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.
We’ve once again reached the halfway point of another year, and as such it creates a perfect opportunity to reflect on the past six months just to check in and see how things are going so far. You don’t need another recap of pandemic fatigue, vaccine distribution, and the “return to normalcy” while our democratic institutions remain in constant peril. That’s not what this site is about. Everyone is stressed out enough already, so let’s take a moment to remember the good things, like music. Oh hey, remember music? It’s that thing you can play to soundtrack your life and enhance your emotional state. The right song can turn your entire day around, for better or worse. A fond memory can be triggered by a song, or an uptempo beat can somehow make a sunny day that much brighter. Great stuff, right?
After the disaster that was 2007’s “Baby 81”, my confidence in Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was shot. Despite the relatively poor reviews their first two albums received, their fuzz-fueled Jesus and Mary Chain-baiting rock captivated me like few other bands at the time did. That they have been on a slow and steady drop in quality since then has been unfortunate. The reality is that I gave “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” a listen more as a formality in preparation for another scathing review attacking their inability to commit to a sound and the lack of passion they’ve been putting behind their songs recently. What happened instead was that for the first time in a long time, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club finally sounded like they were back in a big way. Think of them like pro athletes that slowly spiral into the dangerous world of drug addiction. “Baby 81” was them hitting bottom, and now after a rehab program, they’re back in shape and almost in peak form. Let’s just hope they can keep on the straight and narrow from here on out. [
For her entire life, Charlotte Gainsbourg has been living in the shadow of her father. No matter what she’s done, from her acting to her very sporadic music career, people almost always bring up Serge. In 2006, Charlotte released her first album in 20 years “5:55”, and given that she paired up with French pop duo Air, that record sounded like a tribute to her father rather than a statement of individuality. That wasn’t the intention, and thankfully for “IRM” she joined forces with Beck to make a diverse and fascinating record that’s actually the best thing either of them have done in a long time. We see a new side of Charlotte and though she didn’t write the lyrics or compose the songs, her vocal performance stretches beyond anything she’s done previously, and with more emotion too. [
The Futureheads seem to have been slipping ever since their self-titled debut album. Of course a band that tends to specialize in short, 2 minute bursts of pure energy and hooks isn’t exactly built on a strategy for longevity. Still, continuing in their tradition of releasing a new album every two years, “News and Tributes” was a solid sophmore effort, but the band fell off the wagon when they tried to compose longer, more serious songs on their last album “This Is Not the World”. As if they’d gotten the message, “The Chaos” brings back to The Futureheads exactly what the title describes. Some of their poppiest, most addictive music since they first burst onto the music scene several years ago. Combine that with a highly combustible and insanely fun live show, and The Futureheads are more than equipped to surprise you in 2010. [
There’s been a slow and low build of buzz for Local Natives since their performance impressed so many at SXSW 2009, but I’ll admit to being late to that party. All too many times I’ve heard of bands being called “the next Grizzly Bear” or “the next Fleet Foxes”, only to be disappointed by these supposed next big things. When “Gorilla Manor” was finally released in the U.S. earlier this year, I wasn’t even fully aware of it until the high praise reviews started rolling in. Even then I was hesitant to even give them a try. It took stumbling upon the song “Wide Eyes” by accident one day while randomly surfing the internet to compel me to give Local Natives a try. And boy am I glad I did. The album is nothing short of amazing, and like Fleet Foxes scratched a certain itch for me in 2008, Local Natives satisfy that same part of my brain in 2010. This is an all-too-unheard album from the first half of the year that deserves every shred of recognition it gets, so if you’ve been holding out like I was, buy into these guys. They’re the real deal. [
I’ve made it a point in the past to complain about MGMT. Their 2007 “debut” album “Oracular Spectacular” featured a handful of songs recycled from years old EPs, and it’s those songs that gained the band so much attention. That, along with an extremely poor live show from them I witnessed in 2005 drove my dislike of the band to near extremes. Well, their second record “Congratulations” earns them exactly that from me. Not only is it a full album’s worth of material that was completely written and recorded in the past year, but the songs on it give the proverbial middle finger to the rabid fans of their debut. That they didn’t go for the easy sell and made challenging, psychedelic songs while signed to a major label is seriously courageous. On top of that, the songs are pretty damn good too. Well played MGMT, you won me over and that was something I never saw coming. [
It never occurred to me to find out the names of the guys in Band of Horses besides singer Ben Bridwell until I heard “Infinite Arms” for the first time. See, it turns out that unbeknownst to me, Band of Horses was pretty much Bridwell’s solo project for the first two albums and the guys he played shows with were pretty much hired hands. Well, after the last album “Cease to Begin”, Bridwell did hire some guys full time to write, record and tour with him. Band of Horses now being a full-fledged band, all the new guys contributed a bunch of stuff to “Infinite Arms”, and suddenly their mojo disappeared. The new songs are blander and aimed at the arena-sized crowds they’re starting to attract. If they got this far with more introspective and personal material, why stop now? I’m not saying that Bridwell should fire the rest of his band, but maybe for the next album they let him go back to what he does best – writing and composing songs on his own. [
Keyboardist Franz Nicolay left The Hold Steady before they went to record “Heaven Is Whenever”, and though a moustachioed keyboard guy is never the lynchpin that makes any band go from good to great, something does feel like it’s missing from the band’s latest offering. The advancement of The Hold Steady from “Separation Sunday” to “Boys and Girls in America” was remarkable and pushed the band into new territory that saw them make huge strides in terms of attention and popularity. Their last album “Stay Positive” largely continued on the themes that “Girls and Boys in America” had set up, and while it was slightly less effective, the band remained exciting and prolific. Where “Heaven Is Whenever” goes wrong is when the band decides to abandon the Springsteen-esque progress they’d made on their last couple records and return to the much more guitar-based sound of their early days. If only they’d attempted to take another step forwards rather than looking backwards, I think everyone would have given them a little more leeway. Instead, The Hold Steady for the first time sound creatively exhausted, and Craig Finn’s stories are starting to wear a little thin. [
Hot Chip established themselves as this great electro-pop band building songs that sounded amazing on the dance floor. Examining the hits for a moment, songs like “Over and Over” and “Shake A Fist” were so huge and earned them such a following because they were fun, highly creative bursts of energy you could get down to. They seem to have forgotten that on “One Life Stand”, because the number of club banger tracks has decreased significantly. Yes, you could say the approach is far more nuanced and mature, but mid-tempo pop songs and slow ballads just don’t have the same cathartic release. There are a few great things about the album though, first and foremost among them is the incredibly great video for “I Feel Better”. I’m also all kinds of in love with the closing track “Take It In”. If Hot Chip want to show their more serious side, they have every right to do so, but as LCD Soundsystem has proven time and time again, you don’t need to scale back your beats and tempos to put your emotional depth on display. Hopefully they remember that for next time. [
Spoon has had such a spectacular run of albums in the last few years that as much as we all might like that streak to continue, we knew it couldn’t go on forever. Their last album “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” may have placed them at the peak of their creative powers, so unless they could continue with that same vigor and intensity, “Transference” was going to be a let down. And so it was, with Britt Daniel & Co. turning in what felt at times like a half-baked album. As the band might put it though, every song is as complete as they want it to be. A small dash of grimy lo-fi here, a purposely missed or incompletely sung lyric there, and a splash of unfocused energy and things sound a little topsy-turvy in Spoon’s world. Good for them for having the courage and spirit to throw most everybody for some sort of loop, and the majority of the songs still work well even with the added quirks. “Transference” will go down as one of the lesser albums in Spoon’s catalogue, and as disappointing as that might be, the record is still interesting and even a bit surprising…just not always in that great sort of way. [
Blandness and repeating yourself are two big things that many long-standing bands have had to fight against. Stars have reached their fifth album, and while their dark and depressing brand of indie pop has worked more often than it hasn’t, “The Five Ghosts” leaves them sounding like they’re no longer dying but are already dead. Many of the songs on the album are downtempo or devoid of any real expression of life, and the ones that do manage to pick themselves up off the floor can’t seem to do so for long. To be clear though this isn’t an album filled with bad songs, just merely okay ones. The positive is that Amy Millan really shines across the entire album from a vocal perspective, while Torquil Campbell seems pushed into a corner where he’s not allowed to be his normal, expressive self. It’s sad in a way, because while Stars haven’t always been the most prolific of Canadian exports, memories of magic from albums like “Nightsongs” and “Set Yourself On Fire” hurt whatever haunting message the band might be trying to get across here. Between this and “In Our Bedroom After the War”, let’s hope Stars find something a little lighter and less same-y sooner rather than later. [