

79. ““Good Guy”” – Against the Current
||An appropriate kiss off to self-proclaimed “nice guys” everywhere||

78. “Supernatural” – Barns Courtney
||Brilliant. Simply brilliant. No notes||

77. “Money for Flowers” – Paper Idol
||This is the new “pop rock”||

76. “Smoke” – Victoria Monet, f/ Lucky Daye
||I don’t even imbibe, but I can dig a stoner anthem when I hear it.||

75. “Stede” – Huntertones
||Jazzy jazz jazzing jazzly. ’nuff said.||

74. “You Needed a Hit” – KennyHoopla
||Stud punk delivers a punk stud||

73. “Beguiled” – the Smashing Pumpkins
||The rumors of Billy Corgan’s demise have been greatly exaggerated||

72. “The Credits” – Arrows in Action, f/ Loveless, Magnolia Park
||Sweeping power pop offed up by this veritable council of modern pop punk dignitaries||

THE AWESOME

71. “Echolalia” – Faetooth
||They describe their music as “fairy doom metal”, and that’s all I have to say about that||

70. “Applause” – Liily
||Worthy of a slow clap… an unironic slow clap!||

69. “Kick Back” – Kenshi Yonezu
||I don’t even watch anime, this song just kicks like a wild donkey!||

68. “Tarantula” – Gorillaz
||G’z take a swan dive into dreampop, and the judges give it a perfect 10||

67. “El Senor de la Noche” – Don Omar
||I like my reggaeton with dallop of d. r. a. m. a. on top.||

66. “Lost” – Linkin Park
||It’s a Meteora outtake, and you can tell because it’s damn good… and now I’m sad again||

65. “Ghosts Again” – Depeche Mode
||80s new wave kings still got the moves||

64. “Teeth” – Ergo, Bria
||Takes a bite out of the early aughts rock scene that 9 out 10 dentists approve of||

63. “Running Out of Time” – Paramore
||Hayley Williams could have rested on her laurels as a pop punk princess from another time, but her distinct evolution into a hurricane force of alternative rock is seamless and respectable||

62. “Burnt Toast and Coffee” – High Fade
||Tell the Chili Peppers there’s a new funk-rock sheriff in town!||

61. “All Comes Crashing” – Metric
||I’m always afraid they’re going to sound like a relic from another time, but Metric continues to evolve and prove me wrong every time.||

60. “New Invention” – I Don’t Know How But They Found Me
||Tight new wave revival. ‘Nuff said||

59. “Nothing Gold” – After the Burial
||Who says heavy metal has to be unintelligible? Resounding sentiments delivered via scream over gunging guitars||

58. “Tear Gas” – Architects
||They have the gumption to be the front runners to rescue rock from the mainstream doldrums.||

57. “Telephones 4 Eyes” – Hak Baker
||Electric paranoia gets a seeing-eye Brit-punk backdrop||

56. “When I See Darkness” – the Main Squeeze
||Soul rock is the musical fusion we need in this day and age.||

55. “Tomorrow Never Comes” – Rancid
||When you’re a well-established act in their legacy period, sometimes it’s hard to produce music that lives up to what got you there… Then again, sometimes you’re Rancid and continually drop punk rock bangers that fit in with everything you did back in the day.||

54. “I’m Fantastic” – Paper Idol
||This is the third Paper Idol song on this list, and I’m trying to figure out if I’m actually a fan, or if this guy just cracked the code on making an intelligently catchy song. Either way, this song is It.||

53. “So Be It” – Alex Vaughn, f/ Summer Walker
||Vintage R&B power play with just enough swooping drama to give it edge without overdoing it||

52. “Can You Help Me?” – Can’t Swim
||These nu-punk death anthems, man. Feel those feelings, brother!||

51. “Bogus Operandi” – the Hives
||So glad Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and the boys came back from the dead, because this is a stadium rocker needed to be let out.||

50. “Pages” – White Reaper
||I love the retro style bleeding back into the scene. The 60s pop-rock “bop-bop” drumline gives this song such sway.||

49. “Kizuna no Kiseki” – Man with a Mission
||Worlds collide as American style riff rock gets a streamlined into Japanese sensibilities, and the result is a speeding bullet of soaring hard rock. I don’t know the words, but I understand music as a language, and this one is screaming victory||

48. “A Million Watts” – Nonpoint
||You know you’re doing something right when you come up during the initial nu-metal movement and you’re still dropping bombshells 20 years later during the so-called nu-revival. Nonpoint’s been here the whole time, people!||

47. “Destroy the World” – Jaws the Shark, f/ Dinosaur Pile-Up
||Distortion rock is cool because it can be appreciated by anyone. But when you dress it up with smart lyrics and set an almost storylike timeline from verse to verse, AND you can develop an allegory about rich motherfuckers not giving a shit? Well, that’s why I’m in this business…]]

46. “Thousand Lifetimes” – Fire From the Gods, f/ Corey Glover
||Hammer drop of alt-rock lifted by the powerful vocals of Mr. Cult of Personality himself.||

45. “I Am Not You” – Blood Red Shoes
||BRS have transformed their sound over time, but at their core they are purely art-rock shoved into a dishwasher of distortion, and this fuzz filled bomb is a great example of that.||

THE FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC

44. “Zeit” – Rammstein
||If this is the end, as some have suspected, this is quite the valentine they left everyone.||

43. “Oportunista” – Calva Louise
||”If I ask for respect, and you don’t give it, I’ll scream” is… a … LINE! Punchy metal with a sour bite, and yes I’ll take seconds.||

42. “Held” – Spoon
||Spoon has built a career on developing little licks that are repeated over the duration of songs, a loose drumline as a structure, and then they just stack and stack and stack on top. Guitar frills, vocal walks, distortion zippers, production knobs turning, Hammond organ chords… But having that one riff baseline and getting more and more to dance on top of it is a powerful way to build a song, and they are the kings of it.||

41. “Opening Night” – Scowl
||One of the most important factors of new music is repeatability. The want to hear the song again and again. Scowl wins in that regard. Super concentrated distortion punk can take my attention every damn time.||

40. “Oil” – Gorillaz, f/ Stevie Nicks
||Should we start to consider Damon Albarn as one of the premiere songwriters of our time? In a song that features rock royalty (and she is just wonderful on it, giving the song just enough zhuzh to make it legendary), Albarn’s colloquial style and melody structuring are elite, and this track is all the proof you need.

39. “Vampire” – Olivia Rodrigo
||I’m not trying to buy any clout from the younger set because god knows I couldn’t give a shit, and because old heads liking music of the zoomer generation is viewed as “cringe”. I was so surprised her music appealed to me since this usually wasn’t my bag, but her recent admission of 90s pop-rockers and underground influences may very well explain it. Either way, this song is legitimately great and leans into the dramatic bent of it all rather than pretends it isn’t there like some singers are wont to do.||

38. “Pick Up the Phone”- Norman Sann
||Sann is the perfect antidote to the mumble rap, trap rap, unbearable schlock that modern hip hop has become. It’s hard to find a rapper who cares about the flow and the rhyme scheme anymore, but Norman Sann is breathing life back into the game with undeniable chops, structure, and rhythm. If we can get others on board, the soul can be put back into the rap game.||

37. “Portrait of a Blank Slate” – Lovejoy
||That’s a killer bassline you got there. I’m a sucker for a locked and loaded bass guitar feature. Altogether, it’s a powerful riptide of indie-alternative, like Modest Mouse after 3 Red Bulls.||

36. “Sharpen Up” – High Fade
||One surefire way to end up high on the list of best songs is by producing a high-energy, bright personality, funky, flavorful instrumental track. Something that transcends the need for vocals because the music says all it needs to say. High Fade fills that order here. High speed funk rock in a blender and press puree.||

35. “Fireplace” – Sincere Engineer
||Sometimes a song comes out of nowhere, ambushes you even, and just stops you in your tracks. I’m not a lyrics-first listener… I usually hear them and process their meaning on subsequent listens. But the delightful vitriol in which the words “I hate your guts”, and every line thereafter is just … perfect. A lot of music is subtle with its imagery and careful with its wording, but this song is just out with it in the open, and it makes for a brilliant smack down of humor and anger joining forces. It also helps the punk-driven music elevates it beyond just a cheeky diss track.||

34. “Alien Jewelry” – Atticus Chimps
||Sometimes one riff is all it takes. Now, that’s not to say the rest of the song isn’t up to snuff… No, the fact the rest of the song is equally as pungent is the reason it finds itself just outside the top 30. But let’s be honest here, they could have just played that one riff on repeat for 3 minutes and this song would still be here.||

33. “Sternhagelvoll” – In Extremo
||How does one sincerely express the multitude of German folk metal band playing a whimsical jaunt into the autumn eyres of the highlands just to sit fireside and drink with your brethren? Lift up a stein, hit play, and find out.||

32. “See You Tomorrow” – Bad//Dreams
||If you’re going to speak-sing over a vicious punk livewire, you better have something cathartic to say, and it wouldn’t hurt to have an Australian dialect on you as well. Check and double check. The properties of this song are almost preposterous. But damned if they don’t pull it off and then some. This song lands directly on the bullseye they were aiming for, and they sound brilliant doing it||

31. “Slow Down” – As Everything Unfolds
||First things first, the whole song is awesome. But allow me to discuss the part that plants it just outside the Top 30. The producer’s decision not to cut one part of the song completely makes it. It was completely within a producer’s vision to trim the pre-chorus that feature some vitriolic screaming. It’s the only part of the song like it, and it could have been trimmed and sewn together and still sounded good. Now, the thing is it’s not the best screaming you’ll hear in a hard rock song, but there’s something to be said about the gumption and pressing in its loose vocalizing during the pre-chorus that changes the entirety of the song. It could have been this decent hard rock song not-unlike a Lacuna Coil offering. But keeping that screaming pre-chorus in (and repeating it for the second and third verses) amplifies absolutely everything else about the song. One four-measure section can change an entire song.||

30. “Hurricane Coming” – the Heavy
||Soul indie alt-rock is not a fusion of genres that has a lot of dwellers, and that’s because The Heavy will just destroy anyone else who tries. This combination of sounds is not unlike a hurricane, dropping a vicious force of musical knowledge it’ll blow anyone else out of the water.||

29. “This is Mongol (Warrior Souls)” – the Hu, f/ William DuVall
||The lead singer of Alice in Chains may have been why I picked up this song to begin with, but excuse me … is that a MONGOLIAN METAL BAND he’s singing in front of? Playing traditional Mongolian style folk instruments OVER the crunchy American style hard rock? I heard this song, and I was just like that Kylo Ren meme yelling “MOOOOORE!” It’s incredibly niche, but this song and this band are nestled at the dead center of my zone of interest.

28. “Centipede” – FIDLAR
||It’s no secret 90’s alternative is my all-time favorite genre. So the closer a modern band can get to that sound, the more I’ll probably like them. FIDLAR, on this song in particular, got so close to the 90’s alt sound I was not initially convinced this wasn’t a secret gem of the 90s I had missed. But nope… 2023 release. And with a line as epic as “She’s my Oasis, but she treats me like I’m a Blur”, it’s an instant yes from me.||

27. “Majesty” – Bury Tomorrow
||The shapeshifting metal song… The ones that can start low and leering, then explode… Those are my jam. Some have trouble committing to the “quiet” part and just want to force the juxtaposition when they get loud. Not here. Two and a half verses of quietude, tension welling up underneath, completely buy into the emotional toil until boom! They pull off the transformation flawlessly. Metal with deep emotions, and with the versatility to pull it off, will always get high marks from me.||

FAR BEYOND EPIC

26. “Do You Ever Wonder?” – Oh He Dead
||This was the year of soul rock, and Oh He Dead leads the charge in that regard. On top of a fantastic band name, the commitment to that funky soul sound while plugging in R&B infused vocals just puts it over the top. This song alone bought me as a fan for life.||

25. “Bottleneck” – Groundlift
||Slappa da bass, man! If this was the year of soul rock, then ballistic funk-rock is right behind it on the list. This is the song you start a party with, big sound, delicious licks, and a stomping rhythm.||

24. “Lux Aeterna” – Metallica
||I make no apologies, I will always find a little bit brilliance in whatever Metallica releases in their legacy period. That’s the credit they were able to build from what their early stuff meant to me. Now, it helps that this song balls out regardless of who did it, but the powerful force that a band with their merit can deliver makes it one of the best songs of their legacy period. It’s not a return to form—that time is over—but it’s still quick, electric, and metal as fuck.||

23. “The Weight of Light” – Maybeshewill
||I connect with instrumental rock a lot. Atmospheric instrumental music has influenced my songcrafting journey more than any other type of music. The ability to express emotion or tell a story without saying a word is a gift some bands have, and this song is beautiful in its sadness. It’s expressive in a melancholic way, leering and staying underneath the surface until it can’t withhold its anguish anymore. The build is fantastic, releasing a burgeoning tension. From quiet to brazen emotional outburst sloping back to quiet and defeated ending, this song tells a compelling, sad story in four minutes without saying a single word.||

22. “Wet Dream” – Wet Leg
||I’m late to the Wet Leg fanbus, but I’m all aboard now. This song has the most infectious chorus of any song I’ve heard all year. The future is bright for modern indie-rock. All it takes is this 3 minute song to prove they are masters of their domain…||

21. “Undefeatable” – Sega Sound Team, f/Kellin Quinn, MEG, Julian Comeau
||This is a song from a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Ok, now listen to it, then come back. Again… this is a song… from a Sonic. The. Hedgehog. Game. This pristine pinnacle of power-metal was the soundtrack to a boss battle featuring the Blue Blur. When I was a kid, we got happy little MIDI loops of peaceful grassland music. My son gets this inspiring, blistering metal slug while fighting the boss. And not for nothing, that’s exactly where I was introduced to this song… My 9 year old just so happened to pick up one of the most torrential metal songs I’ve heard this decade. Proving once again that the perfect song can appear out of absolutely nowhere.||


20. “Love Abuser (Save Me)” – Royal & the Serpent
||So … are the 90s back? Because if the alt-rock scene is any indication, the mid 90s must have returned. This song is a darkly dreaming, slow-moving fuzz missile driven by grungy serpentine feminine vocals. It is undeniable, sharp, dark, and a glaring strike in the return of Generation X’s famous disaffected veneer.||

19. “Verona” – Muse
||Like they’ve done so many times, Muse channels their inner Queen and pens an enigmatic, flourishing astro-stomp track complete with prismatic vocals, a thumping bassline, and profound waves of synthetic bossitude. It is a dramatic display of magnum musicianship that Mat Belamy and company have made a living doing far better than their next peer.||

18. “The Perfume of Decay” – Tigercub
||This is the bastard child of stoner rock returning to ask his dad for a couple bucks. The creeping drawl of the intro repleat with the cascade down an irregular scale immediately sets the tone that this is a dirty little desert pit rocker. Kyuss would be proud||

17. “The Narcissist” – Blur
||I was always Team Oasis in my youth. But growing older and more musically open, Blur’s music has slowly closed the gap. This song, and album, very well may have evened the entire playing field. It’s amazing how Damon Albarn can drop a Gorillaz album complete with the band’s best work since Demon Days, and still have enough in the tank to drop the perfect… literally perfect… britpop crooner with his old mates in Blur in the same year.||

16. “Show Me How” – Foo Fighters
||Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. Dave Grohl has been a master of his sound for years, and sometimes that can get a little predictable. The Foo’s pull things way back with this one, still creating a wall of accessible sound, but Grohl focuses a lot more on his vocal perfomance… and assisting him in that is Violet Grohl. The contrast between their vocals is a perfect harmony and reflects beautifully off the subtly vibrant instrumentation. It’s a reserved reflection in a time of mourning, but it is a wonderfully docile track that is a welcome twist of the knob from the Foos regular brand of music||

15. “Viven” – ttt
||Even after the bland reaction to his first side project Team Sleep, Chino Moreno has garnered enough respect that he has carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants. This side piece is much more gothic in nature than his work in Deftones, but his songcrafting ability warps the darkness into little dark cuts of technically superior slices of music. “Viven” is the result of knowing how to mold the words over the loops and clicks and making something marvelous out of it.||

14. “Burnin’” – High Fade
||The high mark for the funk-rock revival. The energy that comes from this jaunty, ballistic, shotgun slug of guerrilla disco could set a room on fire. The jives and jaunts are doubled up by the rapid tempo, heaped over the smokey vocals, and stoking the white hot guitar licks. If the rhythm doesn’t get you, check your pulse.||

13. “Slaughter Beach” – Clutch
||The mid-aughts modern rock scene beat the mid-tempo rocker to a bloody pulp, taking every ounce of power and soul out of with mundane lyrics and predictable-as-hell chord progressions droning on to an uninspired boom-boom-tick drumline. Clutch has returned to reclaim the mid-tempo rocker from the rock and roll dumpster. A tricky riff and drums that stomp instead of drag, paired with aggro vocals (singing absurdly unassociated lyrics), make the song resonate with power and gives it purpose rather than zombie walking through 4 minutes. The extended outro helps give new life to mid-tempo rocker.||

12. “Surrounded By Spies” – Placebo
||Placebo has always a been a very particular brand of alt-rock for a very niche audience. And on their 10th album all these years later, they’re still pressing that dreary blend of glam-goth and alternative to prismatic highs and gloomy, grimy lows. This song is the latter. It grooves at a sneaky pace with suspicious riffs and rhythms guiding it as Brian Molko’s vocals give rise to the paranoia behind the musical espionage. It shifts and squirms its way through until it erupts in a divisive, distorted stinger depicting the image of a team of undercover spies coming out of the woodwork to thwart him mid-chorus. In terms of thematics, no other song this year is pinned to its theme as much as this one.||

11. “Spit” – Poppy
||There are layers to every good metal song. Some of them are only as good as their surface layer. Some are linear and meets expectation in a predictable way… And that’s fine, you can make a great metal song that way. “Spit” is none of these. It’s brash, loud, vibrant, dark, and multi-faceted. And here, let me say once and for all: I love a good scream in metal regardless of who’s delivering it. But I think this song has helped me realize, while it’s all dependent on the context and the situation, I might actually prefer women singing metal just a fraction more than men. Any song that can lead to an epiphany like that is a song that can sit just outside the top 10.||

TOP SHELF

10. “Belicoso” – Calva Louise

||Speaking of women in metal, Calva Louise might be my favorite new (to me) band I’ve picked up this year. They are skillful songcrafters and performers. But this song gets the 10 spot because of the massive versatility it shows. This goes beyond the metal influence and charges headlong toward highway rock with its high powered drum stomp and torrid guitar line. The tempestuous vocals explode into a million pieces during the torrid chorus. All that together is nothing short of brilliant… but add on top that it’s also, somehow, catchy as fuck leaves the listener with an earful of dopamine.||

9. “Simmer” – Hayley Williams

||Hayley Williams had enough star power to become the next big thing, and I (so very, very wrongly) assumed that her releasing a solo album meant she was giving up being a frontwoman and focusing on her name brand, and that this was the beginning of her radio starlet career. I’m sure that would have been fine… not great, but fine. She earned the right to do whatever she wanted to by this point. What she did instead was doubled way down and released an artistic, avant garde record, with this heatseeking torpedo leading the charge. The caustic mood she sets springs to mind a festering anger bubbling underneath the surface that never quite gets expelled. Indeed, she mastered the imagery by singing about how “rage is a quiet thing”, and drawing “the line between wrath and mercy”. This song has so many layers to it, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t think she had a song like this in her. Lesson learned, and a fan for life. Like, I dig Paramore, but can we get another avant garde album like this again please?||

8. “B.C.” – Alfa Mist

||Jazz is hard enough to compose and perform to begin with what with all the in between beats. But writing jazz with in between beats that changes time signatures is downright ludicrous. I cannot count what beat they’re on in the intro, but it is dynamic and attention grabbing from the jump. Such a street-level beat with a cold groove the horns can play off of. I’ve always loved jazz, but my adoration for its many intricacies only seems to grow with every year. This is night time city driving music at its coolest.||

7. “Ghosts (How Can I Move On?)” – Muse

||Presented without comment, while I try to find whoever is cutting these onions.||

6. “New Gold” Gorillaz, f/ Tame Impala, Bootie Brown

||The intangible magic of Gorillaz and how they’ve lasted this long as a “cartoon band” is the respect they get from their musical contemporaries behind the scenes. Even from the beginning bringing in Del the Funky Homosapien or Phi Life Cypher, Gorillaz have been a labor of musical collaboration. This song serves as the pinnacle of that feat. Gorillaz flexed a huge dream pop atmosphere into their latest album, so it would only make sense to bring in a dreamy indie influence like Tame Impala, but then pulling in a smooth operator like Bootie Brown to bring the hiphop roots back into it is just a master stroke of song building. Three musical dynamos at the opposite end of the musical spectrum combine to pull off one of the most improbably slick tracks of the year.||

5. “Bone Church” – Slipknot

||I’m not even a huge fan of Slipknot. I enjoy some of their tunes, but their theatrics get in the way of the music sometimes. But at the heart of Slipknot is Corey Taylor, who I am a huge fan of and think his approach to music is second to none in his field. The atmosphere they stage on this song is nothing short of brilliant. It’s unlike much of the band’s pound and growl sound, pulling their foot all the way off the pedal yet still somehow managing to careen ever so close to the edge. The cold ominous intro reminiscent of a foggy morning in an abandoned church courtyard bleeds into the soft-spoken chorus. And it just builds from there until that pent up frustration comes out as Corey Taylor belts out “I don’t need a miracle/Prayers will not save me again”. A powerful piece of music from a somewhat unlikely source.||

4. “Francesca” – Hozier

||Sometimes a song is good on its own, but the moment you realize its capacity, it becomes irrevocably ensconced as part of a memory. Let it be known “Francesca” would have been here on its own merit… probably not as high as the top 10, but definitely top 20. This song is equal parts haunting, mesmerizing, and soulful. Hozier has one of the most iconic voices of our time, and he uses it to cut swaths of radiant darkness out of the gloomy din. Now pin a song of those accolades to one of my favorite moments of 2023. That’s worthy of the fourth best spot.||

THE MIND. THE SOUL. THE HEART.

When I sat down to hash out all the songs on my 2023 master list, I took note of who deserved an internal debate on which song should be declared number one. The consideration list was only three songs long. And when I couldn’t pick, I wanted to declare a three way tie for the top. Which was all well and good, but I still had to play them one after the other after the other, and if I could pick the order, then surely that meant it answered the question of who claimed the title of the best song of 2023 (and years prior).

I had an epiphany when trying to decide who to truly deserved the top spot. Each of the three songs hit a different part of me. The mind. The soul. And the heart. Each part chose its song as champion… but which one honestly deserved the title.

3. “The Dirt I’m Buried In” – Avatar

||This one is the Mind’s champion. And the reason is pure and simple. It. Rocks. The torrid tempo, classic drum stomp, and drippy guitarline collect into a maelstrom of modern rock glory. The vocals drive like an angry bus driver, spitting sharp words through a big voice. It’s the authenticity for me, and the deep force buried under the train tracks. And the line that gets me every damn time…

“Lonely lays the longing/I’m so far away from the world that buried me”.

This song releases every ounce of dopamine within me, making this my Mind’s pick for song of the year… It’ll settle for #3||

2. “The Eye That Catches the Dream” – Rodrigo y Gabriela

||There is real magic in music if you listen closely enough. There’s a place deep within ourselves that music can reach if given just the right quietude. There are songs that go beyond what we can hear and becomes this astral force that envelopes our soul. There isn’t a doubt in my bones that this is a soul touching song. I can feel the world slow to a passive halt whenever it plays. And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this. So if you have four minutes and fourteen seconds to spare, plug in your headphones, go someplace alone, shut your eyes, and see if this song can find your soul just as it has found mine. This is the soul’s song, and it is the second best song of the year.||

1. “Wild” – Spoon

||In the battle of mind, soul, and heart… The Heart will win every damn time. Thus, the best song of ~2023 is this offbeat indie slammer. And the reason is simple… this song just makes my heart so damn happy. Every time. The groove is undeniable in every way, the vocals are executed with just enough verve, and I will never ever deny a song that builds on top of itself as the song progresses to make it sound like a wandering tower of sound, even when it’s just an un-mic’d drumset, a couple acoustic guitars, and a jambling piano playing delightful melodies. Music is supposed to make you feel… and this song is my joy personified. That is the Heart’s pick, and it is the greatest. Song. Of. 2023. (and select cuts from years beforehand).

Just kidding, forget everything I said. The only good song of 2023 was “Peaches” by Jack Black.