The Best Songs of 2022

The Best Of
Written By Jeff Lehman

ISSUE #227

Songs are listed in order of ascending rank.

The future is back, baby!

Coming at the heels of two bifurcated years—one by a virus, the other its vaccine—2022 stands tall in history as the year the Great Machine roared back to life. Belch ye black smoke into that unbearable blue sky—we want our gifts, our rights to power! Traffic is back to ninety minutes again.

Music’s biggest corporate players withheld their albums as the pandemic played out, and most chose this year as the time to finally drop them. I couldn’t muster the strength to keep up. An economy based on views instead of objects transforms attention into an endless currency. I resent being obligated to pay it—a tax—particularly in support of a stupid app or conglomerate. If the following songs share an accidental theme, it’s the recurrence of that old-man type of stinginess—a reckoning with cost and the price of the soul, the carving of mine shafts out of helpless minds.

Not all that has to do with music, though. It remains one of my eternal loves—a preeminent part of a life worth living. I don’t begrudge even the thinnest of artists, for it is rarely the musician’s fault, in true. Things are okay when I keep that in mind. I practice forgiveness and try to sleep. The music, I think, can save us still.

15. “Perfected Steps” | TOPS

It’s Fleetwood yacht rock with a rug-pull structure: halfway through a breezy tune, we’re suspended at the fifth for sixteen measures before TOPS finally relents and pulls us to the sixth. That moment always crests in me like a wave—the arrival of a certain paradise.

 

14. “Snowy” | Art Moore

A mood song about the weather and zoning out in traffic, how the mind drifts to memory and the flakes form ghosts. It hinges on a piano every other third beat, which reminds me how truth can come late, like an accident.

 

13. “Alive Ain’t Always Living” | Quelle Chris

Clever with rhyme but relaxed in nature, Quelle Chris raps with empathy and humor. He stops the track when he gets off track, makes sure he gets the record straight—life’s gift lies not in potential for power. The gift is the feeling. Its grace is perception.

 

12. “describe you” | Oso Oso

Endless hooks and a sandwich structure: chorus–bridge–chorus, Oso Oso in a nutshell. He’s the Klonopin of emo, the genre’s grand balance—his voice can sound pained without freaking us out, he’s full of feelings without causing a panic.

 

11. “Paint by #” | Shannen Moser

I’m always a sucker for sunrise songs, and here’s another that changes its structure halfway through—Shannen lightens the load toward the end, and as the flowers warm, the rhythm bounces. She lilts as she sings of quiet bliss. An absolute cozycore classic.

 

10. “Pájaros en Verano” | Ela Minus / DJ Python

Aging clogs us with the paths we never took, but the joys of life will always be present—clouds, food, sleep, books, air, rest, quiet, light, awe, home, crickets, trees, a view of you with me. This one cuts that feeling out of sunlight with the wisdom and clarity of a Rumi poem.

 

9. “Bad Habit” | Steve Lacy

This is 2022’s tiny miracle—it hit #1 on the Billboard charts! One of only 12 songs to enter the chart at #100 and climb with bare hands all the way to the top. Also, the first to top three charts at the same time: Hip-Hop, R&B, and Rock & Alternative. Thank you, TikTok, for giving us one of the artsiest songs to ever be a huge. We’re all much better off because of its success.

 

8. “OVERDO$E” | Pharmacist

Speaking of TikTok, this was my year of phonk—an easy genre to replicate, but a hard one to master. It makes sense that Pharmacist, one of its progenitors, tends to nail it every time. Some people just got the juice. I mean—listen to how fast this goes.

 

7. “Blessing” | Alex G

Give every cliché the sinister voice treatment! “Blessing” would fit right in on Pixies’ Doolittle—just listen to those fun stabs of dojo-style grunting—but its the benzo-tempo that makes it stand on its own, and its simmering rage tattoos it with the mark of The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. A new Halloween song of hushed reckoning.

 

6. “Tastes Just Like It Costs” | MJ Lenderman

MJ Lenderman is an Asheville guitarist who may single-handedly be keeping the instrument alive. For his part in the band Wednesday, he plays to the ensemble, but his solo work rips like Dinosaur, Jr, all slacker snark and soaring solos. This year’s album, Boat Songs, leaves a Michelin-star aftertaste

 

5. “50/50 (Extended Mix)” | Jockstrap

Emerging as this year’s foremost freaks, Jockstrap released a perfect club album for tricksters. It sounds on the surface like SOPHIE worship, until you start to notice their conservatory chops. This song pushes the limits of dance music with the irreverence and formal chutzpah you only get from London these days. Before this week, I didn’t even realize that vocalist Georgia Ellery is in Black Country, New Road—make of that what you will!

 

4. “Cash In Cash Out” | Pharrell Williams (feat. 21 Savage & Tyler, the Creator)

Pharrell? Rips. So weird. Remember the hat? I can’t believe it. Even after Frank’s “Sweet Life” and Kendrick’s “Alright,” his legacy runs the risk of being eclipsed by “Happy”—a song written for Despicable Me 2. Despicable Me 2! Who was even happy then? Was it Gru? Was it Minions? Oh well—all is good now. Cash in, cash out, cash off, king.

 

3. “Simulation Swarm” | Big Thief

Big Thief was never as close to me as you would think. Despite frequently placing them on lists, I cannot honestly count myself a real fan. Theirs is usually a concessionary prize, a non-emotional position based on you-gotta-give-it-to-em respect, not play-count. I mention this not as a slight, but as a feat—there’s always at least one amazing song on one of their releases. On this one, there happen to be 20.

 

2. “Summer Sun” | Plains

Katie Crutchfield has always had the magical ability to write songs that sound like they’re actually old standards, like she’s covering a tune that’s been around for decades. When Jess Williamson joined her for their duo Plains, they found the power to resurrect a genre—not an update nor an homage, but a new entry in an old series. Together, their songs are the spitting image of strength, telling stories of those who make the hard decisions of men with the intelligence, grace, and empathy of women. They wield their power with responsibility and stay accountable to the things they hold in their hands.

 

1. “Good Will Hunting” | Black Country, New Road

I sing some songs in my dreams—the ones I love. The images I that fade away from me at dawn are sometimes of singing with the shadows around me. Once, in March or April, I was asleep next to someone I’d loved since I saw her. I woke up with the remnants of a familiar verse:

“It’s just been a weekend, but in my mind,

We summer in France with our genius daughters now,

and you teach me to play the piano.”

The rest of the day—the month, really—I would hear:

“And if we’re on a burning starship,

the escape pods filled with your friends,

your childhood film photos,

there’s no room for me to go.

Oh, I’d wait there and float with the wreckage,

fashion a longsword, traverse the Milky Way

trying to get home to you.”

I remember where I was when I heard that valiant interlude—the change in signature, the smack of the snare, the grand drama of its placement in structure. At the culmination of this short stage of their career, Isaac Woods’ final album with Black Country, New Road became one of life’s favorites: a darkly funny, ornately structured, brilliantly performed soundtrack for those turbulent days of reckoning with a love so wild it refused to stay. There’s no better sign that a song is the best than to hear it in dreams, as a heart in love.

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