The Best Songs of 2022 - 10 Highlights and the Big Fucking Spotify Playlist
I don't love making lists, but I'll do it for you.
It’s tempting to write about how 2022 was a mess for myself and a lot of other people, but I think you get the point by now. Let’s talk about why these songs are good. Here are ten selections from the above playlist that I think best represent my impression of 2022 in music. This list is definitely pop-minded, but I like to think that the nature of playlists and year end compilations is putting disparate acts on a level playing field. With that said, consider the playlist itself - it’s a lot longer and does more establishing context for what I was listening to and why I was listening to it last year. Here’s what I could manage with words, though:
10. gummyboy, Linna Figg - Dubai
This song appeals to the part of me that longs for my messiest days, a mixture of trudging through the end of high school by skipping as many days as possible and introducing myself to the magic of marijuana with friends and late night convenience store runs with a fresh driver's license. It is not necessarily indebted to tropes of the era I describe (2011-2013), but if I discovered it during that time period it would have likely been my entire personality. Gummyboy is funny, not urgent at all, coasting and enjoying a breeze he created for himself with a nonchalance that can only be attributed to someone enjoying the best of their youth.
9. death’s dynamic shroud - Judgment Bolt
It's not blowing smoke up anyone's ass to say that death's dynamic shroud is one of the hardest working acts in electronic music right now. For some time now, the group has been putting out monthly album-mixtapes via a Bandcamp subscription service, and they still found time to drop an official big-tent LP this year ("Darklife") backed by one of the most commanding and manic romps the group has produced to date in "Judgment Bolt." This song is like prime OPN by way of arena-era Nine Inch Nails, with sampled stabs of vocal melodies punctuated by synths with so much slam to them that you can mistake them for drums at first. This track is enormously validating to me as someone who endlessly vouched that dds had more up their sleeves than creeped-out K-Pop samples (not that there's anything wrong with those!), and "Judgment Bolt" is like a crown jewel piece in the study of NUWRLD as a composition approach.
8. STAYC - I Want U Baby
STAYC has been a group to watch in K-pop from the moment they came out, offering hope for musical experimentation in an era that was starting to become defined by barely-modified Splice pack samples and bombastic but samey "girlcrush" romps. STAYC creates a song that can best be described as K-Pop Smoke here, with all of the bass and movement of the scarier-sounding big drill productions alongside a melodic lightness and playfulness that brings the production into surreal territory. This is a promising direction to say the least, positioning STAYC as a more sonically ambitious and experimental group than many of their peers (though in general things are trending more in this direction).
7. NewJeans - Ditto
What can I tell you about NewJeans that you haven't already read everywhere else? This group is what K-Pop used to feel like to a T. It's hard to explain if you weren't there in 2008-2011 when things were still so fresh and innocent relatively speaking, but there is a certain level of intrigue and can't-look-away to everything NewJeans has done so far. It was hard to pick a song to highlight for the sake of this list, with "Hype Boy" and "Attention" tugging on the heartstrings of people like me who longed for a world where Especia went massive and 2NE1 got to keep making songs like "Baby I Miss You." NewJeans has a sound that is informed by the past but not indebted to it, and "Ditto" is a prime example of how you can zig when people expect you to zag - it stays minimal and bubbling instead of ever giving into a cacophony of bed squeaks, presenting one of the most reserved takes on Jersey club I've ever heard (and I claim Jersey). This group has musical legs. If you put the music first, NewJeans still wins. If you put the full package first - check out their insane Melon Music Awards stage where they essentially performed their debut EP - NewJeans still wins. What an exhilarating group after several years of fandom stagnance.
6. Utada Hikaru - Find Love
I want to confess something. I was not super into the post-comeback Utada material up until "Bad Mode." There was an occasional peak at brilliance when it came to songs like "Boukyaku" feat. KOHH, but I felt like Utada's best days were past us. It was something hard to come to terms with. Then the singles for "Bad Mode" started rolling out, and ignoring "Face My Fears" to some extent (look, Skrillex did the whole Jordan Petersen thing and he's not cute anymore), all of those singles were brilliant. With the reckless abandon proposed by "Darenimo Iwanai," Utada set a high bar for themselves with this album in terms of putting forth emotionally resonant content for their maturing audience. And "Find Love" is proof that they lived up to the challenge and then some, because there is nothing else from this year that managed to be so heartbreaking and fun at all at once. "Find Love" is like a catchy list of personal neuroses, with Utada wondering about the shortcomings of being too affectionate aloud in between house organ stabs that wouldn't be out of place alongside "Break My Soul." It's a bit of a shame that "Bad Mode" was released in the form of several singles and a few alternate versions, because a little bit of careful editing could have positioned it even better in those album of the year conversations. This song, available in both English and Japanese dominant versions, is an example - meet in the middle somewhere! All told though, you couldn't have possibly ended up with a better song to have two versions of.
5. beabadoobee - Talk
This is the first time something on one of those "Iconic Moments" types of Twitter pages has ever truly inspired me. It caught me off guard, truly, because it sounded like a song from a bygone era. This is like Liz Phair by way of shoegaze, more indebted to the still-cool years of Urban Outfitters and fuzzy pop-rock than almost anything in the modern pop palette. It stands out like a sore thumb, and thank god, because it's one of the most refreshing pop songs I have heard in a very long time. Beabadoobee sounds light and breezy throughout, lamenting a near mechanical relationship approaching its expiration date but still nervously entertaining the idea that she doesn't have much else going on. This isn't a guilty pleasure to me, but I bet if it came out around 2003 and was performed on a changing TRL, people would rush in droves to apply that "guilty pleasure" label to it (while in reality they just mean "fucking banger").
4. FLO - Cardboard Box
Have you ever wished for more turn-of-the-century girl group songs to exist? Have you ever found yourself hunting for the ones you missed, hoping there was some excellent b-side or shelved record from a group that absoultely had the talent but fell victim to the nasty system? Have you ever been in a club bathroom throwing up halfway across the stall onto some guy's moccasins, only to make sure you escaped the situation as fast as possible so you can be on the floor in time to sing and dance to "No Scrubs" like nothing happened? "Cardboard Box" is for you if you answered yes to any of these questions. I can't really explain it without comparing it to the works of the past, something which I study like sacred texts but others have simply turned into background music for their soul sucking corporate jobs (try and figure out what I'm going through in life by that one). "Cardboard Box" is filled with pettiness and emotional recklessness and inconsideration and hate and silliness and brilliance all at once, and FLO is vocally untouchable. These melodies and harmonies are iron clad because they are done with the intentionality and musicality of an era more focused on song structure than packing in moments easily extracted for the viral video front - though, with how devastatingly funny its lyrics are, "Cardboard Box" offers something for those kinds of culture fans too. It's really hard to think of a group with a more promising upside than FLO right now.
3. Daichi Miura - Le Penseur
"Le Penseur" debuted in the true ass-crack beginning of 2022, with my first exposure to it taking place on a New Year's special when Daichi Miura brought the striking and commanding song out during a night defined by mostly happy-go-lucky ditties and artists attempting to cope with the crowd-free awkwardness by projecting big personalities. This song sounds like it is haunted. The mood instantly changed when Miura performed it, as if he was experiencing some kind of catharsis by creeping people out instead of conjuring memories of himself as the soulful belting "Fire! Fire!" kid from Folder. I can't really speak to where Daichi Miura drew his inspirations from on this one, but if I had to make an educated guess, I would say the more recent highly textured and thematically bleak work by the Weeknd might have played some role in the development of the version of Miura seen and heard here. There is something just so much more camp and fun about how Miura does it though, and if you don't find yourself at least toe-tapping when the thumping instrumental almost non-chorus of this song kicks in, you might just not like the best of what male pop soloists have to offer right now. There are a lot of songs that I thought about including in this spot, but this is the one that had the most lasting impact on me throughout 2022 by far. If you want something that is a little more in line with the Bieber approach but still modern in sensiblities (read: a little dark), try "Upside Down" by Kang Daniel, also on the playlist.
2. That Kid - Full Throttle
On "Full Throttle," I believe That Kid created the queer pop girlie/hyperpop-adjacent scene's answer to "Kid A" by Radiohead. No, seriously. This song shares as much DNA with "Idioteque" as it does with Ayesha Erotica's best moments, with That Kid churning on and on through a manic episode alongside the stuttering beat and using the lyrics like a bullet-point diary. One of the most memorable points of the song is the scream-vocalized "pop stars want to die too," an instantly iconic and dark-but-humorous quip that seems emblematic of the approach towards bad feelings That Kid's generation (and of course by that I mean my own) has come to develop (very familiar, very casual). I think showing a little bit of influence from pop-punk, emo and otherwise chuuni roots is one of the smartest things an artist like That Kid could do to showcase sonic diversity right now. As the alternative pop star scene has started to blossom and develop tropes of its own, "Full Throttle" is something so fresh and original that it can almost come as a bit of a shock when playlisted alongside its contemporaries. This song is urgent and dead-ass-serious even as it rattles off lines like "Siri, engage self destruct." That Kid has always been one of the best in his field, and each subsequent release in his catalog builds upon his past work and influences in a way that shows attention to the big picture that few contemporaries exercise. This is someone with a bright future, if only the world can open up to accept a hot sequin wearing doll-faced boy in a black tee and spiked neck piece.
1. Chase Icon - Bang (My Body)
If you can find a song more triumphant and bombastic than this from 2022, you might be a bit of a liar. Chase Icon finds herself in pop genius mode on the “Girlfriend Experience” EP, a 4 track release that has the most informed perspective on the last several decades of pop both massive and underground, synthesizing the best aspects of everyone from Ayesha Erotica to Azealia Banks to the Backstreet Boys (no really, listen to “Save You From the Streets” and then listen to BSB’s “the Call”). “Bang (My Body)” is an adrenaline shot of bad girl rap filled with boasts and brattiness, backed by a bell-featuring beat that feels like it was made in a lab to soundtrack those fast-paced debauchery loaded TikTok tributes to figures like Paris Hilton and the Real Housewives. This song recalls an era when every white girl with a pop contract was taking on rap, but actually bothers to have clever lyrics - groundbreaking to say the least. “Turn a transphobe into a chaser” is an all timer bar that people will be unpacking for years and years after this, so it’s best to get aboard the Chase Icon train now - it’s clear some very exciting destinations are coming ahead. Chase Icon, Slayyyter and That Kid are among a unique new class of super-pop-stars raised and developed with a level of internet culture integration and influence that can only affectionately be described as “brain poisoned” by those in the know and along for the ride. This is music for people who listened to songs like “Slave 4 U” by Britney and felt empowered but not necessarily fully represented; this is taking the power and subverting expectations and delivering greatness in the face of adversity. It sounds like serving cunt, though.