Our pop music critic picks his best albums of the year

Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were the headline makers in 2023, but neither released albums of new music this year, so sorry, you won’t find them on this best-of list.

Instead, the world belongs to SZA, the wide-ranging New Jersey R&B singer-songwriter who made an album about disconnection and isolation that dominated the pop charts early in the year.

Along with SOS, my top 10 includes one Philly rapper and one Philly rock band, one manic hyper-pop duo and one laid-back dance-pop duo. Plus, a selection of folk, Americana, and country, and singer-songwriters who have risen to pull in arena-size audiences when they played in Philly.

SOS came out at the end of 2022, but it made itself felt in 2023. Its 23 songs demonstrate mastery over multiple genres while working through recrimination, anger, and self-acceptance and reveling in revenge on “Kill Bill.” And though it took SZA a while to get to Philadelphia after a March show was postponed and Made in America canceled, her weirdly wonderful nautically themed SOS show in September underscored that she’s a one-of-a-kind artist.

It was a big Black Thought year. In February, the Roots rapper Tariq Trotter dropped “Love Letter to Hip-Hop,” a celebration of the culture’s 50th anniversary that’s Grammy-nominated. In April, he teamed with soul group El Michels Affair to release this autobiographical set that features his cinematic writing as it evokes his Philadelphia childhood. Then he went even deeper in his superb memoir, The Upcycled Self, which works as a companion piece.

“When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise?” Olivia Rodrigo asks on “Teenage Dream,” on the formidable follow-up to her 2021 debut Sour. There’s plenty of wisdom on Guts, but also humor, self-doubt, confusion, and rage from the no-longer teen star who’s doing a bang-up job of growing up in public.

Iris DeMent makes music from a deeply human, old soul perspective, going back to her timeless 1992 debut album Infamous Angel. Workin’ On A World is the Arkansas-born songwriter’s first set of originals since 2012. You could call it protest music (”Goin’ Down To Sing In Texas” is an eight-minute song about gun violence), but it’s really an album about finding faith and purpose in “The Sacred Now,” looking to the future even as mortality looms. “I’m workin’ on a world,” DeMent sings, “I may never see.”

“I’m smarter than I look,” Laura Les sings, “I’m the dumbest girl alive.” Which one is it? 10,000 Gecs is the second album by the hyper-pop duo of Les and Dylan Brady. The songs never sit still and aren’t afraid to be silly, but are anything but dumb. “You were tough, unforgiving, made me cry all the time.” You’d think that lyric was from a song about a breakup or bad parent. Instead, it’s called “I Got My Tooth Removed” and is about a dentist appointment.

Everything But the Girl went on extended hiatus as a band, but stayed together as a couple. And 24 years after Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt last released an EBTG album, the married duo returned with Fuse. The album couples Thorn’s exquisite torch singing with Watt’s low-key beats to create melancholy club music of the highest order.

There’s a heaping helping of talent in Wednesday, Karly Hartzman’s Asheville, N.C., band who return to Philly to play Union Transfer on Jan. 17. Hartzman’s partner, Jake Lenderman, who made last year’s list with Boat Songs, plays guitar in Wednesday, but doesn’t write songs for the band. That’s Hartzman’s job, and she excels at it, whether dropping concise wisdom in the screamer “Bull Believer” or brandishing a Drive-By Truckers influence in “Chosen To Deserve,” the riff-rock love song of the year.

The best Philly rock record of the year, and up there with the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds as one of the best guitar records of 2023. Sadie Dupuis, the West Philly songwriter, guitarist, and poet records with this band named after a Love & Rockets character and the more solo-oriented Sad13. Rabbit Rabbit teems with energy as its faces childhood trauma and learns how to cope as an adult. Speedy Ortiz play MilkBoy Philly on New Year’s Eve.

Three is the magic number. Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus all have significant followings, but their audience exploded when they pooled their talents. On The Record, songs like “Not Strong Enough” highlight the artists as individuals while creating a sum bigger than its parts. The sense that the members are, above all, there to support one another — that gives boygenius all the strength it needs.

Dependable artists like Margo Price and Jason Isbell delivered as usual, and Margo Cilker made what might be the best Americana album of 2023. But this spot goes to Moroney, the Georgia singer pulling off the Miranda Lambert trick of reaching pop-country fans with whipsmart music steeped in traditionalism. Her Willie Nelson-referencing mission statement: “I write sad songs for sad people, somethin’ ‘bout the pain / I want every word to hurt, like blue eyes cryin’ In the rain.”

Honorable mentions: Corinne Bailey Rae, Black Rainbows; Bully, Lucky For You; Feist, Multitudes; Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Weathervanes; Vijay Iyer, Arooj Aftab, Shahzad Ismaily, Return To Exile; Lankum, False Lankum; Lydia Loveless, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again; Rolling Stones, Hackney Diamonds; Allison Russell, The Returner; Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World.