Irish label Nyahh captured the sounds of rowdy pub backrooms, the Gentle Good reimagined folk songs from the National Library of Wales and a legend revisited her past
There was soothing minimalism and bowel-quaking low end as Neil Gaiman got some wonderfully quizzical accompaniments and Manchester’s answer to Sun Ra freaked out
Dragonchild delivered a genre-hopping debut, Thandi Ntuli collaborated with Carlos Niño on a stripped back, joyous record and Titanic conjured visionary free-improv chamber pop
Lankum’s roaring reworking of Irish folk stunned, there was unprecedented invention from Young Fathers and Caroline Polachek offered an oblique angle on pop in our critics picks of the year
The 50 best albums of 2023, No 1 – Lankum: False Lankum
Wrangling Irish folk into expansive new territory, the group’s stunning harmonies lead us through delicate beauty and nightmarish cacophony
Blank space: how Taylor Swift – and an aching sense of loss – dominated music in 2023
Away from Swift’s joyous, record-breaking successes, the year’s most acclaimed albums were concerned with death and absence
The 50 best albums of 2023, No 2 – Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy
Young Fathers’ fearless musical vision, packing together ideas that shouldn’t work together in ways that absolutely do, results in a triumphant fourth album
The 50 best albums of 2023, No 9 – Amaarae: Fountain Baby
Refusing categorisation, the Ghanaian-American singer’s lavish second album tears through alté, punk, R&B, flamenco, trap, g-funk and soft rock in a voracious pursuit of pleasure
