From rock’s coolest new supergroup to Janelle’s joyous ode to hedonism, our favorite releases of the past six months defied genre and our expectations.
With six months behind us and the warmest days still ahead, we’re feeling festive. So festive, in fact, that we’re inviting you to join us as we look back at the best albums of 2023 so far. It’s a list that knows no boundaries, and the musicians dominating it have little interest in being boxed in or defined. As artists like Janelle Monáe, Lana Del Rey, and Kali Uchis have proven on their stellar new records, genre is a thing of the past — or at least just a blank canvas ready to be covered in their beautifully messy vision.
Below, 10 releases to explore — or revisit and savor — as you settle into summer. (Also, be sure to check out EW’s best TV shows of 2023 so far as we charge into Emmys season.)
Amaarae, Fountain Baby
Genre-blurring in 2023 pop is as ubiquitous as hot dogs on the Fourth of July, but Amaarae’s audacious pinballing between styles sets a new bar for invention. The Ghanaian American artist treats her second album — a blend of millennial R&B, Afrofuturism, alt-rock, and kpanlogo — as the ultimate sandbox, resulting in thrilling moments of ingenuity. “Disguise” serves up high-wire drama that nods to East Asian–inspired sinogrime, while “Sex, Violence, Suicide” wields the kind of ragged riffs that conjure tartan pants and wallet chains. Central to it all is her airy voice: a soft, dextrous, inviting instrument that bears the soulfulness of a diva and the assurance of an auteur. —Owen Myers
Listen to: “Co-Star,” “Disguise”
Boygenius, The Record
When three of this generation’s most gifted songwriters come together in a studio, you anticipate big things. The good news is that The Record exceeds expectations, with Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus each putting their stamp on its soaring road-trip rock and pensive folk while achieving something greater than the sum of its parts. While they’ve beefed up their production since their self-titled 2018 EP, it’s still polished and unfussy, and their chemistry is palpable on standouts like the countrified stomper “Not Strong Enough” and “True Blue,” a track about unconditional love that’s both winsome (“You say you’re a winter bitch, but summer’s in your blood”) and heartbreaking (“I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself”). As solo artists, these women are formidable; as a unit, they may be unstoppable. —Jason Lamphier
Listen to: “Emily I’m Sorry,” “Not Strong Enough”
Lana Del Rey, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
At nearly 80 minutes, Del Rey’s spectral, slippery ninth album is a monument to unbridled creativity, the crown jewel in a post–Norman F—ing Rockwell trilogy of song suites. Weaving luxurious tapestries of memory and mood over languid folk, ’70s rock, and baroque orchestration, she makes pop music her putty. She battles sexism while yearning for ancestral guidance. She flees a funeral to mend her heart in the desert, reflecting on how something broken can still be beautiful. She holds space for family and spiritual truths, and then glides right past them, winking at her “sullen girl” image along the way. In an interview with Marc Maron last year, Courtney Love recalled introducing Del Rey to the unusual harmonies and avant-garde tunings of Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and you’ll find echoes of that 1975 touchstone scattered all over Ocean Blvd. Comparing Del Rey to Mitchell is played out but also understandable — with each new release, she continues to set herself apart from her contemporaries. —Owen Myers
Listen to: “The Grants,” “Fishtail”
Everything but the Girl, Fuse
Everything but the Girl’s Tracey Thorn became a cult voice of dance-floor ennui on the back of “Missing,” an unlikely ’90s anthem that, with the help of a huge Todd Terry remix, proved as perfectly suited for mirrorball twirling as it was a lonely cab ride home. Fuse, the veteran English duo’s first album in more than two decades, is an imperious return, its finely crafted rave ballads drawing from jungle, drum-and-bass, and Balearic (vibrant lead single “Nothing Left to Lose” could be the pop hit of the year if radio gatekeepers would open their minds). Anchoring its 10 tracks is Thorn’s melancholic wisdom; it’s as if she’s watching the world through frosted glass. —Owen Myers
Listen to: “Nothing Left to Lose,” “No One Knows We’re Dancing”
Foo Fighters, But Here We Are
After a year marred by personal tragedy that included the deaths of drummer Taylor Hawkins and frontman Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia Grohl, Foo Fighters returned with But Here We Are, a stirring exploration of how we process grief and the many discordant emotions that come with it. The 10-track album, which features Grohl’s best writing in at least a decade, is a crash course in navigating the white-water rapids of immense loss, as the band’s signature rousing stadium rock keeps listeners afloat and the lyrics dive into feelings of denial (“Rescued”), anger (“But Here We Are”), quiet introspection (“Show Me How”), and, ultimately, acceptance (“Rest”). “You showed me how to grieve / Never showed me how to say goodbye,” Grohl sings on the 10-minute megalith “The Teacher.” Still, with But Here We Are, Foo Fighters not only carve a path forward for themselves, but offer a steady hand for listeners to hold through their own hardships. —Emlyn Travis
Listen to: “Show Me How,” “The Teacher”
Janelle Monáe, The Age of Pleasure
The album’s cover should have tipped us off. “Titties out for the next 15 years,” Monáe tweeted just before she unveiled the image, which shows her swimming topless underwater in a pool full of revelers, slipping giddily between their legs. The follow-up to 2018’s Dirty Computer trades in the high-concept, sci-fi world-building of her previous releases for hickeys, bottle-popping, and a heady feast of all things carnal. But if The Age of Pleasure feels more accessible, the pansexual empowerment pop of tracks like “Float,” “Champagne Shit,” and “Phenomenal” is no less inspired. Over 32 sticky, seamless minutes, the singer skates through hip-hop, doo-wop, funk, jazz, reggae, and amapiano, inviting VIPs like Grace Jones, dancehall icon Sister Nasty, and Afrobeats ensemble Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 to an all-inclusive party that never lets up. As its horny host, Monáe has never sounded so confident, so ecstatic, so liberated. —Jason Lamphier
Listen to: “Float,” “Know Better”
Kali Uchis, Red Moon in Venus
If Uchis’ swoony, sun-kissed new album blossoms like the flora of its lead single, “I Wish You Roses,” its fixations are thorny. The Columbian American neo-soul star has said her third LP is as much about her confronting childhood trauma and learning self-worth as it is about falling head over heels for someone. And with self-worth comes zero tolerance for mind games and toxic BS; the smitten lyrics “When you spoil me in every way / It’s Valentine’s Day, like, every day” arrive only after the mic-drop moment when the singer tells an obsessed ex that his new paramour is so jealous of her, “she’d eat my p—y if I let her.” On Red Moon in Venus, love is cosmic, karma’s a bitch, and Kali is queen. —Jason Lamphier
Listen to: “I Wish You Roses,” “Hasta Cuando”
Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good!
Following her 2020 disco pivot, What’s Your Pleasure?, Jessie Ware’s fifth album plunges deeper into the groove. It’s manna for anyone who genuflects at the altar of Donna or Diana, but the British singer’s vision of ’70s decadence and glamour oozes with a sophistication absent from so many of today’s trend-chasing Xeroxes of the genre, as well as a playfulness you’d imagine coming from an artist whose live shows include her brandishing a whip. Full-throated backup singers, lashings of brass, and kinetic keys lend a richness to the proceedings, and Ware extinguishes any flicker of pastiche with her supple voice and a range that floods That! Feels Good! with warmth and sultriness. —Owen Myers
Listen to: “Pearls,” “Shake the Bottle”
Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World
Thirty years into their storied career, the indie-rock titans have nothing left to prove, but the group’s 17th studio album, and the first they produced on their own, finds them reinvigorated. Tight, focused, and infectious, This Stupid World is the perfect distillation of what the New Jersey trio do best: balance the hard and the soft, the dark with the light. Ira Kaplan can still hypnotize with his raucous, blissed-out guitar squalls (check the fuzzy krautrock opener “Sinatra Drive Breakdown”), and Georgia Hubley can still stop time with her haunting, honeyed vocals (“Aselestine” and “Miles Away” rank among her finest ballads). Also well intact: the band’s trademark humor. Who else but Yo La Tengo could stare down death and turn guacamole into a verb on the same record? —Jason Lamphier
Listen to: “Fallout,” “Aselestine”
Youth Lagoon, Heaven Is a Junkyard
What do you do when your life force is taken from you? That question looms large on Trevor Powers’ fourth album as Youth Lagoon. After the severe side effects of a medication stripped him of his voice, the 34-year-old experimental-pop performer thought he’d never sing again. Heaven Is a Junkyard chronicles his slow recovery at home in his native Idaho, an agonizing experience that left him 30 pounds lighter, heavy with existential dread, and reckoning with a past he’d been running from. His sleight of hand is his ability to cloak even his bleakest moments in uplift or a hook. “Trapeze Artist” folds in a choir to stunning effect, and the saloon-style piano on “Idaho Alien” could easily have you humming its grim refrain — “I don’t remember how it happened / Blood filled up the clawfoot bath” — at the grocery store. It’s a strange dichotomy, but one that lingers long after the music fades. —Jason Lamphier
Listen to: “Idaho Alien,” “Mercury”
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