The Best Albums of 2023
The Best Albums of 2023
Ten Favorite Records of the Year, Seven Favorite Songs, and Nine Photos From the Stormy North Atlantic
I’ve been browsing several best-of lists this year and found little consensus among them. Overall, this comes as good news because, with so much good music out there and available to everyone via streaming, there is no need to use sales charts as guidance. At glamglare, we don’t follow the consensus anyway, so we’re in good company this year.
This is also our most casual and organic list, based on albums we listened to often over the last year. Since I maintain the album list, the top ten are more geared towards my taste than Elke’s, but in the end, we can both agree. So here we go, in alphabetical order:
Anastave - I Don’t Want You in the Light
Art School Girlfriend - Soft Landing
Avalon Emerson - & The Charm
Cherry Glazrr - I Don’t Want You Anymore
Detalji - Truly
Enny Owl - Homes In Humans
Fenne Lily - Big Picture
Jackie Mendoza - Galaxia de Emociones
Le Couleur - Comme dans un penthouse
Shana Cleveland - Manzanita
Click/tap on the links for more information and where to listen. We also created a short playlist with one song from each album:
Song Pick of the Day
Listen to/watch all seven songs on YouTube. Follow our daily updated playlists on YouTube and Spotify for the 50 latest Song Picks of the Day. Thank you for following us and sharing the excitement.
Enveloping us is a feeling of Christmas, and I cannot remember when we had so many holiday-themed or -inspired songs in our playlist. Enjoy!
Her best friend leaves town for college, and in “Maybe,” Gabriela Bee muses about how the future may turn out for the two of them. At 17, life is full of surprises, and the Canadian singer/songwriter is right when she sings: “Maybe I’ll see you again.”
Also from Canada comes JESSIA, who reflects on heartbreak in the season of love. In “The One Before the One,” she finds healing from a breakup while watching the other person happy in a new relationship. “I’m excited to release a scream in your car, cry to your ceiling, breath of fresh air kind of song to get us through the holidays,” she says.
We still feel the “Fennestival” in our bones, so it is lovely that Fenne Lily has a brand new Christmas song for us. The holidays are always about glowing memories of celebrations past, and the quiet song “Christmas Alone” is a beautiful take on that feeling of nostalgia.
“Goodbyes” is the debut solo release by Danish musician Markus Artved, aka Honey Hideout. “An escapist dream come true” the song is about a remote summer retreat he loved as a child.
As a child, LA singer/songwriter Maeve Steele took a character who was fascinated with the protagonist of the 2012 country song “Good Lord Lorrie” by the Turnpike Troubadours. “Her story was such a freeing one to write, as I found more and more pieces of myself as she took form,” Maeve explains.
When loved ones pass away, there is much left to say. With “Wish,” Jess Guise, singer of the London band GUISE, sends a song to her late father, who left her when she was 18. “Music was a shared language for us, and this is the closest I can get to feeling like I’m still actually talking to him,” she says.
In the video of “Office Christmas Party,” London musician Zoe Mead, aka Wyldest, takes us to a bar in Tallinn, Estonia: a group of young office workers come together for merrymaking. “The phenomenon where a group of people who work together gather in a dark room, casting off the shackles of their professional personas, replacing it with a version of themselves that’s more honest and present,” as Zoe describes it.
Nine Photos From the QM2
It is impossible to compress our fabulous seven days and nights on board the luxurious Oceanliner QM2 in only one newsletter; hence, I decided to feature nine photos in a few more installments and start with the beginning, the first 24 hours. From Embarkation in Southhampton to exploring our stateroom and the ship to our first drinks, lunch, and dinner in the beautiful Britannia restaurant, Enjoy!
