Best Albums of 2022: Beyoncé, Rosalía and More - The New York Times

Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay Zoladz

Jon Pareles

A Cornucopia of Ideas

If there’s 1 happening that unites my favourite albums of 2022, it’s a consciousness of originative abundance: of ideas spilling retired truthful accelerated that songs tin hardly incorporate them, and of artists acceptable to travel their impulses toward revelatory extremes. No request to clasp back: In 2022, much was more.

1. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’

A disco revival gathered momentum during the pandemic years, arsenic musicians and listeners recovered themselves yearning for the joys of sweaty, uninhibited communal gatherings. Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” besides looks backmost to creation level styles, but it goes overmuch further. It’s not simply a nostalgic re-creation of a fondly remembered era. With leathery vocals and visceral but multileveled beats, it’s an excursion done layers of nine culture, connecting with pride, pleasance and self-definition and taking nary guff from anyone.

2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’

“I alteration myself,” Rosalía declares successful the archetypal opus connected “Motomami,” and passim the medium she does conscionable that: playfully, impulsively and precise purposefully smashing unneurotic philharmonic styles and verbal tactics. Every way morphs arsenic it unfolds, hopping crossed the Americas and backmost to Spain, seldom giving distant wherever it’s headed. Along the way, Rosalía presents herself arsenic fragile astatine 1 infinitesimal and invincible the next.

3. Beth Orton, ‘Weather Alive’

Over ghostly, circling soft motifs, the songs connected “Weather Alive” meditate connected longing and memory, transportation and solitude, quality and time. Beth Orton’s dependable stays unguarded successful some its delicacy and its flaws, portion her accumulation cradles it successful patiently undulating arrangements, floating acoustic instruments successful physics spaces; the songs linger until they go hypnotic.

4. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’

Sudan Archives — the songwriter, vocalist and violinist Brittney Denise Parks — juggles the galore conflicting pressures and aspirations of being young, Black, female, artistic, carnal, career-minded and societal connected “Natural Brown Prom Queen.” The euphony is kaleidoscopic, deploying funk, electronics, hip-hop beats, jazz, chamber-music arrangements and the African fiddle riffs that inspired Sudan Archives’ name, hardly keeping up with her ambitions.

5. iLe, ‘Nacarile’

Vulnerability and courageousness are ne'er acold isolated connected “Nacarile,” which is Puerto Rican slang for “No way!” The songwriter Ileana Cabra, who records arsenic iLe, sings astir governmental and feminist self-assertion alongside songs astir toxic and tempting romances. Each of the 11 songs conjures its ain dependable — acoustic bolero, orchestral ballad, Afro-Caribbean drums, gravity-defying electronics — for euphony that’s richly rooted but ne'er constrained.

6. Sylvan Esso, ‘No Rules Sandy’

Sylvan Esso’s physics popular goes gleefully haywire connected “No Rules Sandy,” the 4th workplace medium by the duo of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn. In songs that leap betwixt the mundane and the metaphysical, they support the transparency that has ever defined their music, but skew and tweak the details: moving vocals disconnected the beat, slipping successful hints of transverse rhythms, ever keeping superior ideas lighter than air.

7. achromatic midi, ‘Hellfire’

The quality information is nasty, brutish and ferociously virtuosic connected the third album by the British set black midi. In songs that flaunt the complexity and dissonance of prog-rock and the bitter angularity of post-punk — portion stirring successful ideas from jazz, classical music, funk, salsa and flamenco — loathsome characters bash odious things. But the euphony turns grotesquerie into exhilaration.

8. Björk, ‘Fossora’

Forget popular comforts: Björk has different plans connected “Fossora,” leaning toward enclosure euphony astatine 1 infinitesimal and blunt interaction the next. Her caller songs contemplate earthy fertility and the continuity of generations, utilizing rugged physics sounds, families of acoustic instruments and the precise quality passionateness of her voice. As Björk looks each the mode backmost to a primordial “Ancestress,” she’s besides determined for her euphony to determination ahead.

9. Billy Woods, ‘Aethiopes’

In hip-hop that’s simultaneously grimy and cerebral, upholding a New York City legacy, the prolific Billy Woods raps astir colonialism, poverty, idiosyncratic memories and ruthless humanities forces. The unsettling productions, by Preservation, gully connected Ethiopian euphony (of course) arsenic good arsenic funk, jazz, reggae, soundtracks, Balinese gamelan and galore murkier sources, and Woods is joined by arsenic determined impermanent rappers. The tracks are dense, and good worthy decoding.

10. Porridge Radio, ‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky’

Catharsis is the docket for Porridge Radio, the British set led by Dana Margolin. In songs that wrestle with transportation and autonomy, her vocals declaim, sob and gasp; her lyrics blurt retired dilemmas and request responses that whitethorn not arrive. The arrangements dependable unrecorded and jammy, harnessing post-punk and psychedelia for affectional crescendos.

And 15 more, alphabetically:

• Rauw Alejandro, “Saturno”

• Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”

• Congotronics International, “Where’s the One?”

• Jorge Drexler, “Tinto y Tiempo”

• Ethel Cain, “Preacher’s Daughter”

• FKA twigs, “Caprisongs”

• Horsegirl, “Versions of Modern Performance”

• Jenny Hval, “Classic Objects”

• Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee, “Bamanan”

• Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”

• Makaya McCraven, “In These Times”

• Mitski, “Laurel Hell”

• Bonnie Raitt, “Just Like That…”

• Soul Glo, “Diaspora Problems”

• Soccer Mommy, “Sometimes, Forever”

Jon Caramanica

Letting It All Go

Judging by these albums, it was a twelvemonth of release: superstars opting to get physical, neat songs spilling implicit with unruly emotions, artists relinquishing acquainted beliefs, singing and rapping teetering connected the borderline of control. Disruption is successful the aerial — being contentedly static is nary longer enough.

1. Zach Bryan, ‘American Heartbreak’

An astonishing feat of emotionally acute songwriting and shredded-artery sentiment, Zach Bryan’s mainstream breakthrough is simply a dense lift, successful each senses: 34 songs, and 10 times arsenic galore tiny details that footwear you successful the sternum. “Summertime Blues,” the EP helium released 2 months later, is possibly adjacent amended — bare bones and astir harried, it’s adjacent much grounds of a faucet that simply won’t halt spilling.

2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’

When Rosalía archetypal broke through, she was engaged successful a tug of warfare betwixt contented and modernity. But the dissonance she’s navigating connected “Motomami” is much profound: cultivating a futurist aesthetic that spans aggregate genres, eras and philosophies, making for an medium arsenic extremist and syncretic arsenic immoderate released by a planetary superstar successful the past fewer years.

3. Drake, ‘Honestly, Nevermind’

The amended of the 2 Drake albums this twelvemonth was the less expected one: a postulation of earthen, sensual, soulful location music. In a vocation defined by blurring borders, this was little a crippled twist than a speedy spotlight connected an underappreciated character: assemblage euphony that keeps the bosom palpitating.

4. Priscilla Block, ‘Welcome to the Block Party’

The astir promising Nashville debut of the twelvemonth belonged to Priscilla Block, a pop-friendly singer-songwriter with a robust grasp of state tradition. Her archetypal medium includes a fewer rowdy bridge-burners and a gaggle of torch songs sung successful a saccharine but unshakable voice.

5. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’

“Renaissance” is simply a fewer things that Beyoncé’s euphony hasn’t ever been: chaotic, breathy, unrelentingly sweaty, appealingly frayed. A titanic collection of nine music, it has an astir gravitational urgency, emphasizing the primal propulsion of the creation floor, wherever putting connected airs is not an option.

6. Bartees Strange, ‘Farm to Table’

Bartees Strange has rather a voice, oregon possibly voices. He sings with huskiness and nimbleness, plangency and viscosity — sometimes each of these astatine once. On his eruptive 2nd album, helium writes astir maturation and self-doubt, Phoebe Bridgers and George Floyd, each unified by singing that’s brimming with bosom and pluck and tin pivot connected a dime.

7. Gulch’s last show, Sound & Fury Festival, July 31, 2022

Not an medium per se, but the video of this 34-minute performance — connected the StayThicc YouTube transmission — is simply a hair-raising papers of this San Jose, Calif., hardcore set astatine its punishing peak, the instrumentality fervor it inspired, and the ridiculous, anticlimactic decision successful which powerfulness to the signifier was abruptly turned off.

8. 42 Dugg & EST Gee, ‘Last Ones Left’

These two, stars successful their ain right, person each the makings of a large rap duo — EST Gee, from Louisville, Ky., is steely and narratively vivid, his verses square-cornered and bleak. 42 Dugg, from Detroit, delivers nasal, curvy passages flecked with scars of having seen excessively much.

9. Asake, ‘Mr. Money With the Vibe’

The debut medium from the rising Nigerian prima Asake is some appealingly grounded and aiming for an astral plane. Taking successful Afrobeats, fuji and amapiano, but besides flickers of jazz fusion and adjacent gospel, Asake’s euphony is enveloping and inspirational, mellow but assured.

10. Bad Boy Chiller Crew, ‘Disrespectful’

There’s an inherent silliness to bouncy nine music, songs designed to trigger full-scale abandon. Bad Boy Chiller Crew — efficaciously a drama troupe wearing the costume of a euphony corporate — amplifies and underscores that inclination connected its 2nd album. The songs — faithful bassline and store tunes that dependable similar shout-rapping implicit a D.J. premix — are absurd and uncanny, an invitation to creation and a metacommentary connected letting loose.

11. Bad Bunny, ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’

The defining popular prima of 2022, Bad Bunny is afloat untethered from expectations. His 4th solo medium is simply a sunshine beam, taking reggaeton and Latin trap arsenic starting points and embracing styles from crossed the Caribbean, from mambo to dembow.

12. Bandmanrill, ‘Club Godfather’

Bandmanrill emerged past twelvemonth from the Jersey drill scene, which takes the drill template of immediate, punchy rapping and matches it with up-tempo Jersey nine music. In abbreviated order, helium became 1 of drill’s premier songwriters, but his debut, “Club Godfather,” already shows him stretching beyond the genre’s boundaries.

13. Special Interest, ‘Endure’

The ecstatically erratic 3rd medium from the New Orleans set Special Interest is afloat of politically minded punk-funk. It is simply a howling bully time, but besides tense and tense, with songs that are agitated, but much crucially, agitating.

And 16 more, alphabetically:

• The 1975, “Being Funny successful a Foreign Language”

• Cash Cobain & Chow Lee, “2 Slizzy 2 Sexy (Deluxe)”

• Tyler Childers, “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?”

• Fred again.., “Actual Life 3 (January 1 — September 9, 2022)”

• Giveon, “Give oregon Take”

• Lil Durk, “7220”

• Mavi, “Laughing So Hard, It Hurts”

• Tate McRae, “I Used to Think I Could Fly”

• Rachika Nayar, “Heaven Come Crashing”

• Harry Styles, “Harry’s House”

• Earl Sweatshirt, “Sick!”

• Rod Wave, “Beautiful Mind”

• The Weeknd, “Dawn FM”

• Willow, “<Copingmechanism>”

• YoungBoy Never Broke Again, “Colors”

• Honorary precocious 2021 release: Kay Flock, “The D.O.A. Tape”

Lindsay Zoladz

Inner Lives, Shared Wide

This twelvemonth I recovered myself drawn to records that created their ain immersive worlds that reflected the bold, chiseled position of their creators — a instrumentality that rather a fewer big-budget popular albums pulled off, sure, but plentifulness of smaller indie records did, too, with conscionable arsenic overmuch property and flair.

1. Grace Ives, ‘Janky Star’

Small, quirky popular albums are a dime a twelve these days, but they seldom travel with the wit, imaginativeness and lyrical property of this 1 by Grace Ives. For the past fractional year, the Brooklyn musician’s sharp, often hilarious observations person stuck successful my caput arsenic often arsenic her infectious, synth-driven melodies: the overdraft interest from a $100 A.T.M. withdrawal connected “Loose”; the flirty mode she co-opts concern jargon similar “circle back” connected “Angel of Business.” Or however astir this deadpan punchline connected the jangly, crush-struck “Shelley”: “I wonderment what she wants for dinner/She’s truly got maine looking inward.” Ives’s dependable crossed these 10 tracks is weighty but nimble, her receptor for melody idiosyncratic but ever contiguous and true. By the extremity of “Janky Star,” it’s hard not to beryllium charmed by the lukewarm interiority of her dependable and her peculiar, canted imaginativeness of the world.

2. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’

Along this dazzling and immaculately sequenced joyride done the past of creation music, Beyoncé celebrates her ain uniqueness portion besides decentering herself, refracting the disco ball’s spotlight truthful it illuminates a agelong enactment of forebears: Grace Jones, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, Robin S., Moi Renee, Nile Rodgers, Big Freedia and of people her precise ain Uncle Jonny. Bless whoever dosed the lemonade astatine this party: “Renaissance” is Queen Bey astatine her loosest, funniest, sweatiest and — arsenic she testifies connected the sublime “Church Girl” — her astir transcendently free.

3. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’

On the singular “Motomami,” 1 of the coolest popular stars connected the satellite mashes up innumerable genres and taste influences to make her ain sonic world. Rosalía combines the braggadocio of your favourite rapper (“Rosa! Sin tarjeta!”) with the affectional strength of the flamenco fable Carmen Amaya (“G3 N15”), effortlessly pivoting betwixt stylistic extremes that would springiness a little innovative endowment whiplash.

4. Alex G, ‘God Save the Animals’

The Philly indie-rock everydude Alex Giannascoli reimagines the New Testament arsenic a fanzine, benignant of (“God is my designer, Jesus is my lawyer”), and the occurrence is however good it really works. The abrupt jolts of sonic abrasion — a hyperpop breakdown successful the mediate of an acoustic ballad astir the innocence of children, accidental — and the unbroken done enactment of weirdness bash not diminish the extremist empathy and poignant sincerity that is this record’s beating heart.

5. Florence + the Machine, ‘Dance Fever’

On her fifth, and best, workplace medium with her trusty Machine, Florence Welch’s imperial goddess persona comes crashing down to earth, oregon possibly determination adjacent little dignified: “The bath tiles were chill against my head, I pressed my forehead to the level and prayed for a trap door,” she sings connected the gut-wrenching person “Morning Elvis,” a painstakingly elaborate depiction of a breakdown. Welch has ne'er been sadder (“Back successful Town”), much provocative (“King,” “Girls Against God”), oregon funnier (“And it’s bully to beryllium alive, crying into cereal astatine midnight”) than she is connected the kaleidoscopic “Dance Fever,” an medium that constantly, seamlessly moves betwixt the macro and the micro, from an inquisitive exploration of sex and powerfulness to a blown-open model successful the heart.

6. Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Painless’

London’s Nilüfer Yanya harnesses the antsy buzz of modern anxiousness and transforms it into thing not conscionable manageable but really beautiful, acknowledgment to her elegant melodies and the lavender calm of her voice. The magnificent “Painless” is truthful good paced that 1 of the highest philharmonic moments of the twelvemonth comes astatine its nonstop center: that bushed erstwhile the hitherto coiled “Midnight Sun” abruptly blooms into a reverie of guitar distortion.

7. Alvvays, ‘Blue Rev’

This Toronto five-piece makes — and connected its 3rd album, “Blue Rev,” perfects — a benignant of inverted shoegaze: big-hearted, smeary dream-pop oriented toward the sky. Molly Rankin’s achingly saccharine dependable cuts done the woolly squall of distortion arsenic she sings of the thwarted expectations and indistinguishable anticipation of aboriginal adulthood: “I find myself paralyzed/Knowing each excessively well, terrified/But I’ll find my way.”

8. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’

Get comfy erstwhile Sudan Archives welcomes you into her domicile connected the mood-setting opener “Home Maker” — you’re going to privation to enactment awhile. The prismatic songwriter calved Brittney Denise Parks showcases the galore facets of her philharmonic property — singing, rapping, playing violin — connected the immersive, genre-hopping “Natural Brown Prom Queen,” an 18-track song-of-self filled to the brim with smart, sensual and continuously adventurous ideas.

9. Angel Olsen, ‘Big Time’

To code immoderate extremist changes successful her beingness — coming retired arsenic queer conscionable earlier some her parents died — the indie prima Angel Olsen turns, incongruously, to the traditionally minded sounds of vintage state and torch-song pop. Turns retired they suit the wailing grandeur of her dependable perfectly, though, and she can’t assistance but marque them her ain acknowledgment to the fiery unit of her philharmonic personality.

10. Miranda Lambert, ‘Palomino’

Miranda Lambert’s wandering tone is fixed plentifulness of country to roam connected the majestic “Palomino,” a travelogue crossed not conscionable the interstate road strategy but the galore philharmonic stylings Lambert tin command: honky-tonk state (“Geraldene”), Petty-esque Southern stone (“Strange”) and adjacent immoderate heartstring-tugging people balladry (“Carousel”). Mamas, this is what it sounds similar erstwhile you fto your daughters turn up to beryllium cowboys.

11. Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’

Here’s the tone of outlaw state successful 2022: a fearless pistillate gathering each her spot and belting retired her truths with a poet’s diction and a vertebrate of prey’s voice. “Come on, I situation you, marque maine consciousness thing again,” the singer/songwriter/fiddle subordinate Amanda Shires trills astatine the opening of “Take It Like a Man,” and past she spends the adjacent 40 minutes rising to her ain challenge.

12. The Weeknd, ‘Dawn FM’

If you’ve ever wondered what the finale of “All That Jazz” would dependable similar had it been scored by Oneohtrix Point Never, person I got the grounds for you. The Weeknd follows the immense occurrence of “After Hours” with immoderate high-concept and profoundly stirring experimentation connected the probing “Dawn FM,” reimagining the popular medium arsenic a benignant of decease imagination without sacrificing the hooks.

13. Aldous Harding, ‘Warm Chris’

The New Zealand eccentric Aldous Harding is simply a folk-rock harlequin, clowning and mugging her mode done beguilingly catchy tunes. In the weird satellite of her 4th album, “Warm Chris,” there’s not a batch of because, conscionable a batch of deadpan, and glorious, is.

And 12 much precise bully records worthy mentioning:

• The 1975, “Being Funny successful a Foreign Language”

• Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”

• Yaya Bey, “Remember Your North Star”

• Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”

• Julianna Riolino, “All Blue”

• Sasami, “Squeeze”

• Syd, “Broken Hearts Club”

• Sharon Van Etten, “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong”

• The Weather Station, “How Is It That I Should Look astatine the Stars”

• Weyes Blood, “And successful the Darkness, Hearts Aglow”

• Wet Leg, “Wet Leg”

• Wilco, “Cruel Country”