My favorite songs of 2023
The best part of December is the music retrospectives
Like every other music-obsessed dork on the planet, around this time every year, I like to get retrospective about the tunes that helped get me through the prior 12 months. Since 2010, that’s meant constructing a CD-length playlist of those songs each December1. And, friends, I’d like to share this year’s playlist with you. But first, some notes:
The playlist starts with a song from every record I bought, then gets filled out with random single tracks I was drawn to.
For compilation purposes, I consider the year to run December 1 through November 30. There are a couple tracks from December 2022 on here. Sorry not sorry. December releases deserve the opportunity to find love too.
The songs are arranged in playlist order and hopefully are fun to listen to straight through. What you see below is not a ranking!
Why CD-length? Because “a man’s gotta have a code.”
With all that said, here are my favorite songs from 2023! (And here’s a Spotify playlist if you’d like to listen along!)
The New Pornographers: “Really Really Light” — Forever one of my favorite bands, the New Pornographers put out an absolutely gorgeous record this year in Continue as a Guest, which mixes the heavier sonics of Brill Bruisers with the sensitive melodies of Challengers (an all-timer for me). While I don’t think Continue as a Guest quite reaches Challengers levels, it’s a really rewarding, rich listen, with an angelic kickoff track presented here to set the table for my yearly retrospective.
The Hold Steady: “Sideways Skull” — 2023 will go down as the year I super got into the Hold Steady, and their new record Price of Progress was there waiting for me. “Sideways Skull” is a wildly propulsive track about patients in a mental health facility dreaming about rock & roll stardom, and it illustrates one of my favorite things about vocalist Craig Finn — that he and I have a similar reference pool. “She had a hairbrush mic and a fantasy band / She opened up with ‘We Are the Champions’ / Went right into ‘Under My Wheels’ / I was trying to figure out how I feel.” Hell yeah for Alice Cooper references and hell yeah to the Hold Steady.
Ghost: “Jesus He Knows Me” — What an absolutely crushing cover from a band that routinely slays them. Really makes the wild hypocrisy illustrated in the Genesis original come to life for a new generation, and the message is sadly more relevant than ever.
boygenius: “Not Strong Enough” — A total juggernaut and in fact my album of the year, boygenius’ the record was a gorgeous, inescapable blessing that I listened to 53 times since its March 31 release (I keep track). I don’t know what to say about it that the music press hasn’t already covered; the record sits at the top of so many year-end lists, a rare moment of semimonocultural accord in a busy musical landscape. boygenius rules.
Rodney Crowell: “Everything at Once” (feat. Jeff Tweedy) — This one’s a Spotify discovery for me; I don’t have a lot of context for Rodney Crowell, but I think this is a real pretty song.
Weezer: “I Want a Dog” — I haven’t bought a Weezer record since 2005, and honestly, I think their inclusion here speaks to how much I value music that releases at a seasonally appropriate time. Last year, the band put out a series of four EPs each branded SZNZ (“seasons”); this song comes from Winter, a lonely, highly introspective pop creation. I first heard the EP in the middle of a harsh Wisconsin January, and it spoke to me. Also, I am very lonely without a dog, so in a super literal sense I relate to this track.
Jenny Lewis: “Puppy and a Truck” — You seeing the dog theme here? Jenny Lewis' fantastic Joy’all is the thematic opposite of Winter, though — releasing on June 9, it’s a sunny, chill-as-fuck vibes record about living your best life, almost a pre-tribute to Jimmy Buffet. I love the part in this song where Jenny sings about her ideal pet: “I need a dog that’s hypoallergenic / in the poodle milieu and photogenic / don’t shed, don’t bark and can play in the band” — and then a little slide guitar riff punctuates the line immediately afterwards. THE DOG PLAYED THE SLIDE GUITAR!!
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: “King of Oklahoma” — Another 180 to the saddest song on the whole list, but also my favorite song of the year. Weathervanes is an incredible record throughout, covering a range of topics from romance to growing old to gun violence. As my friend Ben says, Jason Isbell is a true artist; he can sing about anything and make it feel compelling and vital. This track, about a man who injures himself at work, becomes addicted to painkillers, and loses himself in a spiral of poverty, drugs, and violence, hits like a ton of bricks but is also beautiful not just in melody but in the way Isbell captures the narrator’s humanity. The aforementioned Ben is a small-town doctor; I wonder if he knows people like this.
Gorillaz: “Silent Running” (feat. Adeleye Omotayo) — I don’t know what to say about this track other than it’s a sick groove. Cracker Island sounds great throughout but this one’s my favorite. Fun fact: it’s the third song named “Silent Running” on one of my year-end lists, and the first not written by Mike Rutherford2. I don’t think the songs are connected beyond the title, but I could see any of them soundtracking a dystopian sci-fi thriller so… maybe?
Bang Camaro: “One Way” — Okay, we’re getting into the metal block. Bang Camaro kicks ass; they’re basically a hair band that only plays the parts of hair songs that rule (sweet riffs, bitchin’ solos, any vocal parts where 5+ dudes are singing at the same time). This year they released their first album since 2009, and it’s real good. Love to hear them playing with keyboards throughout, but especially on this track. It’s a little Van Halen-y but with kind of a dirty edge. A welcome sound in 2023.
Cybertronic Spree: “Logical Lover” — If, 10 years ago, you told me there would be a band that dressed up as Transformers and covered the 1986 movie soundtrack, I’d tell you that the future must be very bright indeed. I love the Spree’s live show and was stoked to support their first record of original tunes on Kickstarter. To be totally honest, I feel like it ended up sounding more in the Heavy Metal vein than Transformers, but I’ve got no problem with that. I actually sketched out a gonzo fantasy one-shot for the Transformers RPG based on this record. PCs definitely fight a giant dragon in it. Pretty sick.
Extreme: “BANSHEE” — I feel like a good way to lose my music cred with some folks is to say how much I love the band Extreme. No joke, Extreme II: Pornograffiti is a top-5 album for me. Beyond the obviously incredible musicianship, I think they’re way more clever than anyone gives them credit for. Their new record, SIX, doesn’t hit those heights to me, but I sure loved hearing them rock again. “BANSHEE” is the track that sounds most like classic Extreme on it; interestingly enough, it’s also the only song on the record cowritten by bassist Pat Badger. Maybe the bass player has been the key all along….
Olivia Rodrigo: “get him back!” — Damn, Olivia Rodrigo is cool! GUTS is a fantastic album that hits even harder than her first; I swear Olivia is the youngest, hippest person making rock music still seem awesome. Though there are a number of standout tracks on this record, I’m choosing to represent it with the super clever “get him back!” as a tribute to my friend Troy, who I stayed with for a week while I was in LA this year, and whose iPhone kept autoplaying this song through his car stereo whenever I went somewhere with him. Great choice, technology!
The Replacements: “Can’t Hardly Wait” (The “Tim” Version) — It is truly wild how quickly the new Ed Stasium mix of the Replacements’ Tim went for me from “oh, this is neat” to “I will never listen to the original again.” It’s a sharp, vibrant take on a classic record that makes it sound so much more alive. I love it. That said, this bonus track version of “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which comes from an alternate universe where it made the original tracklist and Stasium mixed it, captured my imagination like nothing else in the boxed set. I dedicate this song of teenage angst to Mortified, a project where I invested a lot of my creative energy in 2023!
Jeff Rosenstock: “Doubt” — Another Spotify discovery; this song popped up on my Release Radar and I instantly fell in love. Great sense of melody, rad modulation up to a super intense climax, just a beast of a song. I actually bought the whole album (fantastically named HELLMODE) based on this track. Spotify, you really came through on this one.
Gray Ghost: “Stop Helping (Please Move Sir)” — When I tell you that this is my friends’ band, please understand that that is not a caveat but a brag, because damn, they rock so hard. Super clever lyrics, catchy but hard-hitting riffs, unique song structures — Gray Ghost is the whole package and I want everybody to love them.
The Menzingers: “Hope Is a Dangerous Little Thing” — The final of my Spotify discoveries on this list; I love this catchy, powerful little tune. Great lyrics, too; though I don’t want to cosign on the message too hard, I think we all feel like this from time to time.
Bleachers: “Chinatown (Live at Radio City Music Hall) [feat. Bruce Springsteen]” — Okay, so Bruce is undermixed on this track. That said, man, what a killer performance. It is crazy how much the Bleachers crowd embraces the Boss. One of my favorite moments of music listening this year is hearing Jack yell “do it big for Bruce!” to his audience, and the absolutely massive response of “AND TAKE THE SADNESS OUT OF SATURDAY NIGHT!”
Journey: “Faithfully” (live at Lollapalooza) — Journey has found the secret of staying sharp as a classic rock band: keep replacing your lead singer with younger, more diverse people who sound ridiculously like him. This Lolla set absolutely blew me away; what may seem like a joke (why would Journey play such a hip festival?) quickly turns into a rad celebration of decades of music. I chose “Faithfully” to represent this album because the song soundtracks one of my favorite moments in my life (or at least my live performance career), which I will explain in the footnotes. 3 The COVID-era patter that opens this track serves as a reminder of a weird time, I guess.
The Mountain Goats: Clean Slate — A Mountain Goats concept album fueled by ancient Greek symbology? Yes, please! Jenny from Thebes is a blast, and I thought this propulsive, hella catchy opening track was a great way to close out my musical 2023 and send me into whatever’s next.
So there you have it, friends — my favorite songs of 2023, in handy playlist form. What did you listen to a bunch this year? Anything you’re super looking forward to in 2024?
As a COVID project, I went back and filled in hypothetical versions of what 1970-2009 might have looked like.
The Mike and the Mechanics original, obviously, in 1985, and then a Protomen cover in 2015.
Okay, so, 2016: I’m in the middle of a seven-year run hosting/performing music for a somewhat regionally popular comedy storytelling podcast, and I’ve taken the show to UCB Sunset in Los Angeles for an away game while I’m on a road trip with some pals. The theme of the show that night, given that we were far away from our home base, was “Long Distance,” and all the music I played related to that topic, including “Faithfully,” which was going to be my finale. As I love to do, I came up with a really stupid bit for the song, which was this: I borrowed a melodica for my friend Jon who was on the trip with me and asked him to learn the guitar outro to the song. We orchestrated Jon standing up suddenly from the audience and beginning to belt out his part when I hit that bit in the song, then walking up on stage unannounced to join me for the “whoa oh oh”s that close out the piece. It was so weird and unexpected and a really ridiculous choice for a show in probably the most prestigious comedy venue I’ve even still ever performed in, but it made me laugh super hard. Thank you, Jon! Thank you, Journey!!
Without a doubt the 2 albums I listened to the most this year were "Perfect Saviors" by The Armed and "Take Me Back to Eden" by Sleep Token. Still a little disappointed that Sleep Token's set at Riot Fest was over a half hour late, so I didn't get to see a lot of it, but I listened to that album at least 2 dozen times.