75 Fantastic Songs from 2023: part 1 of 3 (1–25)

A banner year of music expressed in a 75-song earxstravaganza!

Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash

The one downside to loving so many music genres is that narrowing down my favorites is a major challenge when the year nears its end. It’s a low-stakes Sophie’s choice deciding who gets included and who ends up in the cut-out bin.

That’s why I prefer featuring favorite songs rather than favorite albums; I can share ten times the amount of music, and if you like what you hear, then you have something new to explore in 2024! Win-win!

That said, I, along with three other awesome Substack writers shared our top-10 albums of the year a couple of weeks ago! If you didn’t get a chance to check those pieces out, you can do so here and here.

I am not someone who likes to genre-box, but in order to create a flow in each of the three 25-song playlists, I have loosely broken each triad into a mood, as it were. You will get some of everything in the 75-song bucket. 

Part 1 (below) features elements of punk, indie, shoegaze, metal, power-pop, and more. I also feature artists and bands from the ’80s, ’90s, and early aughts who put out killer music in 2023.  

Part 2 (which will be linked here when posted) incorporates a heavy dose of soul, R&B, dance, electronic, gospel, funk, and disco.

Part 3 (which will be linked here when posted) features a wide variety of styles, including singer-songwriter, country, Americana, experimental, progressive, ambient, and my favorite cover songs.

The playlist of all 25 songs is below, as well as YouTube video options!

1. Paramore/Wet Leg — C’est Comme Ça

This is from Paramore’s late 2023 album, Re: This is Why. The band invited their music friends to remix and redo the songs from their earlier release, This is Why. This collaboration with Wet Leg is contagion incarnate.

2. The Linda Lindas — Resolution/Revolution

The Linda Lindas opened for Paramore on tour this past summer along with The Foals. This modern punk masterpiece is one of the best singles of the year and might be the best song these four female teenage badasses have released yet. They are about to embark on another tour with Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins!

3. Softcult — Drain

Canadian twin sisters Phoenix and Mercedes Arn-Horn channeling The Jesus and Mary Chain without ever sounding derivative. 

4. Voice of Baceprot — (Not) Public Property

Personal (and political) heavy metal from a trio of young Muslim women from Indonesia? Yes, please. 

5. The Warning — More

Keeping the love for the rockin’ women going with The Warning. These three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, are only 22, 20, and 17, but they have been blowing the minds of audiences around the world for more than a decade. Thanks for making me feel even more like a lazy bum!

6. Sundara Karma — Friends of Mine

I discovered Sundara Karma after the release of their 2nd album, Ulfilas’ Alphabet. Their latest, Better Luck Next Time, is another solid effort. I love the way the band incorporates elements of ‘80s new wave and early aughts indie rock into their definitive 2020s sound.

7. The National Honor Society — Control

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this Seattle, Washington quartet as an overlooked brit-pop gem in the vein of Oasis or Blur. The National Honor Society has a way of reminding of a lot of iconic indie-rock bands, yet sounding wholly themselves. 

8. Uni Boys — I Want It Too

Power-pop, the way it was meant to be heard. Loud, fast, catchy-as-hell, and over in three minutes.

9. White Reaper — Pages

White Reaper was supposed to be the next big glam-pop sensation. In my mind (and in a few others I would presume) they are simply what they need to be: a kick-ass rock and roll band with a penchant for earworm-worthy melodies.

10. Superviolet — Blue Bower

Superviolet may have recorded the most gorgeous, lush, power-pop song of the year with “Blue Bower.” I get hints of late-era XTC and something else on the tip of my tongue. What do you hear?

11. The Lunar Laugh — Born Weird

No this isn’t a song about me. I don’t care what my mom says. “Born Weird” sounds like the Ben Folds Five if they were a guitar trio. 

12. The Reds, Pinks and Purples — Use This Song if You Need One

I want to make a movie just so I can use this song under the ending credits. The vibe I get in this song is Morrissey if he were sweet and kind but just as snarky and clever as always.

13. The Hives — Bogus Operandi

If you only click on one clip in this overly-long piece, make it this one, if only for the amazing music video. And because The Hives are an international treasure who deserves to be honored and idolized.

14. Bloc Party/KennyHoopla — Keep it Rolling

I never thought Bloc Party would still be releasing music that excited and challenged, almost 20 years after the iconic Silent Alarm album took the indie rock world by storm. But 2023 single “Keep it Rolling” is as adventurous and propulsive as anything they’ve ever recorded.

15. Quasi — Doomscrollers

Another band I never thought I’d hear new music from again, Quasi, is back and is as great as ever. Janet Weiss’ drumming remains powerful and peerless, and keyboardist and vocalist Sam Coomes’ sharp-edged lyrics are incisive and hilarious.

16. The New Pornographers (w/Aimee Mann) — Fireworks in the Falling Snow

This acoustic version of the gorgeous “Fireworks in the Falling Snow” isn’t on the New Pornographers’ excellent 2023 album, Continue as a Guest. I prefer this one though, as Aimee Mann’s makes any song infinitely better.

17. Gaz Coombes — Turn the Car Around

Gaz Coombes (Supergrass), in my opinion, is as important to the evolution from Brit-pop to whatever we have today as the Gallagher brothers or Damon Albarn. Maybe more so. “Turn the Car Around” shows he is still comfortably perched at the top of the songcraft mountain.

18. Slowdive — Shanty

Slowdive’s “Shanty” is hypnotic, epic, intimate, and maybe the best song the band has recorded since the early ’90s. 

19. Kristin Hersh — Ms Haha

Kristin Hersh has been steadily putting out excellent solo albums for decades now, and Clear Pond Road has not altered that streak. Mostly acoustic, but with flashes of strings, electronics, and percussion, “Ms Haha” perfectly captures Hersh’s intense, raw power.

20. Louise Post — Guilty

Louise Post’s debut album Sleepwalker is one of the year’s best. “Guilty” perfectly captures that iconic ’90s indie rock sound that she made popular with Veruca Salt. A complete pleasure. No guilt necessary.

21. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — Bauhaus Staircase

Yes, OMD is back! And writing infectious electro-dance music as fun as their early-’80s classics. “Bauhaus Staircase” brings me back to my high school days, when I had hair on my head, and it was aqua-netted to the high heavens.

22. Depeche Mode — Ghosts Again

Another legendary band of the ’80s returned in 2023 after a six-year absence. Memento Mori reveals Depeche Mode to be at the top of their game 40-plus years into a long career. 

23. Duran Duran — Secret Oktober 31st

The third in this list’s 80s trifecta, Duran Duran looked backward while aiming forward in 2023. Danse Macabre is their first album with original guitarist Andy Taylor in more than 20 years. On an album filled with appropriately spooky and campy covers and reworkings of Duran gems of the past, “Secret Oktober 31st” might be my favorite.

24. Blur — Barbaric

I didn’t love Blur’s 2023 album, The Ballad of Darren, but I loved the songs I liked, such as the charming, upbeat “Barbaric.” 

25. Mozart Estate — Relative Poverty

I thought I’d end with the cheeky Mozart Estate and their superbly acerbic “Relative Poverty.” Led by Lawrence (Felt, Denim), this track feels like it could have been recorded in the ’60s or ’70s or perhaps was a song from a lost Monty Python movie. Check out the perfectly cheesy keyboard solo 2 1/2 minutes in. Poverty never sounded so good!

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Phew! Did you make it all the way to the end? I’m so proud of you. And myself for writing all of this. 

Did any songs here stand out to you? What songs from 2023 did you love so much that you need to cry it out to the world? Or maybe just type out to the world?

Let us know in the comments!

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3!