Deep Voices 100 Best Songs of 2023

Face melt

Deep Voices Best of 2023 on Spotify
Deep Voices Best of 2023 on Apple Music

Here are the best 100 songs of 2023. Despite my best efforts, I did not hear every piece of music released in 2023, so take my evaluation with a grain of salt. A very, very small grain of salt. One of those grains that whispers in your ear and says, “Hey, that’s a great list of music.” 

I recommend listening to this playlist on headphones. If you can’t, the second best way to listen is directly through the speaker on your phone while taking a shower. The playlist is sequenced to be listened to in order. Listen above, and read thoughts on the year below. If you discover anything you love, please leave a comment. I’d love to know.

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Astrid Sonne’s “Do You Wanna” is my favorite song of the year. “You look at me,” she begins, singing a gentle command. Then: “Do you wanna have a baby?” What a question. The song’s drums sound like someone hammering into a wall, the relentless march of time. Sonne answers, the only true answer to that question, to any question, if you’re being honest: “I really don’t know.”

Who even knows anything? Years ago, in one college class, flummoxed about how to explain some convoluted conclusion I’d reached in a paper, a professor advised me to not even bother. Asking questions was enough. I felt split open with revelation. I also felt stupid. If I had some idea of what I was talking about, then it wouldn’t be so difficult to state it plainly. Au revoir, concision. Hola, open ended deserts of thought. 

My own daughter Coco turns one very soon. She was born a few days after I sent last year’s 100 Best Songs of the Year. I wrote then that 2021 “was the worst year of my life,” as I spent it all deep in grief. “Discovery,” I wrote, about the until-then central tenet of my entire life’s devotion to music, “has held less appeal than peace.” With an infant, you don’t have a lot of time for peace. You don’t have a lot of time at all. My daughter is a big goof, a rambunctious little sweetie. She is awesome, but she is not chill. What spending time with her has taught me is patience. 

I like being patient, as I think that trait goes hand in hand with curiosity, which I’ve got in spades. Occasionally, I use both traits a bit as a cudgel, or maybe a troll. This year, I relentlessly sent people a link to Peter Garland’s The Basketweave Elegies, an album of solo vibraphone compositions. Its beauty speaks for itself—if you can make it past the title. I dare you. The Basketweave Elegies. It sounds like a parody of preciousness. A lament for the basketweavers! It’s not a parody, but it is precious. Soft music for strong people. Or vice versa. The piece I included is part IV, “Bright, Clear.” The best weather for taking a look around. 

Someone who has done plenty of that is Pavel Milyakov, the artist I loved most this year. To indulge myself, I have broken my own unspoken rule of one song per artist. Sort of. I have included three tracks by Milyakov, also known as Buttechno. He appears here under both those names, as the former making bewitching guitar music and as the latter making discursive drum n bass, as well as half of pmxper, his ecstatic alt-rock dirgecore duo with Perila. He’s inquisitive enough to collaborate with seemingly anyone who asks (hey man, wanna jam?), and in each project he finds new ground across genres. It reminds me of how the guy who founded Atari also founded Chuck E. Cheese. Brilliance has no use for boundaries. 

To borrow a phrase from the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, the music on this year’s playlist contains plenty of wide open spaces. Some of that is literal, as with the 11-minute Wurlitzer improvisation, “Gertrude,” the careening sound collage that makes up Lia Kohl’s “when glass is there, and water,” or the quiet and expansive steel drum of Olof Driejer and Mt. Sims’ “Hybrid Fruit.” Other times, the space feels more theoretical, like when Celia Hollander asks if there’s still more that can be done with the piano, on “2nd Wind,” or on “Quincy,” when Tim Reaper, subbing in the Amen break for the piano, answers that question in the affirmative, as he always does. Every song, every piece of art, is a creation, a willingness to believe that all conclusions have not yet been reached. 

There is a Mike Leigh Film from 2010, Another Year, that I once tried to make a friend watch with me. I had a reputation for slow paced, talky films that he did not always like, and, not long after this one began, he asked if we could stop watching. I finished it later, alone. 

Another Year is ostensibly about happiness and time. A couple nears retirement and the days pass. The movie is demarcated into four parts, one for each season. Friends and family come and go, most with more troubles. The couple at the heart of the film are largely happy. Why them? How? And why didn’t my friend want to watch these British sexagenarians mitigate the doldrums of existence with me?

As my grief has continued to bore its way into my marrow, I’ve found myself drawn to music like Another Life, music that unfurls with disregard for form. Your song is 25 minutes long? The vocals don’t kick in until halfway? The whole thing is a dewy take on our fragile existence? Face melt. I’m not so boring that I don’t know a good hook when I hear it, but, I dunno, who cares? 

My experience of music in 2023 has been lonely but fulfilling. I haven’t spread my wings so much as burrowed deep. Going to concerts has been alienating, as I’m unable to shake off the chip on my shoulder that grief has given me. Unadulterated pleasure is no longer within my realm. I get resentful, sad seeing others experience it. Not a care in the world? Couldn’t be me. 

With that in mind, maybe what I wanted in music this year was possibility. Something to look forward to. The same thing you get from watching a child grow, the ability to see what’s next. I don’t think I am happy. Maybe one day. Not now. Take that out of the equation and I’ve got plenty of time for all the other emotions. Let me hear them all.  

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