The 10 Best Albums of 2022

According to me (but also everyone who likes things that are good)

Hey! Do you like music? I sure hope so, because that’s what this column is about. You probably sussed that out from the title. Since we’re firmly inside the window of time where it’s still legal for publications to produce “best stuff from the previous year” content, I figured I’d get in on that action.

Here are the 10 best albums of 2022.

Drive By Truckers - Welcome To Club XIII

One of my favorite bands in all the land released a new album in 2022. The Drive-By Truckers have spent the years since Trump was elected cranking out some of the best (and only) protest music on the market. But now that we’ve rolled democracy back to the previously installed version, it’s time to party again!

On the bafflingly spelled Welcome 2 Club XIII the band returns to the sound the MAGA types in their audience were referring to when they undoubtedly told them to shut up and sing. It might have come off as a bit of a cop out if there was even the slightest chance they’d ever get those Trump-loving fans back. They won’t. You need only consult the YouTube comments under any song from this album to know that.

So, this “return to form” represents a nice break before the band inevitably takes to writing songs about the horrors of Ron DeSantis’s America in 2024. Provided that kind of dissent is still legal by then, of course.

SASAMI - Squeeze

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and former Cherry Glazerr guitarist Sasami’s sophomore album, Squeeze, is essentially the Babe 2: Pig In the City of rock albums.

I trust I don’t need to explain that reference, but I will anyway.

If you’ve seen the first Babe movie, you probably remember it as nothing more than a movie for kids about a talking pig who strikes up a romance with James Cromwell.

I might be misremembering some of the plot.

So imagine moviegoers’ surprise when they rounded up the kids to check out the sequel, Babe 2: Pig In the City, and were greeted with an absurdly dark movie that, among other shocking moments, features two separate scenes where dogs are almost hanged to death.

This is not at all unlike the move Sasami pulled on her fanbase with the follow-up to her 2019 self-titled debut album. That record was bursting at the seams with the kind of laid back singer-songwriter fare you used to be able to buy on CD at Starbucks.

Which made it all the more shocking when, in 2022, she dropped a goddamn nu-metal album directly on the heads of her unsuspecting fanbase. While Squeeze does include some slightly less aggressive tunes like the single “The Greatest”…

…those moments are few and far between. The album as a whole leans way more toward the kind of sounds you hear on her cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Sorry Entertainer”.

It’s the kind of risk most artists will never take, especially not on album number two. I’m a big fan of how that risk paid off this time and look forward to the inevitable Nintendocore record she’ll probably drop in 2023.

Mitski - Laurel Hell

Speaking of dramatic shifts in sound, universally acclaimed singer-songwriter Mitski is better at them than anyone.

Her first two albums, released as school projects during her junior and senior years studying music at SUNY Purchase, featured a sad-girl-alone-at-a-piano kind of vibe.

She didn’t even start playing guitar until after she graduated, but by the time her fourth album rolled around, 2016’s Puberty 2, she was in full-on guitar shred mode, as heard on the single “Your Best American Girl”.

With 2022’s Laurel Hell, she took yet another turn, this time toward a sort of ‘80s synth pop sound.

This, according to legend, only happened after initially conceiving the album as a punk record then changing gears a second time and crafting it into a country album. Here’s the thing…I want to hear those versions too.

Julia, Julia - Derealization

Julia, Julia is the solo side project alter ego of Julia Kugel, lead singer of my absolute favorite band in the whole entire world, The Coathangers.

In keeping with the rich history of drastic changes in sound featured on this list, while The Coathangers are a pop punk trio who sound like this…

…Julia’s side gigs lean more in the dream pop direction, as heard on the album she recorded with her husband, Scott Montoya of Minus the Bear, under the band name Soft Palms.

That is also the vibe on 2022’s solo effort, Derealization…

…and it is the best version of that sound she’s produced so far. Instead of sounding like the polar opposite of her band work, the songs on Derealization sound more like Coathangers tunes that took a different exit at the last possible moment. It’s the first time she’s managed to strike a balance like that while exploring this side of her work, and I was way the hell into it.

Jack White - Fear Of The Dawn/Entering Heaven Alive

This pick feels like cheating for a couple of reasons.

For starters, I’m including two completely different albums as one pick. But I guess the only thing that’s cheating anyone out of is the opportunity to see the number 11 in the title of this article instead of 10.

The other reason this pick feels like cheating is because Jack White is just always kinda great.

Well, the Boarding House Reach album was a crime against music that sounded like it was recorded out of spite to fulfill a contract he didn’t want to be locked into anymore.

Beyond that, though? Mostly great. His work with The Whites Stripes was consistently solid, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather were both great, and his solo albums (except for that one) that came before 2022 were high level good as well.

Jack White released two more solo albums in 2022: April’s mostly electric Fear of the Dawn and July’s mostly acoustic Entering Heaven Alive.

And guess what? They’re also both pretty great. Go figure.

Added bonus: Jack White’s LA stop on the Fear of the Dawn tour was the first live show I attended since covid briefly made live entertainment illegal. It was also great.

Los Bitchos - Let the Festivities Begin

Confession: I was never a huge fan of instrumental music. I just tend to get bored if someone isn’t singing about some shit while the band plays, you know?

At least that’s how I lived my life prior to being introduced to Los Bitchos by way of the YouTube algorithm. But now? I love instrumental music (but still just by this one band mostly).

Also, the term “instrumental music” isn’t appropriate. What you’re hearing in the above video falls more into a genre called cumbia, which I did not realize is extremely my kind of shit until I heard this band.

That said, I did always kinda wonder what they would sound like if they had a lead singer. And in 2022 I got to find out! Sorta!

Abraxas - Monte Carlo

If you dig around deep enough into Los Bitchos video history, you’ll eventually find that there used to be five people in the band.

The missing member is Carolina Faruolo, who left to form the wildly-difficult-to-Google duo Abraxas (also the name of Santana’s most famous album) with vocalist Danny Lee Blackwell of the band Night Beats. Much to my delight, they sound like…Los Bitchos but with a singer!

I’m going more in a “what makes the most sense to talk about next” kind of order here, but if this list was truly ranked from tenth to first, this album would be way higher up the list.

Maybe not number one, but it would be close. I listened to it a whole fucking lot in 2022. You should do the same in 2023.

Wet Leg - Wet Leg

Wet Leg is having about as huge of a year as any new band could ever hope to have.

Case in point, while writing this article I was excited to find that they were doing a show in LA this month. That excitement lasted exactly as long as it took me to click the “tickets” link, at which point I realized they aren’t “doing a show” in LA. They are opening for Harry Styles during his three-night stint at the Forum.

On top of that, they’re nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist.

So, they’re having a good run, to put it very mildly. Which is exactly as it should be! They are a fun band that makes fun music.

There isn’t much else to say beyond that, seeing as how they’re a new band that just sorta popped up out of nowhere. But I’m excited to hear more in the future!

Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers

I saw a tweet once that said Kendrick Lamar is what Kanye West thinks he is. I don’t know if that’s completely accurate or if comparisons like that are the healthiest thing, but what I do know is that Kendrick Lamar is a fucking ARTIST.

If the only thing he did in 2022 was the video for “The Heart Part 5” I’d probably still have found a way to include him on this list.

But nope. A few days later, he released his fifth studio album, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.

It’s a concept album built around his time in therapy and, as a result, is quite possibly the most personal and confessional rap album of all-time. There was nothing else like it released in 2022, there has maybe never been anything else like it released ever.

Miranda Lambert - Palomino

Fact: Miranda Lambert is the only good modern country musician. From songwriting chops to personality to politics, she’s closer to being her generation’s Dolly Parton than any of her peers ever will be.

On “Actin’ Up” — the opening track from her ninth studio album, Palomino — she claims she makes “her own kind of country” and she is correct. She makes the kind that doesn’t suck.

That’s a little harsh. I’m not an anti-country music type by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that I tend to lean more toward classic and/or outlaw country stuff. Johnny Cash, George Jones, Hank Williams…things like that. Miranda Lambert is legitimately the only modern mainstream country musician who scratches that particular itch for me and, yes, I have listened to Chris Stapleton. Thanks for asking.

She is by far my favorite country musician working today, one of my favorite musicians in general, and Palomino was my favorite album of the year.