Gurrrl, it’s been a year! 🥴 In this edition, we rank the best of what 2023 had to offer in the world of music, television, pop culture, and more! Plus, read to the very bottom to hear what we’re most looking forward to in 2024 🤩
🎼 MUSIC
We listened to more than 6,000 songs across nearly 2,500 albums last year, and among those released in 2023, these were our absolute favorites! 🎶
In a year that was particularly light on stellar hip-hop or pop releases, our favorite album came from punk rock legend, Jeff Rosenstock. We had the pleasure of seeing Jeff perform with his band at Terminal 5 to support the album and it was easily one of the best concerts we’ve ever attended!
Supergroup boygenius—whose debut album ranked a close second on our list—may have put on the second-best concert we’ve ever seen, in an epic sold-out show at Madison Square Garden 🎸
Now, of course not every album we enjoyed made it into our top ten, so here are a few honorable mentions that we highly recommend:
• Blondshell - Blondshell
• In Pieces - Chlöe
• Why Does The Earth Give Us People to Love? - Kara Jackson
• GUTS - Olivia Rodrigo
• This Is Why - Paramore
• Keep On Loving Each Other - Poi Dog Pondering
• My 21st Century Blues - RAYE
• Homo Anxietatem - Shamir
• Something to Give Each Other - Troye Sivan
• JAGUAR II - Victoria Monét
Even without a full-length release in 2023, Big Thief topped our list of the year’s best songs with their lyrical foot-stomper, “Vampire Empire.” Stand-out tracks from Sufjan Stevens, boygenius, Jeff Rosenstock, and Jessie Ware round out our Top 5 🕺🏻
Don’t worry—you can find the playlist version of our Top 20 Songs of 2023 down below, featuring some of these honorable mentions and many more!
• Ruined - Adrianne Lenker
• Pray It Away - Chlöe
• Girls - The Dare
• You Wish - Flyana Boss
• Moonlight - Kali Uchis
• dickhead blues - Kara Jackson
• 4EVA - KAYTRAMINÉ
• I Can See You - Taylor Swift
• DOGTOOTH - Tyler, the Creator
• On My Mama - Victoria Monét
đź“ş TELEVISION
There was a lot of TV to watch in 2023—dare we say, too much? In addition to ranking our Top 10 TV Shows of 2023 overall, we dug deep into our reality TV pockets to crown the Top 10 Reality “Winners” of 2023* 🥇🥇🥇
*in case you’re worried about reality TV spoilers, these are not necessarily people who won their seasons, though there are certainly a few!
The first (and maybe only?) season of Jury Duty impressed us so much that we watched it twice, so naturally it landed the top spot on our list, followed by HBO’s acclaimed video game adaptation, The Last of Us 🧟
In the realm of competition shows, nothing could top RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, though Season 10 of Australian Survivor impressed us with its elevated level of social and strategic gameplay. It turns out we also agree with some of this year’s Emmy’s favorites, with The Bear, Succession, and Beef all landing in our Top 10… and we didn’t watch The Curse yet, okay?!
A handful of honorable mentions that are actually worth your time:
• Barry (season 4)
• Party Down (season 3)
• Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (season 1)
• The Traitors (season 1)
• Yellowjackets (season 2)
It was a banner year in reality TV and we LOVED watching master strategists like Cirie, “King” George, and the Tika 3, as well as entertaining personalities like Ronald Gladden and the Jet Lag boys, but MOTHER Sasha Colby takes our top spot—obviously 👑
From heroes and villains to lovers and fighters, here are a few reality TV honorable mentions (in no particular order):
• Johnny Bananas (The Challenge 38, World Championship, USA 2/House of Villains)
• Horacio Gutiérrez and Olivia Kaiser (The Challenge 38)
• Devin Walker-Monaghan and Tori Deal (The Challenge 38)
• Chris Osmond (Claim to Fame 2)
• Tanisha Thomas (House of Villains)
• Christopher and Robert (LEGO Masters 4)
• Neena and Sam (LEGO Masters 4)
• Chloe Veitch (Perfect Match)
• Dee Valladares (Survivor 45)
• Mal Wright (The Ultimatum: Queer Love)
🗯️ CELEBRITIES AND POP CULTURE
We ask you now to join us in a moment of reflection and help us crown the people and events that defined the year in pop culture! 🗳️
Take a look at our Top 5s below and then vote for your favorites in each poll. First up is…
In the world of movies, there was no cinematic event bigger than Barbenheimer. Heck, it was even the theme of our first Listies newsletter! Of course, Barbie and Oppenheimer may also be remembered as the last two big releases before the SAG and WGA strikes effectively shut down Hollywood for more than three months.
It’s only fair that Taylor Swift lands a spot in our Top 5 for The Eras Tour, which was the first tour in history to gross a billion dollars. And speaking of massive amounts of money, who can forget Elon Musk’s continued destruction of the website formerly known as Twitter, which is now reportedly valued at just $12.5 billion (for reference, Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion in late 2022).
Last but not least, we have the Met Gala Cockroach, whose death was near-simultaneous with his fifteen seconds of fame. We have not forgotten you, good sir!
VOTE: What pop culture moment defined 2023? |
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Now is the time to pick your MVP of the year from our Top 5 below and decide once and for all…
Our Top 5 picks for who won 2023 are dominated by two now-iconic pop culture match-ups—director Christopher Nolan and producer/star Margot Robbie represent Barbenheimer, while Taylor and Beyoncé’s blockbuster tours (and accompanying concert films) landed them each a spot on our list.
Emma Stone may be the “sleeper” contender here, but between her potentially Oscar-winning turn in Poor Things, partnering with Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie for the hit show The Curse, and joining SNL’s famous “five-timers club” back in December, we’d say Emma had a pretty epic year.
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