It can be hard to keep track of the latest music releases this year. From what’s going on in the UK charts to what people are streaming on Spotify.
But we’ve picked the top 10 best albums of 2022 with some artists you might recognise and some you might fall in love with upon the first listen.
Let’s take a look at our music picks from this year.
1. Ezra Furman – All Of Us Flames (Bella Union)
Thought rock has no new stories to tell? Here comes Ezra with a queer underground Born To Run – a blazing, excoriating masterpiece whose creator belongs in the first rank of US heartland rockers.
2. Beyoncé – Renaissance (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia)
Bey stomps through the past three decades of alternative dance music as if she owns it – and she does, now.
3. Weyes Blood – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Sub Pop)
Maybe nothing so concerned with fear and alienation should envelop you with so much velvet and stardust as Natalie Mering’s lush and deeply mysterious AOR classicism, beautifully updated.
4. Spiritualized – Everything Was Beautiful (Bella Union)
Jason Pierce cranks up the orchestrated maximalism on a Spiritualized album for the ages. It is, as ever, formal, even mathematical, yet by turns strung-out, hypnotic and rapturous.
5. Fable – Shame (Naim)
Fable has a fierce talent, star quality to burn, a grasp of the past and a vision of the future. Her knockout debut channels David Bowie, Kate Bush and trip-hop with terrific individualism.
6. Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes (BMG)
Plush 1970s soul textures from producer Danger Mouse; authority and complexity from The Roots frontman Black Thought. An absolute monster of a rap record, a non-stop rush of verbal creativity and sonic luxury.
7. Taylor Swift- Midnights (EMI)
The outstanding lyricist, scene-setter and story-teller of big-time pop brings on the synths, drum machines and nocturnal neon for a tremendous set of razor-sharp, feline songs set in the small hours.
8. Lady Aicha & Pisco Crane’s Original Fulu Miziki Band Of Kinshasa – N’Djila Wa Mudjimu (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Tribal punk-funk on home-made instruments from Congolese slums, plus Lady Aicha’s incantatory chanting. Bonkers. Brilliant.
9. Special Interest – Endure (Rough Trade)
The third album of digitally infused post-punk/no wave from this New Orleans quartet is exciting as all hell – loaded with focused polemical rage.
10. XPropoganda – The Heart Is Strange (ZTT/UMC)
This revived iteration of a great and underrated 1980s synthpop group have struck gold on their return.
Turkey of the year
Nickleback – Get Rollin’ (BMG)
The much-loathed Canuck rockers can’t be as bad as their reputation, right? Wrong. This sucks harder than the entire historical output of the Hoover corporation. Rancid.
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