The best albums of 2022

Syd rose to prominence as a member of the rap collective Odd Future (alongside the likes of Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean) and is best known today as the frontwoman of The Internet (alongside guitarist Steve Lacy, who made his own career-defining album this year).

But her second solo album, "Broken Hearts Club," makes the case for Syd as a standalone star who's pushing R&B to new heights. She cowrote and coproduced the entire project, which fuses the cozy glow of a relationship with the anxious trembles of grief. (The album was originally titled "In Love" before Syd went through a real-life breakup in the middle of its creation.)

Syd's angelic voice carries us through the turbulence, culminating in the gorgeous farewell ballad "Missing Out" ("Hope you findin' what you need or what you seek / 'Cause now I'm free").

It's a bold choice to return after nearly a decade with only eight new tracks, but of course, Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase pulled it off.

"Cool It Down" is the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs album in nine years, following 2013's "Mosquito." As the title suggests, it's a marked shift from the frenzy and thrill of their early contributions to New York's post-punk revival.

Clocking in at just 32 minutes, "Cool It Down" is a practice in focus and restraint — but somehow manages to preserve the smoldering, white-hot energy that made the trio iconic. The album feels both ominous and hopeful, dramatic and minimal, with Karen O's vocals soaring through its open spaces.

Arctic Monkeys fans who still yearn for the swaggering rock of their 2013 classic "AM" may feel disappointed by "The Car," which leans more heavily on orchestral strings, vintage keyboards, and the retro glamour of a rainy evening in '40s Paris.

But for certain fans like myself, who believe Alex Turner is a once-in-a-generation lyricist, "The Car" is another generous slice of his fascinating brain.

Throughout the tracklist, Turner is paranoid, wistful, and wary of our modern world. "The simulation cartridge for City Life '09 is pretty tricky to come by," he observes in "Sculptures of Anything Goes." In the following track, he seems to observe his own life as though "they shot it all in CinemaScope," numb to his own gut and the twinges of everyday stimuli. "When it's over, you're supposed to know," he laments.

Turner's debonair vocals suit the mood, and the album's lush soundscape allows us to relish his elegiac introspection more than ever.

"The Loneliest Time," Carly Rae Jepsen's sixth studio album, further cements her as one of the most adept, endearing pop stars at work today.

For those who still associate Jepsen with her 2012 smash "Call Me Maybe," I challenge you to run through "The Loneliest Time" and resist her ear for magical melodies. You'll find it's impossible.

They're sprinkled all over this tracklist — the syncopated da-da-da's in the chorus of "Joshua Tree," the choir of douchebag boys in the bridge of "Beach House," the TikTok-famous chirp of "I'm coming back for you!" in "The Loneliest Time" — but especially in the fourth and final single, "Talking to Yourself," which would be a No. 1 hit if the pop world knew any justice.

Earlier this year, Wet Leg seemed to arrive as a fully formed sensation like Aphrodite emerging from the ocean, catching the eyes of Harry Styles, who covered their standout track "Wet Dream" and later enlisted the duo as tour openers, and Elton John, who said they're "rocking out" and making some of "the best music" right now.

"None of the boys are doing it, the girls are," John added. "It's a breath of fresh air, because it comes from innocence and pure joy and that, for me, is what music is about."

But in fact, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers had been friends for 10 years before forming the band and signing with Domino Records in 2019.

To my ear, Wet Leg's self-titled debut is obviously made by best friends. Teasdale and Chambers share a language of feminine self-deprecation and wry irreverence that translates into some of the most fun indie rock I've heard in years. The album has been described by other critics as "an instant classic" and a "vivid" depiction of twentysomething life that feels like "an addictive sitcom."

Charli XCX made plenty of jokes that she was bowing to the mainstream pop factory with "Crash," her fifth and final album for her Atlantic Records contract, which she signed at just 16 years old.

"a thought: imagine if this entire album campaign was just a commentary on navigating the major label system and the sadistic nature of pop music as a whole?" she wrote on Twitter. "another thought: what if i just love pop music and wanna be super famous?"

The irony, of course, is that even her version of "selling out" is dynamic and infectious. Whether Charli is sneering at the music industry or sincerely aiming for a record-breaking smash, she has the attitude of a main pop girl, regardless of numbers or material success.

This audacity is what carries "Crash," even in its most repetitive or formulaic moments. Bops like "Good Ones," "Constant Repeat," "Yuck," and "Used to Know Me" would be career highs for plenty of artists. For Charli, it's just another day to start the party and be "very, very, very fucking iconic."

In 2014, FKA twigs tweeted an esoteric phrase that I still think about often: "i'll be down in 5, i am wearing 8 past lives and i smell like jasmine. you can't miss me."

In January, she opened her latest album thusly: "You want a get a bit of my mystique? / I'm still that mysterious bitch."

In the intervening years, twigs has endured an extravagant amount of stress, including "horrific" racism from fans of her ex-fiancé, Robert Pattinson, and six fibroid tumors that were surgically removed from her uterus, which she described as "a fruit bowl of pain every day." In late 2020, she filed a lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend, Shia LaBeouf, claiming "relentless" emotional and physical abuse. She called it "pure luck" that she made it out of their relationship alive.

To hear twigs reclaim her exquisite aroma in the wake of so much trauma is nothing short of a gift — and not just reclaim, but revel and rave.

"Caprisongs" is the most club-ready, body-friendly, skin-sticky music of her career, an uninhibited set of anthems for women who use the alien emoji too much. Twigs herself described the vibe as "bronzer in the sink, alco pop on the side." If you have any ghosts hanging around and giving you chills, she's here to help you sweat them out.

When she exited Central Park's Summerstage on September 8, 2019, Mitski fully intended to leave her music career behind.

"I was thinking this was the last show I would perform ever, and then I would quit and find another life," she later told Rolling Stone. "It was beautiful. I performed, and I remembered how much I loved it. And I remember walking offstage, and I immediately started crying. Like, 'What have I done?'"

"Laurel Hell," Mitski's unexpected sixth album, sounds like she bottled that show's electricity and tension — her undying passion for making music, as well as her discomfort with the consumerism it begets — and tossed the concoction into a blender with '80s synths and disco-ball shards.

With her signature poeticism, Mitski confronts her fears of losing her freedom, of working for the knife, of being dehumanized in the eyes of the masses — all while twirling through a sparkly soundscape that would make Kate Bush and Pat Benatar equally proud. Should you cry? Should you dance? The answer is yes, both, always.

"This album has been a punk record at some point, and a country record," she explained. "Then, after a while, it was like, 'I need to dance.' Even though the lyrics might be depressing, I need something peppy to get me through this."

On his self-titled solo debut, as well as his sophomore album "Fine Line," Harry Styles could sometimes get lost in his tangled array of influences and thirst to be taken seriously.

But as I wrote in our review, "Harry's House" is the warm, vivid, fanciful album that Styles was born to make. Liberated from the pressure of who's allowed to make "fun music," he finally sounds more influential than influenced. The bangers are bigger and bolder ("Music for a Sushi Restaurant," "Cinema"), the rock songs are cheekier ("Grapejuice," "Daylight"), and the ballads swap melodrama for authentic compassion ("Little Freak," "Boyfriends").

I've seen some criticism of Styles as a lyricist, particularly when it comes to his whimsy and fierce protection of personal details. But I would argue that Styles' magic is the open invitation to interpret — even to project your own needs, whims, and fantasies onto the canvas he earnestly offers.

If it's diaristic, open-heart-surgery-style music you're looking for, there are other artists who are happy to oblige. But if it's fistfuls of charisma and fruity allusions you crave, there's no one doing it like him.

The last time Matty Healy's antics landed on one of our year-end rankings, I wrote, "As usual, The 1975 are Doing The Most on their most recent album. Luckily for them, they've gotten pretty damn good at it."

This time, the band's famously verbose frontman has learned to scale it back. "Being Funny in a Foreign Language" is just 11 songs and 43 minutes long, making it The 1975's most compact tracklist to date and cutting the length of its predecessor in half.

Some of the album's best lyrics are refreshingly concise, getting straight to the point without losing an ounce of compassion: "I'm sorry if you're living and you're 17," "The only time I feel I might get better is when we are together," "I'll miss you on a train / I'll miss you in the morning." In fact, Healy told Amelia Dimoldenberg that his favorite lyric at the moment isn't really a lyric at all: "I'm in love with you."

Healy's desire to be happy — and to be earnest about this pursuit — lies at the heart of the album, and it makes "Being Funny in a Foreign Language" a cohesive treat. Romantic cuts like "Oh Caroline," "I'm in Love With You," and "About You" rank among the band's best songs ever.

However, fans from their original Tumblr days need not fret; there are still moments of deflection, dark humor, and harrowing self-doubt. It wouldn't be an album by The 1975 otherwise. My personal favorite: "Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke calling his ego imagination?"

"Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers" is Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album, following a lauded trilogy of rap brilliance (2012's "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City," 2015's "To Pimp a Butterfly," and 2017's "Damn").

As one could expect from the Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist, "Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers" is an intimate and intricate endeavor, certainly not designed for a casual listening experience. The dense tracklist — structured as a double-sided LP — tackles an array of heady subjects, from generational trauma and fame-weary cynicism to Lamar's struggles with toxic masculinity and fatherhood.

Although some fans found "Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers" to be a thorny, messy deviation in Lamar's discography, as Charles Holmes noted for The Ringer, this is who Lamar has always been — confronting his genius and his shortcomings with equal force.

"Lamar contains multitudes, it's just that for many, it's easier to obsess over the Black liberation themes and calls for nonviolence instead of the clumsy bars about respectability and sexuality," Holmes wrote.

"The true brilliance of 'Mr. Morale' is that instead of chasing perfection, the album seems more preoccupied with revealing the internal discord of its protagonist," Holmes continued. "There's only so much growth an artist can attain when they're hemmed in by their own mythology."

"You can't surprise a Gemini," Steve Lacy sings in his mega-hit "Bad Habit," the standout track from his sophomore album. "I'm everywhere, I'm cross-eyed."

This turned out to be oddly prophetic. "Gemini Rights" has destroyed Lacy's status as a cult-favorite virtuoso, long revered by popheads for recording perfect songs on his iPhone and producing for artists like Solange, Kendrick Lamar, and Vampire Weekend, all without reaching mainstream success.

The album was just too good to fly under the radar, and Lacy is everywhere now — TikTok, radio waves, and soon enough, the main stage at the Grammys.

Creatively speaking, "cross-eyed" feels like an undersell. Lacy has always made multidimensional art, noticing beauty where others don't and finding the right palette to express it. "Gemini Rights" bears the fruits of that talent, crafting a cosmic, mercurial, and technicolor landscape.

Nothing is flat or black-and-white in Lacy's world. Even on an album ostensibly about heartbreak, he sees opportunity ("Looking for a bitch 'cause I'm over boys" is both funny and, as a fellow bisexual, unironically inspiring) and insists upon the power of duality ("You think I'm two-faced? / I can name 23 / My layers, all these sides," he rap-sings on "Mercury"). This is classic Gemini behavior, and Lacy makes a strong case for the sign's superiority.

If you're a Phoebe Bridgers and Olivia Rodrigo fiend, deprived of new releases from your favorite angsty girls all year, I have just the prescription: "Five Seconds Flat," the sophomore album from Lizzy McAlpine, who's destined to be known as one of indie-pop's most impressive vocalists and skilled songwriters.

"Five Seconds Flat" resembles a blend of "Punisher" and "Sour" — poetic and contemplative, yet theatrical and bold. Although McAlpine has a stronger flair for eccentricity than her cohorts, they all share a knack for emotional upheaval.

McAlpine's lyrics cut to the core of a feeling with nimble, efficient ferocity. "I hold my anger in my stomach / And I'm starting to have side effects from hating you this much," she sings to open the stripped-back tear-jerker "Nobody Likes a Secret." In the indecisive breakup song "Called You Again," she admits off the bat, "Honestly I never really loved you that bad."

The structures of her songs often reflect their narratives. Even after copping to her lopsided love affair, realizing she should leave her ex alone, McAlpine ends "Called You Again" by circling back for another round: "But you called me again / I don't know why it never seems to end." The deceptively chipper single "Reckless Driving" ends abruptly, interrupting McAlpine as she warns her lover about an imminent car crash.

Throughout the album, McAlpine's expert storytelling is bolstered by cinematic production. Standout tracks like "Doomsday," "Erase Me," and "Firearm" take unexpected detours into elaborate horn arrangements, experimental electro-funk (courtesy of McAlpine's Grammy-nominated collaborator Jacob Collier), and furious swells of electric guitar, allowing the album to transcend a traditional singer-songwriter pastiche. McAlpine's artistry is hard to predict or pin down, and that's exactly how she likes it.

"It's just an instinct thing. When I hear a certain version of a song, I'm like, 'No,' or, 'Yes,'" she told Insider, adding, "I don't want to do what someone is telling me to do, just because they're telling me to do it. I want to do something because I feel it's right."

Noah Kahan's enchanting third album "Stick Season" is so much more than a tribute to his New England roots — although he spends a lot of time plotting his scars on a map. He sings about driving past Alger Brook Road, "a murder of crows in the low light off Boston," and his childhood home on Balch Street that was "designed to kinda look like its crying."

"Stick Season" comes alive in these intimate moments. Kahan wrote all 14 tracks — 10 on his own — and each one carries the fingerprints of an overthinker, overfeeler, and keen-eyed observer. As Greta Gerwig noted in her directorial debut "Lady Bird," a film that doubles as an ode to her own hometown, "Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?"

Indeed, Kahan pays attention. He remembers the exact song he sang in the car with his ex-girlfriend ("Retrograde" by James Blake). He can recite her phone number. He knows which dirt roads are named after high-school friends' grandfathers, as well as "every route in this county." The new Target at a local intersection catches his eye. He scoffs when folks call it "downtown."

The scenes in Kahan's songs are lovingly wrought, even when he's feeling resentful and angry and left behind. This paradox lies at the heart of "Stick Season," one that will speak to anyone who had a complicated, infuriating, glorious coming-of-age — which is to say, essentially everyone.

Bad Bunny's fourth studio album is one of the rare blockbusters that melds mass appeal with critical acclaim.

"Un Verano Sin Ti" topped the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks and recently made history as the first Spanish-language nominee for album of the year. It has already been crowned the best album of 2022 by Time and second-best by Rolling Stone.

At one hour and 21 minutes, the tracklist flirts with feeling bloated, but it's too fun and unserious for the length to truly matter. As Bad Bunny told the New York Times, he was inspired by the carefree bliss of his childhood in Puerto Rico, particularly his family trips to the island's west coast, where he recorded the majority of the album.

"It's a record to play in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist," he said.

Bad Bunny (whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) wrote or cowrote all 23 songs on the versatile tracklist, drawing from a rich tapestry of Caribbean sounds and colors, including reggaeton, dance hall, and dembow.

"Benito firmly roots the album in the deeply personal," Cady Lang wrote for Time, "mining the universal experiences of love, loss, and the supreme pleasure of being alive, for an exceptional project that is genre-defying, intergenerational, and groundbreaking."

It's no simple task to succeed one of the most acclaimed debuts of all time, particularly after a half-decade of false starts and public label scuffles.

As affection for "Ctrl" deepened over the years (it was certified triple platinum in August), so did SZA's reputation as an elusive mastermind with one perfect album (à la Lauryn Hill). The hype for a follow-up seemed insurmountable.

And yet, SZA's long-awaited sophomore album "SOS" is a 23-track tour de force that delves into her psyche with brutal candor. She teams up with Phoebe Bridgers to lament the lonely, soulless music industry; one song later, she uses sex as revenge for self-hatred and longing; on the early highlight "Kill Bill," she confesses, "I'd rather be in hell than alone."

The tracklist is long and wide-ranging, but it works to SZA's advantage. I'm reminded of Robert Lowell's thoughts on Sylvia Plath in the forward for "Ariel," her most celebrated collection of poems: "Everything we customarily think of as feminine is turned on its head. The voice is now coolly amused, witty, now sour, now fanciful, girlish, charming, now sinking to the strident rasp of the vampire."

Much like Plath, SZA self-consciously creates a spectacle of her own darkness. Instead of shying away from her insecurities and impulses, she magnifies each one, wielding humor and hyperbole as weapons against shame. The album's fearless genre-hopping mirrors the moody, multidimensional woman at the helm.

I may be accused of recency bias for putting "SOS" in this year's top five just one week after its release, but I know its poignance will only increase over time. Five years later, I'm still finding new things about "Ctrl" to fall in love with — and the metamorphic nature of "SOS" promises an equally surprising and rewarding relationship.

If you know anyone who accuses Jack Antonoff of diluting the music of his female collaborators, kindly direct them to "Dance Fever."

On Florence + The Machine's fifth album, she sounds ecstatically herself — psychic, penetrating, persuasive. It may be her best yet, rivaled only by her 2009 debut "Lungs."

Primarily coproduced by Florence and Antonoff, "Dance Fever" recalls the burning hunger and bombast of the singer's early hits, including "Dog Days Are Over" and "Cosmic Love."

Like all great confessional poetry, however, "Dance Fever" doesn't aim to simply capture Florence's sense of self, but to reimagine, remake, and continually create it. As she sings on the brilliant lead single "King," "A woman is a changeling, always shifting shape / Just when you think you have it figured out / Something new begins to take."

Naturally, Florence wrote or cowrote all 14 songs on the tracklist. They are expertly arranged: "Free" and "Choreomania" unite to convey the power of movement; "Dream Girl Evil" directly follows "Girls Against God" in a rapturous procession for feminine rage; "The Bomb" and "Morning Elvis" close the album with tender, guilty admissions about Florence's cravings (for obsessive love, for alcohol, for pain in the name of art).

Taken as a whole, "Dance Fever" is a cohesive portrait of a changeling, always shifting shape, jumping around to ward off the demons, coaxing us to join her. In times like these, it would be unwise to refuse.

"Motomami," the follow-up to Rosalía's breakout album "El Mal Querer," is an unexpected and chaotic opus.

Although it appears to share little with its predecessor — a theatrical concept album based on a 13th-century romance novel — "Motomami" expands and deepens Rosalía's reputation as an avant-garde trailblazer with a seemingly infinite well of references.

Conceptually, "Motomami" was inspired by the motorcycle culture of Rosalía's hometown in Barcelona, as well as the tenacity she inherited from her mother, who ran a metalworks company.

Sonically, the album delights in contradiction, flitting between styles and energies with breathless verve. Rosalía boasts a gossamer-fine warble, honed from years of studying flamenco, but often chooses to rap over Caribbean-inspired production and reggaeton beats. "Candy" and "Bizcochito" tap into pop-radio trends, while songs like "Saoko" and "Cuuuuuuuuuute" are intentionally discordant.

"As an artist, my biggest desire is to be as free as possible," Rosalía told Rolling Stone. "It was, 'How far can I push to get as much freedom as possible in many ways, in subjects, in sound, in aesthetic, in everything?'"

"If you're going to paint, you need colors, you need brushes, you need a canvas," she added. "The more colors you have, the more accurately you can express exactly what you want to. Knowledge never threatens creativity — it's exactly the opposite."

Insider's music team previously awarded "Surrender" a 9.2 out of 10, one of our highest first-listen scores to date (surpassed only by 2020's best album, "Folklore," 2021's best album, "Sour," and 2021's runner-up "Solar Power").

We expected Maggie Rogers' sophomore effort to appreciate in cathartic value. Happily, five months later, I can say we were right. "Surrender" continues to land every single punch.

As I wrote in our review, this is a full-body album — sweaty, full of stains and wounds, yet strong and graceful at its core.

It's music that makes me think of humidity and feeling your heartbeat in your fingertips, like a summer night in New York City. There's a good chance you'll cycle through the full range of human emotions in a matter of hours, only to return home sore and slaphappy.

Those nights remind me of how weird and miraculous it is to be alive; how gross the human body can be while still performing as a complex array of muscles and nerves and invisible impulses; how impressive it is to keep going despite constant tragedy.

"Surrender" shares the same effect. Rogers, who single-handedly wrote every word on this album, is a keen and sensitive lyricist. She infuses each moment of freedom and release with existential dread: the death of a mother lurks in the middle of her song about female friendship; amid a swirl of gleeful '80s synths, the phrase "I'm scared" is frantically repeated five times. Her vocal delivery is visceral, making every hint of emotion feel big and immediate.

But the beauty is that it works in reverse, too. Not one of Rogers' songs is just one thing. None are purely sad, hopeless, or fearful. There is always a whisper of hope, a sun that will rise tomorrow.

At its core, "Surrender" is what it sounds like to be happy against all odds.

Six years after "Lemonade," which examined themes of betrayal and redemption through the lens of an extramarital affair, Beyoncé redefined her legacy yet again, returning with a buoyant and blistering blend of New Orleans bounce, deep house, disco, gospel, funk, and techno.

There really isn't a coherent argument against "Renaissance" as the defining album of 2022. It's technically perfect. The listenability is off the charts.

But most importantly, it speaks to a greater need for community and inclusion; for passion, eroticism, and sexual freedom; for queer joy without the precondition of trauma.

"Renaissance" is a pristinely produced, dance-pop masterpiece that's indebted to Black queer people and ballroom culture. While other artists may have tried to mask or co-opt this origin story, Beyoncé ushers her forebears into the spotlight.

The lead single "Break My Soul" prominently samples the 2014 song "Explode" by the iconic diva Big Freedia, while more LGBTQ legends like Kevin Aviance, Moi Renee, Honey Dijon, and Ts Madison appear elsewhere on the tracklist. In a heartfelt note on her website, Beyoncé dedicated the album to "all of the pioneers who originate culture," especially her Uncle Jonny, who died from HIV-related complications when she was 17.

The album is designed like a DJ setlist at your favorite gay club, each track flowing seamlessly into another. "Cuff It" feels incomplete without the transition into "Energy." The self-assurance anthem "Heated" sounds even more sublime after Beyoncé and Grace Jones command their detractors to "move out the way."

When Beyoncé declares "it should cost a billion to look this good" in the penultimate track, her brag requires context — the album's themes of personal liberation and political resistance — to truly appreciate.

"For me, and perhaps a number of people like me — the Uncle Johnnys, Black and brown trans folks, QPOCs, etc. — hearing 'Renaissance' was confirmation of what we've always known in our heart of hearts, regardless of what society told us, or how our white peers made us feel: that to be queer, gifted, and Black is — as Nina Simone once intoned — a lovely, precious dream," Lester Fabian Brathwaite wrote for Entertainment Weekly. "And in Beyoncé's hands, it's the American Dream."

Read about Insider's best songs of 2022 and listen to the complete ranking on Spotify.