Crowning the best albums of 2023, at last

Plus, a look at Brenda Lee's wild Christmas milestone, a Hanukkah Tiny Desk concert and more

View this email online December 9, 2023 Support This Newsletter Winter is a season of festivity and reflection. It’s the season of lights and gingerbread smells, and of chilly days best spent cozily inside with family or in precious solitude – perhaps with a warm voice coming through the speaker. For many of you, NPR and this newsletter are a cherished part of your daily ritual, much like these seasonal pleasures. As your newsletter correspondent, I’m inviting you to include NPR in your holiday traditions by supporting the network that enriches lives all year long. Let’s celebrate the tradition of independent journalism and storytelling that touches millions of hearts and minds every day. Every dollar makes a difference. Please donate today. -- Stephen Thompson, NPR Music We narrow the year in music down to 50 essential albums; plus, a look at Brenda Lee’s wild Christmas milestone, a Hanukkah Tiny Desk concert and more. Illustration by Jed Chisholm for NPR Musically speaking, 2023 has been a huge year for … well, music that didn’t come out in 2023. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé staged record-setting blockbuster tours in support of albums — Midnights and Renaissance, respectively — that came out last year. Swift had one of 2023’s biggest hits with “Cruel Summer,” a track from 2019’s Lover. Luke Combs had a genre-smashing crossover smash with his country cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a song that first hit the charts in 1988. Heck, the current holiday chart-topper isn’t even Mariah Carey’s perennial steamroller, 1994’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but an even older song: Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which came out all the way back in 1958. (See below for more on Lee’s long-awaited milestone.) You’d be forgiven for wondering, as 2023 winds to a close, about the best albums that actually came out this year. And NPR Music has you covered! But first, well, our editors had to acknowledge how infrequently new music made it all the way into the monoculture: “In certain Decembers, a list of the year's best albums feels like a fireworks display. 2023 may have been short on flashes and booms, but it was rich with smaller fires: no less intensely gorgeous, more approachable and built for heat, not spectacle. And while it might be tempting, as many have argued at many points in the format's history, to take this lack of consensus as proof of its diminished value as a popular art form, we look at things a different way. In a year short on albums that draw a mob, it's easier to see what might have otherwise been ignored for the treasure it is.” This year, our team took an unusual approach: Rather than ranking titles based on which ones most frequently bubbled to the top of staff members’ individual lists, we listed our 50 favorites chronologically. This meant opening with, well, yet another commercially dominant record that came out prior to 2023 — namely, SZA’s wonderful SOS, which entered our lives on Dec. 9, 2002, just days before we dropped our Best Albums list for last year, and proceeded to conquer our hearts in 2023. One metric that stayed the same, as noted in this year’s intro: “Every single one of [our picks] is loved intensely by a member of NPR Music’s team.” In fact, the one way to guarantee inclusion on this year’s list was to be someone’s No. 1 favorite album of the year. For me, that record was The Japanese House’s In the End It Always Does. As I wrote in our roundup, the album is full of “vibrant songs that ruminate on queerness and failed romance while conveying a mix of world-weariness, wonder, lust, appreciation, disappointment and, appropriately enough, profound ambivalence.” I came back to In the End It Always Does again and again, and will keep doing so long after 2023 recedes from view. You’ll find some inevitable overlap with other publications’ Best Albums of 2023 lists, as boygenius, Wednesday, billy woods & Kenny Segal, Victoria Monét, Olivia Rodrigo and other favorites dot the lineup. But you’ll also find a feast of cross-genre discoveries — jazz and classical music coexisting with hip-hop, spoken word, R&B, pop, Latin music and whatever tag you wish to apply to the berserker frenzy of 100 gecs. (As my brilliant colleague Daoud Tyler-Ameen wrote of that duo’s second album, 10,000 gecs, “[I]t’s born of genuine love for that messy moment near the turn of this century, when third-wave ska, seven-string rap metal, Myspace emo and Bushwick blog rock might have shared the same font size on a festival poster.”) In other words, it’s a great week to be a open-minded music fan. Have fun reading and listening along — and brace yourself for next week, when we tackle the year in songs. NPR Classical If you are a fan of cartoons – and who isn’t? – each week we’re featuring one from Jeffrey Curnow, who happens to be the Associate Principal trumpeter for the Philadelphia Orchestra and a cartoonist for NPR Classical since 2015.  Newsletter continues after sponsor message More to read, watch and hear A list of 2023’s 50 best albums is one thing — and an essential thing at that. But you also don’t want to miss All Songs Considered’s discussion of this year’s list. Critics Rodney Carmichael, Nate Chinen and Ann Powers join editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen to form some kind of super-genius Voltron of insight. Seriously, don’t miss it. I didn’t have “Brenda Lee tops the Billboard singles chart at Mariah Carey’s expense” on my radar for December 2023, but here we are. Lee, who turns 79 on Monday, is officially the oldest person ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and she’s done it with a song released all the way back in 1958: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” (The song was written by Johnny Marks, who also wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”) As the ever-intrepid Anastasia Tsioulcas noted in her write-up of this week’s milestone, Lee didn’t surpass Carey’s perennial chart-topper “All I Want for Christmas Is You” without a fair bit of effort: Lee shot a video of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” for the first time this year, and the song’s TikTok presence has ballooned in recent weeks. Beyoncé released her hotly anticipated concert film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé in theaters last weekend, and it wound up topping the box office. On a recent episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, I broke down the film — which mixes concert footage with behind-the-scenes material that places the album and tour in context — with the aid of two brilliant members of the NPR Beyhive: Sidney Madden and Bilal Qureshi. Denny Laine first made his name as an early member of The Moody Blues — the band that got Laine inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — and later performed alongside Paul McCartney in Wings. Laine died Tuesday at 79. If you’re looking for Hanukkah music, make sure you check out the Tiny Desk section below, but also don't miss Pink Martini’s performance of “Ocho Kandelikas (Eight Little Candles), recorded live for opbmusic in Portland, Ore. I’d recommend it even if it didn’t feature NPR superstar and all-around good guy Ari Shapiro. Help Keep the Conversations Going. Support the NPR Network and stand for trustworthy journalism that keeps you informed, enlightened, and connected. Your donation fuels in-depth reporting, unbiased insights, and thought-provoking stories that matter.  Join us in sustaining an essential source of knowledge and perspective for a brighter future. Act now with your support today.   Donate Tiny Desk Zayrha Rodriguez/NPR The Tiny Desk has certainly acknowledged Hanukkah — “8 Days (Of Hanukkah)” is a highlight of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings’ classic 2015 holiday set — but we’ve never had a Tiny Desk concert devoted entirely to the holiday, until now. The LeeVees’ Hanukkah Tiny Desk proved to be enough of an event, in fact, that Bob Boilen emerged from retirement to produce it, write it up and serve the crowd some of his famous homemade bagels. I’m on record about my belief that Bob Boilen is history’s greatest monster, and even I don’t have an unkind word to say about his bagels. Also this week: Radiohead drummer Philip Selway played a gorgeous set of songs from his most recent album, aided by members of the magnificent American Contemporary Music Ensemble. One More Thing Don’t let the NPR Music staff get the last word! We want to know your picks for the best albums of 2023. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Books, Pop Culture, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to NPR Music emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy