Yes, yes, I know the average Doper is an old fart who believes music attained scientific perfection in 1974. Bear with me.
It’s getting near the time of year when I post my annual “Best #1 of the year” poll, and almost the 10th anniversary of when I ran a year-by-year thread series of every #1 in Billboard history. (The polls were lost in the move to Discourse, but we ultimately decided that “Satisfaction” is the greatest number-one hit of all time. Maybe I’ll rerun the series for its 10th anniversary.) As much as I try to keep an open mind about new music, though, I haven’t been listening to as much current pop as I used to and it’s been a struggle for me to keep up, and the new songs that I have been enjoying aren’t the kind that usually top the charts.
I thought, therefore, that it’d be fun to ask the Teeming Millions - what song came out this year that you really really like? Any genre, any artist, the only requirement is that it came out sometime in The Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Twenty-Three.
My pick goes to “Money Game Pt. 3” by British singer/rapper Ren. I don’t believe it charted as a single, but the album it’s on made #1 in the UK, and it’s a hell of a story song with a really compelling video to go with it.
I really like Wednesday - really clever, observational songs with a nice individual sound. I listened a lot during the year to Rat Saw God particularly
They were recorded this year, so I’d say they count, just as much as one of the best jams of this year is a straight cover of a song from 1988 which changes nothing from the original.
Spotify says my #1 2023 listen was Miya Folick, “So Clear”. I’m not sure I would have guessed that but then no one spent a bajillion dollars programming me to be an internet music robot so what do I know.
I guess it would be mostly redundant to start a general “best music of 2023” thread at this point, so I’ll pick one best song and tack on the rest of a Top 10 in no particular order.
