We’re officially six months into 2023, and you know what that means: time for a mid-year playlist! Feels like it’s been an exceptionally strong year for music so far, which is really heartening in a lot of ways. Not that the past couple were poor in any way, but sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle to fill an entire playlist and other times it’s a bit heartbreaking to make cuts and remove tracks because there are strict self-made “parameters” in place and you can’t go beyond them. When I say this playlist could easily have been 150 or 200 songs total, that hopefully gives you a sense of how challenging this was to assemble.
100 songs. All of them great in their own ways. You may not love every one of them because your tastes are likely different from mine, but that’s okay! There’s always some middle ground, and that’s what we’re searching for here. Are these the 100 best songs from the first half of 2023? I wouldn’t quite put that kind of label on it. They’re ordered primarily by style, so if you don’t hit the shuffle button you’ll get sections of rock, electronic, rap, pop, experimental, R&B, etc. Skip around if you’d like. Maybe find a song or artist you recognize, then listen to a song or two before and a song or two after. I may have imposed limits on what went into the playlist, but there are no limits in how you can listen to it.
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify and YouTube, plus each song can be heard individually by clicking on it below. Mostly I just hope you enjoy this, discover some new music, and maybe play it at a party or something to impress your friends.
