- 2022 boasted a variety of musical gems from artists like Noah Kahan, Maggie Rogers, and Taylor Swift.
- The year also gave us duds from artists like Leah Kate, Panic! At the Disco, and Drake.
- The five best and five worst songs of 2022 are listed below, with each batch in chronological order.
Ethel Cain's "American Teenager" skewers the so-called "American dream" with gothic imagery and biting wit.
Ethel Cain is the artistic persona of 24-year-old Hayden Anhedönia, invented as a vehicle to explore both the beauty and danger of patriotism, religion, and idealism — especially in the Bible Belt of the American South, where she was raised.
"American Teenager" is the crown jewel of her debut album "Preacher's Daughter." It's a catchy, searing satire about growing up with visions of greatness, all while surrounded by violence.
"When 'American Teenager' dropped, I quickly started seeing people be like, 'Ethel Cain makes me want to grab a Bible and go to church, buy a gun and praise the American flag.' And I was like, 'That is absolutely not the point at all,'" Cain told i-D.
"I know the bad things that have happened to me in the South. I know the negative connotation that I get when I look at a Bible or I look at the American flag," she continued. "The private reclamation of my home, of the little things in between the cracks that I was coming back to loving, was being misinterpreted as me just going down South, guns blazing, flag waving, taking all of it back into my arms... it's something I have to be wary of."
"Girls Against God" by Florence + The Machine is a powerful ode to feminine rage.
From the very first verse, it's clear that "Girls Against God" is one of Florence Welch's most honest, eloquent, and arresting songs to date: "What a thing to admit that when someone looks at me with real love / I don't like it very much / Kinda makes me feel like I'm being crushed."
The song is packed with sharp observations and turns of phrase that capture the exquisite rage of womanhood: "In my darkest fantasies / I am the picture of passivity," "When I decided to wage holy war / It looked very much like staring at my bedroom floor."
Florence makes it clear that her pain is compounded by isolation, and the song doubles as an appeal for solidarity.
Noah Kahan's "Stick Season" is a stunning display of nostalgia and vulnerability.
"Stick Season," the lead single and title track from Noah Kahan's third album, is a monument of confessional songwriting.
The folksy hit is driven by energetic acoustic guitar and Kahan's fearless sincerity. He talks about running into his ex's mom, confesses to playing the victim, and opens up about the "darkness I inherited from dad." He turns each bite-sized phrase into a revelation: "Once called me forever, now you still can't call me back" is one of the most concise and acute summaries of heartbreak I've ever heard.
More than a breakup song, "Stick Season" captures the empty feeling of being left behind, drawing a parallel between the man in the rearview mirror and the Vermontian trees, standing barren in the cold air.
"Anywhere With You" is the best song Maggie Rogers has ever released.
"Anywhere With You" is the blazing core of Maggie Rogers' excellent sophomore album "Surrender."
The whole album is imbued with intense emotion, but "Anywhere With You" is the one time when she's not trying to find anything — she's just feeling everything, knowing exactly where it will lead.
Rogers pours herself into a homemade volcano like a kid at a science fair, building towards an explosive moment of catharsis: "You tell me you want everything, you want it fast / But all I've ever wanted is to make something fucking last."
The structure mimics the lyrical narrative with piercing precision. This is a product of an expert songwriter following all the right instincts.
"Would've, Could've, Should've" by Taylor Swift is the best song of 2022.
I have already written extensively about the brilliance of "Would've, Could've, Should've," the 19th track on Taylor Swift's extended version of "Midnights."
The more I listen to it — the more chills run down my spine every time I hear Swift wail, "Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first" — the more I feel it belongs in the pantheon of Swiftian masterpieces alongside "All Too Well," "Clean," "August," and "Tolerate It."
So of course, in the grand tradition of "All Too Well" and "August," "Would've Could've Should've" easily claimed the top spot on our ranking of the year's best songs. Read the complete list here and listen to the playlist on Spotify.
"Twinkle Twinkle" by Leah Kate is an unpleasant and unimaginative take on the pop-rock resurgence.
"Twinkle Twinkle" is a transparent ploy to recreate the success of Gayle's "ABCDEFU," which was itself an attempt to recreate the success of Olivia Rodrigo's "Good 4 U."
Unfortunately, Leah Kate possesses neither the marketing finesse of Gayle nor the lyrical prowess of Rodrigo. "Twinkle Twinkle" is as generic and derivative as it gets.
"Middle of a Breakup" is the lowest point on Panic! At The Disco's newest album.
"Middle of a Breakup" sees Brendon Urie doing his best impression of Freddie Mercury if the Queen frontman starred in a '70s musical.
If you're like me, this already sounds like a disaster. If you're a show tune enthusiast and this sounds appealing, you'll still be disappointed — Urie doesn't have the chops to pull it off. He strains his voice to reach uncomfortable falsettos, only to deliver melodies that are more suited for a Target commercial than a Broadway stage.
"Staying Alive" by DJ Khaled, featuring Drake and Lil Baby, is reductive and lazy at best.
2022 was the year of the gimmicky sample and "Staying Alive" was the worst offender.
DJ Khaled's take on the 1977 disco classic is completely devoid of originality or personality, and the song's two featured artists do nothing to save it. Drake delivers the Bee Gees' iconic hook with such profound laziness that it makes me question whether he is, indeed, alive.
"Circo Loco" includes one of Drake's most distasteful lyrics to date.
"Circo Loco," the ninth track on Drake's joint album with 21 Savage, "Her Loss," includes a repulsive, blatantly sexist lyric that accuses Megan Thee Stallion of fabricating her own trauma.
"This bitch lie 'bout getting shots, but she still a stallion," Drake raps in a thinly veiled jab at the "Savage" hitmaker, who accused the rapper Tory Lanez of shooting her in 2020.
Megan harshly criticized the song in a series of tweets, shortly before she gave a heart-wrenching testimony at Lanez's trial. (Lanez has pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony assault with a semiautomatic firearm.)
"I wish he would have just shot and killed me if I would have known I would go through this torture," Megan told the Los Angeles court. "I've been made to be the villain. He's the villain."
Kanye West doubles down on his dangerous rhetoric with "Someday We'll All Be Free."
Ye teamed up with the widely discredited conservative pundit Alex Jones to release "Someday We'll All Be Free" on InfoWars. The song came in the midst of the rapper's descent into dangerous conspiracy theories, anti-Black rhetoric, and antisemitism, including explicit praise for Adolf Hitler.
"Wakin up to 'I can't do this any more' texts," Ye raps over a sample of Donny Hathaway's 1973 track with the same name, which was inspired by Hathaway's battle with paranoid schizophrenia. "You knew I follow God, so you should follow me," he adds.
The song ends with an audio clip of Ye telling Jones, "There's a lot of things that I love" about the Nazis.
As Andre Gee wrote for Rolling Stone, "The song's lyrics reflect a double-down on the conservative, antisemetic rhetoric Ye's been expressing in recent months."
"One may be sympathetic to his mental health trials," Gee continued, "and how they may be affecting his judgment, but his latest track also feels like an abhorrent subversion of a song that has been celebrated as a beacon of hope for Black people amid the white supremacy that Ye is so devoutly amplifying."
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