Welcome to the latest and greatest recap of all that was great in music, movies, and more in 2022! Overall, I felt that 2022 was a great year for music, with a lot of solid albums released across nearly all of the genres I dipped my feet into. There were even a lot of great singles, perhaps promoting the greatness to come to us next year as well. Let's not look too far into this year, though; we've got a lot to cover, including a change in how I approached this year's AOTY list.
Like so many have before, I used to rank the Top 10, 15, or 20 albums of the year in the list I posted to the void the internet has become. A few years ago, however, I switched things up and dropped the rankings altogether. Instead, I just named my Album of the Year, and talked about the rest as if they were all tied for second. That's a fine strategy, but since I'm on the verge of getting bored with it, I opted for a different method this year. Here's what I came up with:
Oh yeah, we're making a tier list, baby! I really enjoyed doing this throughout the NFL season, and thought it would be a fun exercise to try to map out my Album of the Year list this way. As you can see, the my AOTY is in a tier all its own, as it typically is. Then, we've got the Great Tier, a group of albums that all received at least some consideration for AOTY at some point. Underneath that is the Good Tier, a tier of albums that all have undeniable highlights, but aren't as solid front-to-back as the Great Tier. The final tier is the Solid Tier. These albums didn't have anything in contention for my Song or Album of the Year lists, but were in constant rotation on my shuffle of 2022 releases throughout the year. Makes sense, right? God, I hope so. If not, ignore all that, and let's dig into 2022's highlights in music.
Album of the Year
Arm's Length - Never Before Seen, Never Again Found There's a common thread between all of the albums I've given the Album of the Year designation to: they all reached out and grabbed me upon first listen. Whether it was The 1975, The Hotelier, Circa Survive, The Menzingers, or any of the other noteworthy artists whose work stood above the rest in the calendar year they were released in, there was something in that album that moved me in a way that I hadn't felt in a long time, or ever before. This jaw-dropping debut from Arm's Length falls into the latter of those two. From the opening riffs and crashing outro of "Overture," Never Before Seen, Never Again Found grabs hold of your emotions and takes you through this odyssey of emo perfection, the heights of which haven't been reached since the mid-2010s "emo revival." While "Object Permanence" and "Tough Love" were the two songs to get the official single-and-music-video treatment (so far), it's likely that there are fans who think it should have been "In Loving Memory," "Formative Age," or "Playing Mercy," and that speaks to the album's consistent and constant emotional outpourings. The album is tied together perfectly by "Dirge," whose crescendo is the most well-established and hard-earned moment of any album released in 2022, and it can activate nearly any emotion the listener is capable of at any given time. No other album did that for me this year, and no other album was this consistently great. The final lines of "Dirge" circling back to the opening lines of "Overture" cements Never Before Seen, Never Again Found not just as a collection of near-perfect emo anthems, but as one of the greatest front-to-back listening experiences in the history of the genre.
The 1975 - Being Funny in a Foreign Language
The beauty of The 1975 is that they're dependable. It doesn't matter how long the band have been away, what personality Matty Healy is feigning on his social media accounts (currently it's chaotic shitposting, for those keeping score at home), or what the social climate is. The 1975 have had an innate ability to understand what's going on around them, and how to bend it at their will to their art. Coming out of the pandemic, the band stripped away nearly all of the tricks they've held up their sleeves, this time opting for a much more analog sound. The result, as you'd imagine, is the band's most intimate-sounding record in a long time, and also one of their most focused. Being Funny has a smooth sound throughout, and while "Happiness" and "I'm in Love with You" are the clear standouts, there's a lot of different songs that fans will be fawning over for years to come as well.
The Devil Wears Prada - Color Decay While those who have stuck with the band all these years understand that the heart that made this band one of the longest-running headliners in metalcore never faded, it's nice to see The Devil Wears Prada reach into their bag and pull out another album that will stand up with Dead Throne or With Roots Above and Branches Below as a pillar for the rest of the scene to strive toward. Color Decay is The Devil Wears Prada at their heaviest, both musically and lyrically. It can pummel you with the finale of "Sacrifice" or take hold of your heartstrings on "Broken," while still scratching the band's long-standing itch to mess with song structures on "Hallucinate." Any fan of band, no matter which release was there favorite, will have something to satiate them on Color Decay. For a band with 15+ years in the game, that's no small feat, giving the album a real argument for the biggest success of the band's career.
Maggie Rogers - Surrender All deference to Matty Healy of The 1975, but the world's greatest rock star released an album this year, but I'm not talking about him. Now long removed from that video of Pharrell moved beyond notes by one of her songs, Maggie Rogers's second full-length finds her in a place where she has nothing left to prove, and with total creative freedom. That's a powerful thing to possess, and Rogers is more than capable of creating greatness with it. "Anywhere With You" and "Shatter" soar, while "Begging for Rain" and "Horses" sway wistfully, and those two parallels make Surrender an album that never lets you guess what's coming next. It's one thing to be called the "Next Big Thing," but with another album full of heart, passion, and power, Rogers has actual become just that.
The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes on Forever It's likely that the pandemic forced The Wonder Years to finally slow down, pick their heads up, and look around at how much their scene had changed since they took it over with the three-album run of The Upsides, Suburbia... and The Greatest Generation. What they found was that a scene that once had so much life to it now had only The Wonder Years remaining as its true standard-bearer, which would seem daunting for so many. Thankfully, the band have never toiled too much with their own legacy, and have pushed themselves and their sound forward yet again with The Hum Goes on Forever. In its simplest terms, it's an album that reckons with moving on to "grown-up life" while still fighting those hopeless feelings the band and its fans have long fought off. As the band have always preached, though, it's about not letting the sadness win. In tackling that struggle yet again, The Wonder Years have created yet another triumphant record.
Noah Kahan - Stick Season It doesn't matter if you heard the album's title track on Tik Tok, or if you found him thanks to a Spotify algorithm, or if you heard about him from a friend, or if you stumbled upon him some other way. All that matters is that you did find his music, and that you let it in. It seems that many found the New England singer-songwriter's third full-length album in 2022, and it's not difficult to hear why: Kahan's aching melodies lamenting the love-hate relationship with his hometown makes it seem like he's a long-lost Warped Tour mainstay, but his folk/indie sensibilities make his music all the more digestible for his ever-expanding audience. A heartfelt songwriter with a viral hit already in his back pocket? This is the start of something special.
Underoath - Voyeurist It's becoming clear to me that there will be no back-nine of Underoath's career. This is too unique and driven of a band for an album that doesn't take at least a few bug swings, and that's what Voyeurist is packed to the brim with. Singles "Damn Excuses" and "Hallelujah" feel like they would have fit perfectly on They're Only Chasing Safety, while "Pneumonia" will have listeners reminded of some of the longer cuts on Define the Great Line or Lost in the Sound of Separation. What really struck me, though, were songs like "Numb," "Take a Breath," and "We're All Gonna Die," all songs that followed the band's path they forged on Erase Me, and shows that there's still a chance Underoath can join the likes of Beartooth or Motionless in White as radio-rock rising stars. That the band have the ability to span so many different aspects of their sound on one album is another feather in an already well-decorated cap for the godfathers of metalcore.
Holy Fawn - Dimensional Bleed If there is ever a time that Holy Fawn have no fans left on the planet, I'm either dead or in space. As long as they're able to blend metal, shoegaze, ambient rock, and post-rock the way they do, they'll always have me in their corner. Dimensional Bleed is quite similar to the band's debut Death Spells, which is a good thing. Among the many similarities with the two records, perhaps the one that's most important is that there simply isn't another band making this type of music at this level of quality right now. There were multiple movies exploring the vast infinity of the multiverse in 2022, but in the end, none of them wrote a line more haunting that Dimensional Bleed's refrain, "I'll find you again, in some other life." If there's only one band you listen to on this list that you haven't heard of, I'd highly recommend you make it this one.
Alexisonfire - Otherness I didn't think Alexisonfire was ever going to have a full-length album come out, given how well they'd done releasing periodic singles over the past couple of years. Turns out, the band is just really good a writing songs, as Otherness proves. It's not quite post-hardcore this time around, but there's no mistaking the emotion poured into this effort, as evidenced by the immaculate "Sans Soliel."
Coheed & Cambria - VAXIS II: A Window of the Waking Mind
If for some reason you'd checked out of the tales of the epic emo space opera, it's time you find your keys again. Coheed and Cambria have turned in their most complete album front-to-back in nearly a decade, and did so by finding new ways to expand their sound in the process. "The Liars Club" is an immediate entry to the band's top 5 songs of their career.
Bad Suns - Apocalypse Whenever Sure, the album's title is a direct indication of the direction of the lyrics on this new Bad Suns record, but listen close enough and you'll still find a lot of emotions mixed in, thus creating the best pop-rock record not made by The 1975 this year. The album takes a little while to get moving, but once you get to the middle of the tracklist, you're in for a great summer-soaked ride.
Conjurer - Pathos From the brightest record on my list this year to easily the darkest. Conjurer are unmatched in their ability to create a sense of impending doom in their blend of metal, but there's no denying this band's talent. It's a tough listen, given the subject matter, but each track has its own flair, and this is certainly one of the best metal records of the year.
Caracara - New Preoccupations While the album could have used an anthem like "Better" to bolster its runtime, Caracara still churned out a solid album from front to back, and their name remains on the list of emo bands you should check out as soon as possible. The collaboration with Anthony Green on "Colorglut" is one of the best guest features of 2022.
Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers Kendrick Lamar is perhaps the only rapper who, for better or worse, shifts the entire hip-hop landscape on its axis whenever he releases new material. Mr. Morale has plenty to chew on, and some serious highlights, but it just didn't hold my attention the way some of these other releases did this year. Either way, though, this is one of Kendrick's most open and personal efforts to date, which is great to see from the Greatest Rapper Alive this far into his career.
Harry Styles - Harry's House Pop's wonderboy had one of the most interesting years in recent memory, and that's not even considering his third full-length album. In a year that saw his acting chops and premiere etiquette skewered, it ended up being pretty damn important that Styles reminded everyone that's he's still got his fastball, as this album and subsequent stadium tour proved out.
Pianos Become the Teeth - Drift It feels like Pianos Become the Teeth deserve more than they've gotten. All they've done over the course of their career is release one great album from front-to-back after another, and somehow they haven't gotten the breaks they have so clearly earned. Drift is yet another example of the band never creating the same album twice, and constantly working on redefining their sound, and they somehow remained criminally underrated. A lot of the press the band did has suggested that the members are pursuing their lives at home rather than the band's life abroad, which could explain things, and that's incredibly admirable. I just hope they know how unique and special of a band they are to so many people.
Silverstein - Misery Made Me One thing that you have to give Silverstein credit for: they clearly know what they had with the first three singles of Misery MAde Me. Sure, there's plenty of songs on the album that fans will love, but one thing that set the album back a little in my mind was that the three singles released-- "Bankrupt," "It's Over," and "Ultraviolet"--were clearly 3 of the best songs on the album. Some of the songs that followed didn't quite hit the level of our first tastes, with the exception of "The Altar/Mary," and the album's replay-ability suffered because of it. Still, the fact remains that Silverstein continue to operate at a very high level.
The Weeknd - Dawn.FM When you're an artist that clearly can't get any bigger, where do you go from there? We may have gotten the definitive and correct answer from Abel Tesfaye this year: you go wherever the hell you want. Dawn.FMis the album so many of today's top pop artists would be afraid to make. It's a concept album of a warped, twisted slow-jams radio station that takes the darkness that The Weeknd explored in After Hours and expands on it in some really fun, intriguing ways. Don't worry, though; Abel has proven he's good for at least one monster single every time out, and that's exactly what we got from "Out of Time."
And with that, the 2022 AOTY list is over. Thanks so much for those of you who are sticking with me as we rethink and expand whatever this project I've called Collections will be. I really appreciate you taking the time to check this out, and I'm so excited to dive into whatever music, TV shows, movies, and sports stories pop up throughout the rest of the year.
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