The 10 best albums of 2023

From Olivia Rodrigo's triumphant return to Victoria Monét's Grammy darling, here are the records that made our year.

If this musical year taught us anything, it's that women rule (and that André 3000 really likes the flute). Art-pop queens Mitski and Lana Del Rey returned with entrancing — and wildly different —records; the former opted for a tight 30, while the latter took the scenic route, wending her way through 77 minutes of genre-hopping experimentation. Meanwhile, with her sophomore effort, Guts, Olivia Rodrigo proved that lightning can strike twice. The upcoming Grammys are sure to be female-dominated, given that eight of the nine most-nominated artists are women. You'll find many of them on this list, which also includes a handful of boundary-pushing stars in the making. Oh, and one tender dude who poured his heart out, and swept us up into something sublime.

Here are the 10 best albums of 2023.

10. Mitski, 'This Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We'

Mitski's latest, which she dubbed her "most American album," embodies both sides of its title's coin. Its subtle Western stylings call to mind barren stretches of scorched earth, with arid guitar chords glinting like moonshine in copper cups and samples of cicadas accompanying a 17-person choir. The Land is a gorgeous expansion on the themes laid bare on 2018's Be the Cowboy, with the art-pop auteur firmly taking the reins even if she's still searching for a sense of belonging. Waxing poetic about gorging herself on regret and likening lost love to a dying star, she sounds like a cross between a forlorn lounge singer at the end of her rope and a gunslinger reciting her final soliloquy. —Allaire Nuss

9. Amaarae, 'Fountain Baby'

Ghanian-American alchemist Amaarae's slippery soprano connects the disparate dots of her giddy, confident second album. The singer vibrates with yearning on tracks like the breakneck, astrologically minded come-on "Co-Star," while the loping "Reckless & Sweet" blurs the boundaries of carnal and material desire. Her vision is so potent that it transcends genre. The glossy disco strings and crisp horns on "Big Steppa" bolster her lyrical bravado, while "Sex, Violence, Suicide" veers from an amorphous bummer ride to a mosh-pit thrash that threatens to send her "running around and breaking shit," a flamboyant depiction of a person hitting their breaking point. She has cited Stevie Nicks, Young Thug, and Anthony Kiedis as influences, but her spin on pop is as singular and surprising as her acrobatic voice. —Maura Johnston

8. Janelle Monáe, 'The Age of Pleasure'

Since releasing her first demo tape two decades ago, singer-actor-futurist Janelle Monáe has done it all, and on her fourth LP she gives herself permission to reap the benefits of her hard work and top-shelf status. Or, as she puts it in the trap-funk boast "Champagne Shit": "Now I'm here with Bueno and we bustin' bottles / Like we won a championship." The album may be a brisk 32 minutes, but it's laser-focused on its idea of surrendering to lust, excess, and gratification, and it casts its ambitions wide. Club titan Grace Jones, dancehall legend Sister Nancy, and fellow thespian Nia Jones make cameos, while the music shape-shifts through reggae, amapiano, and the sorts of rhythms that dominated jukeboxes in the early rock era. Immersive yet fleeting, The Age of Pleasure demands repeat listens. The result is an endless party where everyone is invited and anything goes. —Maura Johnston

7. Victoria Monét, 'Jaguar II'

Victoria Monét likes to take her time. On Jaguar II, the follow-up to her 2020 EP, Jaguar — a flawless collection of slow-burn R&B — she keeps it smooth ("like a Cadillac"), offering a set of polished mid-tempo tracks that would make her clearest influence, Janet Jackson, proud. It's as if Monét took the laidback, hip-swaying vibe of "That’s the Way Love Goes" and extended it across 11 tracks. But there's also an agelessness to her approach, as heard on the hypnotic "Hollywood," in which she sounds completely at home with funk shamans Earth, Wind & Fire. Meanwhile, the infectiously viral single "On My Mama" took the singer-songwriter, deservedly, to another level, snagging a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year. In 2023, when we witnessed a windfall of excellent R&B, Monét was cruising in her own lane, the sweet smell of a fresh pre-roll trailing behind her. —Lester Fabian Brathwaite

6. Lana Del Rey, 'Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd'

Lana Del Rey's lyrics have always been rife with upper-crust Americana imagery, but on her ninth LP her sonic choices catch up to her storytelling. Clocking in at 77 minutes, Did You Know is sprawling, seamlessly traversing gospel, soul, and trap while staying rooted in her trademark somber chamber pop — it captures the aura of Versailles by way of the Bible Belt. Her voice floating between genres, Del Rey comes off like an isolated queen in the Hall of Mirrors or a lone chorus girl performing for empty church pews. Even with collaborators like Father John Misty and Jon Baptiste hitching a ride, an unshakeable solitary quality pervades the record. Her star continues to rise, but Lana's only looking inward. —Allaire Nuss

5. Jamila Woods, 'Water Made Us'

Few releases this year conjured a sense of intimacy like Jamila Woods’ stunning Water Made Us, a 17-track journey through the life cycle of a relationship. It’s there in the Chicago poet and songwriter’s silky vocals and vivid metaphors, but it’s also in the rich little flourishes scattered throughout: the twinkling harp that opens the record; the elegant trumpet casting sunbeams over the spoken-word “I Miss All My Exes”; the sound of a tarot deck being shuffled in “Let the Cards Fall,” one of several voice-memo interludes featuring Woods with family and friends. In her quest for a greater understanding of love, loss, and herself, the artist glides through hip-hop, cosmic funk, indie folk, ’80s quiet storm, and gospel-tinged soul. The result is a deeply felt album that washes over you, covering you in its grace and wisdom. —Jason Lamphier

4. Olivia Rodrigo, 'Guts'

Sophomore slump? Olivia Rodrigo doesn't know her. After the whirlwind success of her debut album, 2021's Sour, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter returned to reclaim her title as pop punk’s new princess with a fiercely unapologetic follow-up. Blending raucous guitar riffs with her signature witty prose (and some much-needed screaming), Rodrigo takes aim at the all-too-familiar beauty and chaos of youth, navigating complicated feelings of love and jealousy ("Lacy"), demolishing the notion of the perfect woman ("All-American Bitch"), and wallowing over the absurdity of both being alive ("Ballad of a Homeschool Girl") and falling for "some weird second-string loser who's not worth mentioning" ("Love Is Embarrassing"). It takes, well, guts to create a rock record that is just as lively and daring as it is introspective and heartbreaking. Long may Rodrigo reign. —Emlyn Travis

3. Boygenius, 'The Record'

Five years after their promising self-titled EP, Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus returned with The Record, a triumphant rock album that was affectionately adopted by the lavender oat milk latte crowd (if you know, you know). Their "supergroup" was like an assembly of indie-darling Avengers, the stuff of modern music legend. Playing popcorn with the spotlight, the trio take turns leading a cappella love letters ("With You Without Them"), full-throttle screams into the void ("$20"), and subdued meditations on romantic shortcomings ("Emily, I’m Sorry") — and that’s just in the first eight minutes. This is vulnerable stuff, and their delivery — whether via the psychic visions on "Not Strong Enough" ("There's something in the static / I think I've been having revelations") or the banshee shrieks on "Satanist" — isn’t always delicate. But The Record is a marvel, a testament that good things are worth the wait. —Allaire Nuss

2. Jessie Ware, 'That! Feels Good!'

At its 1970s peak, disco was often maligned as being soulless and manufactured, but the finest examples of it were stocked with blissful vocals, woozily romantic lyrics, and gorgeous, innovative instrumentation — something Jessie Ware seems to understand better than just about anyone dipping into the genre's endless well of inspiration these days. With her fifth studio album, the British siren expands on 2020's lush What's Your Pleasure?, crafting mature, lived-in grooves that brim with joy and cheek, from the declarative "Free Yourself" to the shimmering "Hello Love" to the balls-to-the-wall four-on-the-floor fantasia "Freak Me Now." Ware didn't throw a couple of exclamation points in that title for you to sit in the corner nodding your head. That! Feels Good! isn’t so much an invitation as a command: Get! On the dance floor! —Lester Fabian Brathwaite

1. Sufjan Stevens, 'Javelin'

Sufjan Stevens has been writing baroque-pop opuses for two decades, but his 10th studio album finds him at the peak of his powers, and at his darkest. "Everything heaven-sent / Must burn out in the end," he declares in the opener "Goodbye Evergreen," his voice brittle, almost a whisper. What follows is a haunting collection of dirges and hymns that fuses the high points of his career: the symphonic pomp of 2005's Illinois, the electronic maximalism of 2010's The Age of Adz, and the spartan folk of 2015's Carrie & Lowell, a work inspired by the death of his mother.

Javelin tackles grief, too — it is dedicated to the artist's late partner Evans Richardson IV, who died in April — but it is more lacerating, its drama heightened. Across its 10 tracks, Stevens asks to be cast out, set on fire, and sacrificed. "Will anybody ever love me?" he wonders, ashamed of his failures. Later, he imagines harming someone close. As his relationship collapses, he confesses, "I love you, but I cannot look at you." Yet for all its anguish, Javelin's songs often culminate in moments of profound beauty. Most of their arrangements begin with piano or acoustic guitar before building to a rousing crescendo of swirling woodwinds, thunderous percussion, and plush harmonies, a choir repeating the refrains until they become mantras. When he delivers the trembling line "Hold me tightly, lest I fall" in the record’s resplendent centerpiece, "S--- Talk," layered backing vocals swelling around him, it becomes clear that Stevens' plea is not to a lover, nor to anything in the material world.

In September, just weeks before Javelin's release, Stevens revealed that he had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which caused him to lose feeling in his limbs. On Tumblr, where he's documented his recovery as he learns to walk again, he remained upbeat, calling the news a "blessing in disguise" and praising his caregivers for restoring his faith in humanity. Javelin has the same effect. Its pain is real, but so is the hope and gratitude that pain engenders. It is the sound of a man, battered and broken, looking up from the abyss to face the sky. —Jason Lamphier

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