‘Music that will be forever in my heart’: readers’ best albums of 2022
From Ezra Collective’s joyous jazz to Little Simz’s old-school rap and King Gizzard’s madcap psychedelia – these were your favourites albums of the year
Kokoroko sounded fresh on their debut record, we heard a classic bebop set from the late, great Joe Harriott, and Charles Lloyd completed his three-part trio masterpiece
Musicians mixed the old and the new, with vocals from Indigenous American tribes and flute music from the ancient Mayan courts among the year’s album highlights
The year’s most cutting-edge sounds included ambient Americana, Ethiopia’s ‘honky-tonk nun’ Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Alice Coltrane disciple Surya Botofasina and field recordings of goats eating mangos
The 50 best albums of 2022: No 3 – The Weeknd: Dawn FM
Abel Tesfaye’s luridly spectacular album continued his trangressive and dazzlingly deranged themes with gorgeous, grand music voiced by his depressive alter ego
The 50 best albums of 2022: No 4 – Charli XCX: Crash
For the final album on her major-label contract, the contrary pop auteur decided to dance with the devil to make a nakedly commercial record – though her self-awareness still shone through
The 50 best albums of 2022: No 6 – Arctic Monkeys: The Car
The Sheffield quartet’s elegant, lounge-funk-inflected seventh album was an introspective, elliptical ode to a time that may only live in the mind of its frontman
The 50 best albums of 2022: No 7 – Jockstrap: I Love You Jennifer B
The highly original, dubstep-informed debut by Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye sidestepped easy categorisation to deliver complex and unsettled music for complex and unsettled times without invoking a litany of their forebears
The 50 best albums of 2022: No 8 – Wet Leg: Wet Leg
The year’s buzziest duo picked apart millennial malaise – and the desire to delay adulthood – with smart gags and catchy choruses on the year’s breakout guitar album
