The Album of the Year Dispatch
This week, we present to you Best Fit's ranking of the records that defined 2023
Best Fit’s Album of the Year: Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? by Kara Jackson
In her book All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks wrote: “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.” The debut album of Chicago singer-songwriter Kara Jackson is negotiated out of that old pact between love and loss; it bears the weight of those unwelcome lessons and endures despite it all like a flower rising from cracks in concrete, a defiant act of humour. Why Does The Earth Gives Us People To Love? – that central question around which everything orbits – is not a manifesto of grief as much as it is a receipt of her love.
Jackson’s tools are simple. Her voice, exceptionally rich at a low simmer, belies her twenty-three years; when you listen, you feel like she knows, heavy with the kind of experience we call ‘soul’. Her guitar is more of a light sketch, shaded with only occasionally with meandering piano and strings which seemingly creates more space for Jackson than they take up. And then there are her words: the sharp, funny, devastating things that seem to find her like iron filings to a magnet.
Her words were famous long before she set them to music. In 2019, she was National Youth Poet Laureate, her crown after a series of accolades including the Literary Award granted to her by Patricia Smith. Following the release of Jackson’s chapbook, Bloodstone Cowboy, Smith said of her: “She plucks at a tangled lineage, brashly personifies virginity and moonshine, chronicles the machinations of ‘her black’, and generally slaps us lucid with daring narrative that can’t be anyone but hers. Baby girl did not come here to play. She came to reign.”
The strength of Why Does The Earth Gives Us People To Love? lies in her restraint, the careful choice of words that get under your skin, linger in your head for days. Allied to music, they take on an elevated meaning. “Some people get high to be recognised / Some people roll dice to be recognised”, she begins on the record’s opening song, keys meandering up the scale like an absent-minded daydream, before she arrives at a simple truth that, when she unfolds it, strikes you with the weight of a piano falling from the sky: “Some people take lives to be recognised / Some people gon’ die to be recognised.”
She's here in London to play a sold-out performance at Pitchfork Festival; two nights ago she played Pitchfork Paris. The applause at her London show stretched out longer than the we might have instinctively let it, caught a second wind that teased a bashful smile on Jackson’s face. People are paying attention.
Read the full feature by Sophie L. Walker over on Best Fit.
Drumroll please…. the best albums of 2023, ranked
The breadth of taste and opinion on music in 2023 is more diverse than any year we’ve seen as we head towards two decades of Best Fit’s life. Despite Taylor Swift dominating almost everything in music for the past 12 months, her name didn’t appear once in the 80-strong list of writers and editors whose opinions we polled as part of our annual Best Fit Fifty. Support for the likes of boygenius, Lana Del Rey and Blur - also absent from our list - was also minimal and consensus was harder to find than ever before in making this elusive list of the music we've loved this year. Such fragmentation can only be a good thing though – a sign that independent thought is thriving and the album format is enduring.
Other factors figured into the rankings of our favourite albums – site ratings, artists we've long championed (and ones we felt deserved more attention) plus more than a little instinct and gut-feeling when it came to the final ordering. And right at the top of the list is one of the strongest debuts we've heard in years, by a frighteningly talented artist whose record cuts to the core of what it means to be human.
Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? by Kara Jackson
Rat Saw God by Wednesday
Heavy Heavy by Young Fathers
Javelin by Sufjan Stevens
Fountain Baby by Amaarae
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We by Mitski
Sundial by Noname
Maps by Billy Woods and Kenny Segal
Blondshell by Blondshell
Scaring the Hoes by Danny Brown and JPEG Mafia
Famous Last Words by CASISDEAD
Am I British Yet? by VV Brown
Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? by McKinley Dixon
I Don’t Know by Bdrmm
The Greater Wings by Julie Byrne
The Patience by Mick Jenkins
Raven by Kelala
Radical Romantics by Fever Ray
With a Hammer by Yaeji
I Killed Your Dog by L’Rain
Life Under The Gun by Militaire Gun
Lahai by Sampha
I’ve Seen A Way by Mandy Indiana
The Window by Ratboys
I Inside the Old Year Dying by PJ Harvey
Honey by Samia
Time Ain’t Accidental by Jess Williamson
Softscars by Yeule
Black Rainbows by Corrine Bailey Rae
Quantana by Danny Brown
The Whaler by Home Is Where
Beautiful and Brutal Yard by J Hus
False Lankum by Lankum
In The End It Always Does by The Japanese House
Everything is Alive by Slowdive
Messy by Olivia Dean
Mid Air by Paris Texas
Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek
The Worm by HMLTD
I’ve Got Me by Joanna Sternberg
Kaytraminé by Kaytraminé
NAILS by Benefits
Quest for Fire by Skrillex
trip9love…??? by Tirzah
stillness, softness… by Hinako Omori
Perfect Picture by Hannah Diamond
Chaos for the Fly by Grian Chatten
Sorry I Haven’t Called by Vagabon
My Back was a Bridge for You to Cross by Anohni & the Johnsons
GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo
Words from the honourees
As we put together our albums of the year list, we reached out to a select few of our featured artists to hear their reflections on 2023. Each have had breakout years in their own right, whether that be through debut albums or standout projects. But, of course, part of what makes album of the year season so exciting is the ability to find community in relishing all the amazing talent that has soundtracked our milestones over the last few months. So, we asked these artists to name one record by another musician that they were inspired by this year. To cap things off with a bit of fun, we also asked them what movies they might use to describe their 2023s.
“I really loved Sundial by Noname, and I would describe my 2023 as Funny Girl because I feel like I relate to Fanny Brice’s growth as a performer learning not to shrink herself onstage.”
“I loved Lucky For You by Bully. I’ve been into her music for a while, and this album is my favourite of hers. When I was on tour this summer, we listened to ‘Change Your Mind’ before every show. Just such badass songwriting and such good production to uplift the songs. As for movies, I spent the last 12 months traveling the world in a van, so I’d have to say Little Miss Sunshine.”
“A big album was Everyone’s Crushed by Water From Your Eyes. In terms of movies, the one with Britney Spears where she goes on the big road trip with her friends.”
“I enjoyed André 3000’s new album took me by surprise. I appreciate his experimentation with soundscapes and atmospheric elements. A visual project would have been the perfect compliment. It’s inspiring when artists follow their own path and challenge their own norms. Disruption can be so amazing!!! If I had to characterize my 2023 as a movie, it would be akin to Mrs. Doubtfire. After spending a significant time solely as a mom and stepping back into the music scene, there are moments when it feels like I’m wearing a disguise. Imposter syndrome is a real feeling for me, especially since coming back after so long. I often pendulum between various identities wondering if people will find me out.”
“Much like everyone else, I loved the Armand Hammer album. An inspirational piece of work that shows, to me, just how far rap can go. The album is brilliant, not only because of what it supplies you right there, but also because it is a portal into the minds and other works of everyone who is on it, all of whom deserve praise. There are many very important moments on that album. As a movie, probably Toy Story cause earlier this year, me and all the homies turned into toys and we had to figure out a way to get out of this kid’s garage who was gonna donate us.”
“I really loved the Fielded album, Plus One. I'm biased because I am on it, but I really think it's a dope listen and she is such a versatile artist, it's dope to hear how she can shift into so many different styles and forms. For movie, I think I would go with Up in the Air.”
“Monkeyman by Kurious and Cut Beetlez. It's crazy to me that more people aren't talking about this album. The production is a really cool update on that raw, Bomb Squad type of sound from back in the day, and the lyrics are straight outta the DOOM camp, although Kurious is so old school it might really be DOOM who was influenced by him, LOL. And I think I’m gonna go with Stranger Than Fiction. At times it really did feel like the album was straight up narrating the life we were living on the road.”
Best Albums of 2023: The Playlist
Dive into cuts from our favourite records of the year with our 100-track AOTY roundup playlist. Featuring selections from each of our top 50 albums of the year, curated by Best Fit editors.