The 100 Best Recordings of 2022 (Part 1 of 2)

Here are my favorite albums of the year (all genres, all styles)

Amazing music is happening right now.

Record labels and streaming platforms have little interest in launching new artists in the year 2022, but musicians are still doing mind-blowing work. The recordings below should convince you of that.

But you might not know this, because the businesses and institutions dominating our musical culture have grown nostalgic, obsessing over the past instead of creating the future. In recent months, music companies and investment firms have spent more than $5 billion in buying up the rights to old songs.

They won’t invest even a fraction of that amount in developing new talent—that’s the exact opposite of how the business once worked. You would need to go back to medieval times to find a musical culture so fixated on the past.

I see myself as working counter to the trend. I know many of you feel the same way. But we are swimming upstream. And lately it seems more like a downward deluge than a stream.

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I spend more time listening to new music than on anything else I do each year. I devote hours every day to this project. In fact, I’ve heard more new music during the last 12 months than during any year of my life. (That’s all the more peculiar because my background is as a music historian—if anyone has an excuse for looking backward, it’s me.)

Sometimes people ask me why I do this. But I believe this is the most important thing I’m doing right now. And that’s because so much of the best new music is hidden away on self-released projects and small indie label releases. Without trustworthy guides, you could miss almost all of it.

And without exciting new music, our entire culture starts to stagnate.

That doesn’t have to happen. The new music scene is glorious, and creative, and exciting. We would all benefit it if the musicians doing this expansive and visionary work were better known. But I don’t want to make this seem like just an advocacy project—listening to this music is also uplifting and fun. If it wasn’t, lists of this sort would have no lasting value.

The end result (below) is a survey of creative new music without genre or stylistic restrictions—encompassing the entire United States, and more than 40 other countries.

By the way, this is just the first installment—the first 50 titles, in alphabetical order, of my 100 favorites of the year. The rest of the list will come your way soon.

Happy listening!

The 100 Best Recordings of 2022 (Part 1 of 2)

In alphabetical order:

Noël Akchoté                      
Philippe Verdelot—Il Primo Libro De Madrigali a Quattro Voci (1533)
Renaissance Madrigals Played on Steel String Guitar by a Jazz Musician

Alabê KetuJazz
Kan
Ritualistic Afro-Brazilian Candomblé Music for Saxophone and Drums

Melissa Aldana
12 Stars
Jazz Saxophony with Fender Rhodes Atmospherics

Matt Andersen
House to House
Canadian Folk & Roots Singer-Songwriter with a Huge Voice

Rich Aucoin
Synthetic Season 1
Insistent Instrumentals Played on Vintage Synthesizers

Bala Desejo
Sim Sim Sim
Danceable Brazilian Pop

Jon Balke
Hafla
Eleventh Century Andalusian Texts Set to Electronica and Jazz Accompaniment