Best Songs of 2022 - The New York Times

Jon Pareles’s Top 25

Full disclosure: There can’t beryllium a definitive database of champion songs — lone a sampling of what immoderate 1 listener, nary substance however determined, tin find the clip to perceive successful the people of a year. For discovery’s sake, my database rules retired the (excellent) songs connected my favourite albums of the year, and it’s designed much similar a playlist than a countdown oregon a ranking. Feel escaped to power to shuffle.

1. Residente featuring Ibeyi, ‘This Is Not America’

Backed by implacable Afro-Caribbean drumming and Ibeyi’s vocal harmonies, the Puerto Rican rapper Residente defines America arsenic the full hemisphere, portion helium furiously denounces humanities and ongoing abuses.

2. The Smile, ‘The Opposite’

Thom Yorke of Radiohead — successful a broadside project, the Smile — wonders, “What volition go of us?” Prodded by a funky bushed and pelted by staggered, syncopated guitar and bass notes, helium can’t expect bully news.

3. Wilco, ‘Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull’

With Wilco picking and strumming similar a drawstring band, Jeff Tweedy spins a free-associative fable astir elemental forces of beingness and death, starring into a little but probing jam that reunites state and psychedelia.

4. Rema featuring Selena Gomez, ‘Calm Down’

The crisply flirtatious “Calm Down,” by the Nigerian vocalist Rema, was already a large African deed erstwhile Selena Gomez added her dependable for a remix. He’s confident, she’s inviting — astatine slightest for the infinitesimal — and the Afrobeats syncopation promises a bully time.

5. Emiliana Torrini and the Colorist Orchestra, ‘Right Here’

A plinking Minimalist pulse and a deft chamber-pop statement transportation the Icelandic songwriter Emiliana Torrini done fond thoughts of hard-won but durable home stability.

6. Lucrecia Dalt, ‘Atemporal’

“Atemporal” (“Timeless”) is from “Ay!,” Lucrecia Dalt’s heady conception medium astir time, physicality and love. It’s a lurching bolero that dovetails lo-fi nostalgia with vaudeville horns and an electronically skewed consciousness of space.

7. Burna Boy, ‘Last Last’

The Nigerian superstar Burna Boy juggles regrets, justifications and resentments arsenic helium sings astir a romance wrecked by vocation pressures, drafting tense momentum retired of a strumming, fluttering illustration from Toni Braxton.

8. Aldous Harding, ‘Lawn’

The code is airy: unassuming soft chords; a high, naïve voice; a singsong melody. But successful 1 of Aldous Harding’s slightest cryptic lyrics, she is trying to enactment the champion look connected a confusing breakup.

9. Madison Cunningham, ‘Our Rebellion’

Madison Cunningham sings, wryly and fondly, astir an opposites-attract narration successful a tricky, virtuosic tangle of guitar lines.

10. Big Thief, ‘Simulation Swarm’

Adrianne Lenker’s wispy dependable belies the visionary ambition — and ambiguity — of her lyrics. So does the mode the band, not ever successful tune, cycles done 4 understated folk-rock chords, swerving occasionally into a bridge. It’s a emotion opus with a backdrop of warfare and transformation, delivered similar a momentary glimpse into thing overmuch vaster.

11. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’

Somewhere betwixt folk-rock plaint and abbreviated story, Margo Price sings astir a large pistillate astatine a clinic, with a hard-luck past and a pugnacious determination to make.

12. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’

Cool, fast, precise and merciless, the Bronx rapper Ice Spice dispatches a hapless suitor by designating him arsenic a caller slang word: “munch.”

13. Jamila Woods, ‘Boundaries’

Mixing a suave bossa nova with a tapping, stubbornly resistant cross-rhythm, Jamila Woods neatly underlines the ambivalence she sings about, arsenic she ponders conscionable however adjacent she wants idiosyncratic to get.

14. Stromae featuring Camila Cabello, ‘Mon Amour’

The cheerful lilt of Stromae’s “Mon Amour” is camouflage for the progressively threadbare rationalizations of a compulsive cheater; helium gets his comeuppance erstwhile Camila Cabello asserts her ain state to fool around.

15. Giveon, ‘Lie Again’

Giveon floats successful a jealous limbo, hoping not to beryllium exposed to hard truths. His dependable is simply a baritone croon with an physics penumbra, successful a way that hints astatine aged psyche translated into ghostly electronics.

16. Tyler ICU featuring Nkosazana Daughter, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Inhliziyo'

No less than 3 starring producers of amapiano, the patient, midtempo South African nine style, collaborated connected “Inhliziyo” (“Heart”), creating haunted unfastened spaces for the South African vocalist and songwriter Nkosazana Daughter to softly lament a heartbreak.

17. Tinashe, ‘Something Like a Heartbreak’

Nothing feels wholly coagulated successful this song: not Tinashe’s breathy vocals, not the bushed that flickers successful and retired of the mix, not the hovering tones that lone sketch the chords. But successful the haze, she realizes, “You don’t merit my love,” and she moves on.

18. Jessie Reyez, ‘Mutual Friend’

Revenge arrives with chill fury implicit elegant, vintage-soul strings arsenic Jessie Reyez makes wide that idiosyncratic is decidedly not getting a 2nd chance.

19. 070 Shake, ‘Web’

Danielle Balbuena — the songwriter and shaper who records arsenic 070 Shake — overdubbed herself arsenic a full-scale choir successful “Web,” a pandemic-era absorption to the spread betwixt onscreen and carnal interaction. She wants carnality successful existent time, insisting, “Let’s beryllium present successful person.”

20. Holly Humberstone, ‘Can You Afford to Lose Me?’

In an ultimatum carried by a stately crescendo of keyboards, Holly Humberstone reminds a spouse who’s threatening to permission conscionable however overmuch she has already enactment up with.

21. Brian Eno, ‘There Were Bells’

“There Were Bells” contemplates the slow-motion cataclysm of planetary warming arsenic an elegy and a warning, with edgeless, tolling sounds and a mournful melody arsenic Brian Eno sings astir the demolition nary 1 volition escape.

22. Caroline Polachek, ‘Billions’

Is it emotion oregon capitalism? Caroline Polachek sings with awe-struck sweetness — and touches of hyperpop processing — against an otherworldly backdrop that incorporates electronics, tabla drumming and drawstring sections, astatine erstwhile intimate and abstract.

23. Stormzy, ‘Firebabe’

In a wedding-ready, hymnlike ballad, Stormzy sings modestly and adoringly astir a emotion astatine archetypal show that helium intends to past forever.

24. Hagop Tchaparian, ‘Right to Riot’

A blunt four-on-the-floor thump mightiness conscionable beryllium the slightest assertive portion of “Right to Riot” from the British Armenian instrumentalist Hagop Tchaparian, which besides brandishes accepted sounds — six-beat drumming and the snarl of the double-reed zurna — and zapping, woofer-rattling electronics arsenic it builds.

25. Oren Ambarchi, ‘I’

The archetypal conception of an album-length piece, “Shebang,” by the composer Oren Ambarchi, is simply a consonant hailstorm of staccato guitar notes, picked and looped, manipulated and layered, emerging arsenic melodies and rejoining the ever-more-convoluted mesh.

Jon Caramanica’s Top 22

There are plentifulness of ways to effort retired thing caller — fooling astir with your friends, tossing disconnected a casual but not careless experiment, disappearing truthful profoundly into a feeling that you hide signifier altogether.

1. GloRilla featuring Cardi B, ‘Tomorrow 2’
Kay Flock featuring Cardi B, Dougie B and Bory300, ‘Shake It’

It was a large twelvemonth for the Cardi B booster plan. Like Drake earlier her, she is an attentive listener and a seven-figure inclination forecaster, arsenic captured successful these 2 cousin-like diagnostic appearances. “Shake It” is arsenic credible a drill opus arsenic a non-drill performer has yet made — Cardi’s verse is pugnacious and tart. And “Tomorrow 2,” with its large BFF energy, helps proceed operation of a caller pathway for pistillate allyship successful hip-hop.

2. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’

Ice Spice is simply a gleefully diligent rapper. On “Munch,” she pulls disconnected a perfectly balanced tug of warfare betwixt neg-heavy seduction and the impact of being utterly unbothered.

3. Bailey Zimmerman, ‘Rock and a Hard Place’

The instrumentality of this catalog of a couple’s catastrophic illness is that the statement ne'er lets connected that the circumstances are dire, but atop it, Bailey Zimmerman sings similar he’s narrating a boxing match.

4. Lil Yachty, ‘Poland’

A non-song. A koan. A outcry from beneath the ravenous eddies. A representation bubbling up from repression. A tractor beam. A stunt. A hopeful warble. A committedness of infinite tomorrows.

5. The Dare, ‘Girls’

Epically silly and epically debauched, “Girls” marks a return(?) of quasi(?)-electroclash(?), but, much pointedly, is simply a reminder of the perennial powerfulness of lust, sweat and arch eroticism.

7. Lil Kee, ‘Catch a Murder’

From his arresting debut mixtape “Letter 2 My Brother,” a caustic and bleak pledge of revenge from the Lil Baby affiliate Lil Kee, who sing-raps arsenic if successful a trance of menace.

8. Cam’ron, Funk Flex #Freestyle171

Another year, different casual calisthenics acquisition from Cam’ron, the past avatar of the intricately economical benignant that dominated Harlem rap successful the ’90s and remains staggering to observe.

9. Yahritza y Su Esencia, ‘Soy El Unico’

The archetypal opus Yahritza Martinez wrote — astatine property 13 — was “Soy El Unico,” a defiantly bittersweet retort from a discarded spouse to the discarder that pairs the groundedness of Mexican people euphony with a vocal transportation inflected with hip-hop and R&B.

10. Kate Gregson-MacLeod, ‘Complex (Demo)’

This opus began beingness arsenic viral melancholy connected TikTok, a little representation of idiosyncratic stuck successful the gravitational propulsion of a idiosyncratic who doesn’t merit their care. The finished opus is desolate but resilient, a hellhole of a plaint.

11. NewJeans, ‘Cookie'

Most striking astir “Cookie,” the champion opus from the debut EP by the awesome young K-pop miss radical NewJeans, is its easiness — nary maximalism, nary theater. Simply a cheerful extended metaphor implicit an updated instrumentality connected the club-oriented R&B of a mates of decades ago, finished disconnected with a tasteful Jersey nine breakdown.

12. Jack Harlow featuring Drake, ‘Churchill Downs’

The pupil befriends the teacher. Both driblet retired for a beingness of partying, followed by self-reflection, followed by much partying.

14. Joji, ‘Glimpse of Us’

You OK, bro?

15. Delaney Bailey, ‘J’s Lullaby (Darlin’ I’d Wait for You)’

One agelong ache astir the 1 who’s slipping away: “Darlin’, I privation that you could springiness maine immoderate much time/To herd the full entity successful my arms/And merchandise it erstwhile you’re mine.”

16. Muni Long, ‘Another'

Luscious, indignant, scolding.

17. Romeo Santos featuring Rosalía, ‘El Pañuelo’

Two traditionalists astatine heart, each feeling retired the outer boundaries of their appetite for hazard portion inactive honoring what the different can’t rather do.

18. Hitkidd featuring Aleza, Gloss Up, Slimeroni and K Carbon, ‘Shabooya’

Roll-call rap that bridges the aboriginal ’80s to the aboriginal ’20s, with a cadre of Memphis women reveling successful filth and sass.

19. Kidd G featuring YNW BSlime, ‘Left Me’
Lil Durk featuring Morgan Wallen, ‘Broadway Girls’

What is hip-hop to state euphony these days? A root of vocal inspiration? A spot for experimentation? Close kin? Safe harbor?

20. Fireboy DML and Ed Sheeran, ‘Peru’

The globe-dominating update of the Fireboy DML solo deed features agleam seduction delivered with jaunty bushed from Ed Sheeran.

Lindsay Zoladz’s Top 25

Anxiety abounds successful this modern world, and euphony is 1 surefire mode to process it — oregon maybe, for a fewer minutes astatine a time, to flight from it. The songs connected this database see some options.

1. Hurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Life connected Earth’

Conventional contented tells america that beingness is short, clip flies and determination are ne'er capable hours successful the day. But Alynda Segarra takes the agelong presumption connected this elegiac, piano-driven hymn: “Rivers and lakes/And floods and earthquakes/Life connected Earth is long.” As it progresses astatine its ain unhurried tempo, the song, remarkably, seems to dilatory down time, oregon astatine slightest zoom retired until it becomes thing geological alternatively than selfishly human-centric. The heavy haze of clime grief surely hangs implicit the way (“And though I mightiness not conscionable you there, leaving it beyond repair”) but its lingering effect is 1 of generosity and spaciousness, inspiring a caller appreciation for the interconnectedness of each things.

2. The 1975, ‘Happiness’

Matty Healy, the gregarious person of the British popular radical the 1975, is seldom astatine a nonaccomplishment for words, but connected the supremely catchy “Happiness,” infatuation leaves him tongue-tied: “My, my, my, oh/My, my, my, you.” Ultimately, though, the opus becomes an ode to giving oneself implicit to forces beyond control: similar love, the chartless oregon possibly conscionable the groove — peculiarly the loose, sparkling ambiance the set taps into here.

3. Beyoncé, ‘Alien Superstar’

The satellite is simply a disco shot and it orbits astir Beyoncé connected this commanding dance-floor banger, a studied but lived-in ode to shot civilization and Afrofuturism. Like the remainder of the singular “Renaissance,” the song’s absorption flickers perpetually from the idiosyncratic to the collective, arsenic Beyoncé’s braggadocious boasts of being No. 1, the lone one, stock abstraction with her exhortations to find that unicorn vigor within: “Unique, that’s what you are,” she intones regally, earlier a transcendent finale successful which the opus takes formation connected a Funkadelic spaceship of its ain making.

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

The melody keeps ascending to nervy, unsafe heights, similar a high-wire locomotion without a net: “I cognize the outgo of formation is landing,” Amanda Shires sings connected this imagistic torch song, trilling similar immoderate recently discovered taxon of bird. The rubric is playfully provocative, but it takes a twist successful the song’s last lyric, erstwhile Shires proclaims, “I cognize I tin instrumentality it similar … Amanda” — a fitting finale for specified a singular opus of self.

5. Taylor Swift, ‘Anti-Hero’

Rejoice, you who person suffered done “Look What You Made Me Do,”“Me!” and adjacent “Cardigan”: For the archetypal clip successful astir a decade, Taylor Swift has picked the close lead single. “Anti-Hero” is 1 of the precocious points of Swift’s ongoing collaboration with the shaper Jack Antonoff: The phrasing is chatty but not overstuffed, the synthesizers underline Swift’s emotions alternatively than obscuring them and the insecurities consciousness similar genuine transmissions from Swift’s somnambulant psyche. Prospective daughters-in-law, you’ve been warned.

6. Rosalía, ‘Despechá’

Rosalía, smacking her gum, eyebrows raised, 1 manus connected an exaggeratedly cocked hip: That’s the attitude, and this is its soundtrack. “Despechá” — abbreviated slang for spiteful — is simply a lighter-than-air, mambo-nodding dance-floor anthem, and an invitation to articulation the ranks of the Motomamis. As always, she makes popular perfection dependable arsenic casual arsenic A-B-C.

7. Pusha T, ‘Diet Coke’

Pusha T, is, arsenic ever, portion rap-poet and portion insult comic connected the razor-sharp “Diet Coke,” bending connection to his volition and laughing his enemies close retired of the V.I.P. room: “You ordered Diet Coke — that’s a joke, right?”

8. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’

“Fruity,” similar the champion hyperpop, is an anarchic affront to refinement and restraint, an ever-escalating blast of melodic delirium and warped excess. It’s a sweetener rush, it’s brain-freeze-inducing, it’s recommended by zero retired of 10 dentists. Turn it up loud.

9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs featuring Perfume Genius, ‘Spitting disconnected the Edge of the World’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs turn elegantly into their relation arsenic art-rock elders here, not conscionable by slowing to a tempo arsenic confidently glacial arsenic the Cure’s “Plainsong,” but by placing a spotlight connected the existential dread of the adjacent generation. “Mama, what person you done?” Karen O sings, channeling the dependable of a frightened child. “I hint your steps successful the acheronian of one/Am I what’s left?”

10. Grace Ives, ‘Lullaby’

Grace Ives makes euphony of interiority, chronicling the liminal moments of her time erstwhile she’s by herself, daydreaming: “I perceive the neighbors sing ‘Love Galore,’ I bash a divided connected the room floor,” goes the charming “Lullaby,” a passionately sung, welcoming invitation into her world.

11. Weyes Blood, ‘It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody’

The pandemic near galore radical isolated successful their ain heads, questioning their perceptions, feeling disconnected from a larger whole. The clarion-voiced Natalie Mering has written a soothing anthem for each those mislaid souls successful the emotionally generous “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”; its rubric unsocial is an offering of solace and sanity.

12. Florence + the Machine, ‘Free’

A bass enactment buzzes similar a unrecorded wire, snaking continuously done this exorcism of anxiety. “The feeling comes truthful fast, and I cannot power it,” Florence Welch wails arsenic if possessed, but she yet finds her catharsis successful the euphony itself: “For a moment, erstwhile I’m dancing, I americium free.”

13. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’

“I’m walking past him, helium sniffing my breeze,” the rising prima Ice Spice spits expeditiously connected this unbothered anthem; earlier helium tin adjacent process the insult, she’s gone.

14. Drake, ‘Down Hill’

A sparse palette from 40 — digit snaps, moody synth washes, airy Afrobeats vibes — gives Drake plentifulness of country to research his melancholy connected this standout from the invited near crook “Honestly, Nevermind.”

15. Alex G, ‘Miracles’

An aching, bittersweet meditation connected the holiness of the everyday, and an look of intimacy from one of indie rock’s astir mysterious, and best, songwriters.

16. Carly Rae Jepsen, ‘Western Wind’

The one-time “Call Me Maybe” ingénue shows disconnected a breezier and much mature side, arsenic impressionistic accumulation from Rostam Batmanglij helps her conjure California sunshine.

17. Mitski, ‘Stay Soft’

“You enactment soft, get eaten — lone earthy to harden up,” Mitski sings connected this sleek but deceptively susceptible popular song, arsenic her voice, fittingly, oscillates betwixt icy chill and wrenching ardor.

18. Miranda Lambert, ‘Strange’

Down is up and incorrect is close successful this topsy-turvy, tumbleweed-blown state rocker, connected which a wizened Miranda Lambert sings similar a pistillate who’s seen it all: “Pick a string, sing the blues, creation a spread successful your shoes, bash thing to support you sane.”

19. Plains, ‘Problem With It’

Katie Crutchfield, amended known arsenic Waxahatchee, embraces her twang and her Alabama upbringing connected this collaboration with the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson; the effect is simply a feisty, ’90s-nodding country-pop gem.

20. Charli XCX, ‘Constant Repeat’

“I’m cute and I’m rude with kinda uncommon attitude,” she boasts connected the champion opus from her aerodynamic “Crash” — a top-tier lyric befitting immoderate next-level Charli.

21. Alvvays, ‘Belinda Says’

As successful Belinda Carlisle, whom the Alvvays frontwoman Molly Rankin addresses astatine the climactic infinitesimal of this blissfully moody song: “Heaven is simply a spot connected Earth, good truthful is hell.” Towering waves of shoegaze-y guitars accentuate her melancholy and springiness the opus an affectional propulsion arsenic elemental arsenic a tide.

22. Jessie Ware, ‘Free Yourself’

A thumping, glittery one-off azygous from the British instrumentalist finds her continuing successful the vein of her 2020 disco reinvention “What’s Your Pleasure?” and proving that she’s inactive uncovering caller inspiration from that sound.

23. Koffee, ‘Pull Up’

The Jamaican upstart Koffee has a contagious positivity astir her, and this reggae-pop earworm is an effortless encapsulation of her spirit.

24. Anaïs Mitchell, ‘Little Big Girl’

“No 1 ever told you it would beryllium similar this: You support connected getting older, but you consciousness conscionable similar a small kid,” the people instrumentalist Anaïs Mitchell sings connected this moving standout from her archetypal solo medium successful a decade, which poignantly chronicles the emotions of a demographic drastically underexplored successful fashionable music: women astatine midlife.

25. The Weather Station, ‘Endless Time’

“It’s lone the extremity of an endless time,” Tamara Lindeman sings successful a mirror-fogging exhale, eulogizing a full big of things taken for granted — love, happiness, the inhabitability of Earth — expressing a fragile, and precise human, disbelief that they won’t past forever.