![]() (Personal favorites include the rattlesnake shaker, the fractured harmonies in the hook, and the way she says “ho mage.”) Though it wasn’t released as a single, “Angels” feels like a mission statement. You’ll catch something new each time on “Angels in Tibet,” a sexy, sensual, baile-funkish cut off Amaarae’s exquisite new sophomore album, Fountain Baby. McBryde knows the power of saying just enough - like paiting a toxic relationship as “suitcase marks on a hardwood floor” - and when to let everything boil over, which she expresses in a fiery chorus: “Mama says get my ass to church / Daddy says get my ass to work / Doctor says I gotta give up on these smokes.” After letting her creativity run wild on last year’s concept album Lindeville, McBryde is back to writing simple, timeless hooks that ought to make the rest of Nashville shout along. “The Devil I Know” is an anthem for all of them. Justin CurtoĪshley McBryde writes about the outcasts - the best characters in her songs are downtrodden, stuck, and determined as ever. The five members of NewJeans bring it to life with a performance bursting with charm. ![]() Danish alt-pop musician Erika de Casier, one of the songwriters, is key to the track’s balance of playful ’90s and ’00s pop and left-of-center club touches. The hook is a masterful blend of simple, catchy lyrics, and the melody hits all the right dopamine receptors. (Their 2023 EP, Get Up, is six tracks and just over 12 minutes long.) The K-pop group’s two-and-a-half-minute breakout single “Super Shy” is little more than a featherlight chorus adorned with just enough verse and refrain to break the monotony. NewJeans excels at bite-size pop - short, satisfying songs that will have you quickly craving another. With over 40,000 songs uploaded to Spotify every day, further exploration is essential. ![]() As with any “best of” list, our selections for 2023 aren’t a finish line but a starting point. Despite these hurdles - amid a seemingly endless stream of corporate consolidation and A-lister-prioritizing algorithms - there is a lot of great music being made, from less-than-Yoncé-level-but-still-mainstream artists like Lana Del Rey to fresh acts bubbling just under the surface like Maiya the Don. That’s the music business, of course, but it feels more lopsided than ever, when only the biggest of big can comfortably make make a living. In a year when Taylor Swift took up an atmosphere’s worth of media oxygen ( sorry), artists large and small continued the long trudge uphill, attempting to stand out in an increasingly crowded field. Photo-Illustration: Franziska Barczyk Photos: Erika Goldring/FilmMagic, Terry Wyatt/WireImage, Backwoodz Studioz, Kristy Sparow/Getty Images, Scott Dudelson/Getty Images, Josh Brasted/FilmMagic, Rob Kim/Getty Images, Simone Joyner/Getty Images, Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images
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