Talking about the best albums of 2023

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4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's that time of year again. Over the next few weeks at NPR.org and here on the All Songs Considered podcast, we'll be sharing lists of and conversations about the best music of 2023.

We're kicking things off with the standout albums of the year. Gathered on the show are NPR Music's three main critics: Rodney Carmichael, who writes about hip-hop and R&B Nate Chinen of WRTI, who covers jazz and classical and Ann Powers, maven of pop, rock, folk, country and a little of everything else. Speaking with editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen, the trio dives into a heavy and heady year to discuss the releases that inspired the most vivid feelings, and together make a case — in an era when singles and playlists drive the industry numbers — for the album as a still-indispensable art form.

The fun won't stop there. Stay tuned for more conversations about the songs that made us drop everything and the tours that turned into vessels for community. There will be lists of our favorite releases on NPR.org and conversations about the sounds and stars that defined the year, enough to keep you listening well into 2024.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language.
0:04.0	What did 2023 sound like to you?
0:07.0	Here's one answer.
0:09.0	I turned on the news and it said that I was the number one most wanted person in the United States, the United States,
0:17.0	the most wanted person in the United States, in the United States, in the United States, the most wanted person in the United States, the most wanted person in the United States, the most one of the pressing of the United States.
0:25.0	Woeah! I'm a real killer. I just killed by me and then I ate his dinner.
0:32.0	Then I took his car and I crushed it in the river.
0:34.0	Always been called. I was born in the winter.
0:38.0	Yeah.
0:39.0	Hey everyone, it's Daude Rame Amin, one of the editors at NPR Music.
0:44.0	That was a little bit of the album 10,000 Gex, by the band 100 Gex, a very, very silly record that
0:51.0	happens to be one of my favorites from 2023.
0:53.7	Look, it's been a heavy year.
0:56.8	It's been a consequential year and a year with a lot of big feelings in it.
1:01.8	And for the past month and a half we've been busy
1:04.6	revisiting the music from this big weird year and reflecting on how it made us
1:09.9	feel, how it helped us feel. Every year around this time we collect the best music of the year to share
1:17.1	with our readers and listeners. We make lists, we have conversations, try to make
1:22.0	sense of the year in music. And that's coming.
1:25.0	Over the next few weeks on NPR.org and here on the podcast, you'll hear about the songs that
1:30.3	made us drop everything and listen.
1:32.6	You'll hear about the way that live performance was a major vessel for community.
	...

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