It's been a great year for music. New releases offered something for everyone to sing along to, cry to, and connect to. While Taylor Swift and Beyoncé dominated the cultural zeitgeist both on stage and screen, satisfying albums came from acts as disparate as Sufjan Stevens, Boygenius and Zach Bryan. From indie rock mainstays to pop stars on the rise, here are five of my favorite albums of 2023.
Kaytraminé
Nine years after 20-year-old Aminé rapped over a sample of Kaytranada’s “At All,” the two artists have joined forces for Kaytraminé — a collaborative album perfect for summer playlists. Released on May 19, it’s an album that perfectly captures the good vibes of a hot summer day, and is enjoyed with a drink in hand. Kaytraminé is brimming with energy and momentum from the first moments of opener “Who He Iz” and it never lets up throughout its 34-minute runtime.
There’s something natural about the rapport between Canadian producer Kaytranada’s jazz/hip-hop dance beats and Aminé’s impressive rap flow in the collaboration, the 11 songs allowing for moments of bravado and danceability. The duo rented a house in Malibu for two weeks in 2021, spending the time crafting their party-friendly sound that begs you to dance. From Snoop Dogg to Pharrell, some of rap’s heaviest hitters make feature appearances throughout the album, but the strongest moments are when the chemistry between Kaytranada and Aminé takes center stage. Both artists have established themselves as dynamic performers, but they bring out the best in each other in Kaytraminé.
Del Water Gap
I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet
Certain albums just sound better at the tail-end of long, blurry nights out. They’re the perfect soundtrack for the ride home after a party, or when you’re in bed with headphones on at 3 a.m. On I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet, S. Holden Jaffe crafts a cinematic portrait of time on the road between his first and second album. The catchy indie-pop album feels tailor-made for those late nights, as Jaffe, who performs under his solo project Del Water Gap, grapples with the transience of relationships and fame.
I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet expands on what made the self-titled album’s “Ode To A Conversation Stuck In Your Throat” such an earworm. A majority of I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet was written during spare moments in green rooms while Jaffe was on tour. Newly sober and adjusting to constant touring, Jaffe’s lyrical content is heavier this time around, but he’s able to turn songs about his own personal struggles into vibrant pop anthems. Lead single “All We Ever Do Is Talk” details a relationship long past the honeymoon phase. On “NFU,” Del Water Gap sounds like Bleachers, but Jaffe’s emotional outpourings are what really set his music apart. “It’s hard to give yourself over to something, when it could all turn into nothing,” Jaffe sings on the album’s best track, “Coping on Unemployment.” It’s a recurring sentiment throughout the album about the fear of committing to something unknowable, whether it’s a relationship or Jaffe chasing his dream as Del Water Gap. He takes a bold and vulnerable plunge on I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet, and in the process, creates some of his best music yet.
Olivia Rodrigo
Sophomore albums can be tricky. Living up to the hype of a debut can be hard to land for any artist, but especially when you’re Olivia Rodrigo. After exploding onto the scene with Sour in 2021, the then-18-year-old quickly skyrocketed to pop stardom, scoring three Grammys and conquering the Billboard charts. In a discussion with Interview magazine earlier this year, Rodrigo, now 20, talked about the pressure she felt to reinvent herself on the follow-up: “There’s a sort of wide-eyed innocence to the first album that lots of people picked up on…. My life is different now.”
Sophomore slump be damned.
Guts finds Rodrigo navigating the messiness of young womanhood, newfound fame, and her own self-image with the same spunky, pissed-off attitude that made Sour so great. Rodrigo once again wrote with collaborator Dan Nigro, so the biting lyrics of “Vampire” feel like a natural progression. She embraces her pop-punk persona even more this time around, examining the impossible standards she must live up to as a woman and public figure on “All-American Bitch” and returning to an ex against her better judgment on the snappy “Bad Idea, Right?” There’s still room for slower, refreshingly introspective moments, where the singer takes accountability for her own self-sabotage on the self-deprecating “Making the Bed.” While the success of “Driver’s License” and “Good 4 You” set sky-high expectations for Rodrigo’s next release, Guts doubles down on everything that made its predecessor great. Plus, it’s just fun as hell.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Few contemporary artists approach their songwriting with the transparency and candor Jason Isbell does. Isbell’s music has long been an intensely personal outlet for the singer-songwriter to explore his own shortcomings with a vulnerability that’s rare among his contemporaries. As Isbell has grown in the decade since getting sober, so has his ability to weave introspective lyricism into roots-rock anthems.
In a banner year that’s included Running With Our Eyes Closed, an HBO documentary about Isbell, as well as a prominent role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Isbell also released Weathervanes, his ninth studio album and the sixth with longtime backing band The 400 Unit. Most of Weathervanes was written during downtime while filming Killers of the Flower Moon in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which shaped tracks like “King of Oklahoma” (a reference to Robert De Niro’s character in Killers). As first-time producer, Isbell brings the 400 Unit’s country rock to the forefront, especially on anthem “Save the World” — a song he wrote in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting. While the instrumentation often favors the heavier sound this time around, the 13-track album still allows for quieter moments where Isbell’s storytelling shines. Standout “Strawberry Woman” paints a vivid picture of Isbell’s nostalgic early days with his wife and frequent collaborator, musician Amanda Shires. His storytelling is at its best on “Cast Iron Skillet,” where he rejects the nostalgic perspective on Southern traditions that are so often romanticized. With a blend of country rock anthems and stirring Americana storytelling, Weathervanes is a shining example of why Isbell is considered one of the preeminent songwriters of his time.
Mitski
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Mitski’s lyrical prowess is only outdone by her hauntingly beautiful voice. She delivers tender vocal performances that hit like a gut punch of heartbreak and longing. Some of her biggest songs have gone viral thanks to her dedicated online fanbase, who have platformed the artist as somewhat of an icon of “indie rock sad girl” music. Spend a few minutes scrolling through TikTok or Instagram Reels and you’ll probably stumble onto videos soundtracked by Mitski staples like “Washing Machine Heart” and her latest hit, “My Love Mine All Mine.”
“Nothing in the world belongs to me, but my love, mine all mine,” she sings. Her voice sounds ethereal, almost dreamlike. It’s the linchpin track of The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, the 11-track seventh album that’s somewhat of a stylistic departure for Mitski. The album’s sound reflects its evocative title, ditching the indie pop synths of last year’s Laurel Hell for stripped-down Americana consisting of steel pedal guitar, strings and a choir. The result is a warmer collection of songs that the singer-songwriter has referred to as her “most American album yet.”
Love and loneliness are inseparable parts of Mitski’s music, but she’s never approached the themes with the rawness she does here. Listening to The Land Is Inhospitable front to back feels like attending an intimate lounge performance set amongst a sparse landscape. Within the heartbreak and turmoil of life, our love for ourselves and for others — in all its complexities — might be the only things that’s truly ours. On The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, Mitski discovers the beauty in that.
