2023: A Playlist
It’s January (or, erm, February, sorry!) here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time to sum up the last 12 months with Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2023 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?
For the last 4 years, my favorite part of putting together my Best Of Year End Lists has been creating my Year End Playlist. Each year I put together a playlist of songs that defined the year for me, featuring one song from each release I listened to throughout the year, and here on the newsletter, a sentence or two of commentary on each song. However, each year I have watched the length of this playlist skyrocket. In 2020 it was 27 songs; in 2021 it was 36 songs; in 2022 it was 51 songs, a length that could barely be contained in these emails; in 2023 my playlist has ballooned to a staggering 100 songs. It’s a testament to how goddamn good this year has been for music, but it’s also just not sustainable!
So, I had to make some changes. Below is, as always, the link to my 2023 Playlist and a list of each song included, however, I will only comment on a select handful of songs. I’m linking to Spotify, but not creating a list on YouTube as I usually do (if this is something you enjoyed in past years and miss, let me know). Songs from one of my Top Albums of 2023 will be marked with a *, while tracks from a few runner up records who almost made that list will be marked with a #, and my Top Single of the Year will be marked with a +. Moving into 2024, I plan to create one playlist per quarter, which will allow me to not only give you smaller, more frequent playlists, but to talk about multiple songs per release for the first year ever!
Anyway, without further ado, here’s 2023: A Playlist, which can also be found here on Spotify. These 100 tracks run the gamut of guitar-centric music, from pop-punk and emo to indie to hardcore to radio rock to power pop to, hell, even a little bit of regular pop. I hope you can find something here to enjoy! And thank you all so much for following me through this year’s Best Of Lists! It’s been a joy! Here’s to another year of amazing stories, music, and media!
“TOMMY HUSS” — My Cousin’s Girlfriend’s House (single)
Like a lot of things, I found this band through the Wonder Years — guitarist Matt Brasch has been producing songs for My Cousin’s Girlfriend’s House for a few years now. These kids have a some killer harmonies and a charming social media presence, and I like both the singles they released in 2023 quite a bit. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do next!
“Alameda County Fair” — Mom Jeans. (single)
I am the target audience for a song about being young and in love at the County Fair.
“Totally Cool” — Magazine Beach (Constant Springtime) *
Exactly what a lead single should sound like. Magazine Beach should teach a class on how to write songs that will get stuck in your head for months at a time.
“GODDAMNITALL” — The Wonder Years (single) +
This is a brand new Wonder Years song that’s also kind of an old Wonder Years song — “GODDAMNITALL” was a half-finished demo from The Greatest Generation writing sessions that the band dug up and finished in celebration of the record’s 10th anniversary (in the vein of “Out On My Feet” and “Brakeless” three years ago). I’m pretty sure it features the best bridge of the band’s entire career, and it’s easily my favorite single new song of 2023.
“Do It Faster” — Militarie Gun (Life Under The Gun)
“Song the Bullets Sing” — Save Face ft. Heart Attack Man (…Found Dead at the Crime Scene)
While the …Found Dead at the Crime Scene EP is the primary Save Face release of 2023, they actually had quite a prolific year; singer Tyler Povanda also released a collaboration with Jhariah, a cover of AFI, and fronted a side project, Kid Lightning, featuring members of Mom Jeans., Just Friends, and Joyce Manor — all of which made this playlist at one point or another because, well, they fucking rock.
“Cosmic Leash” — Chris Farren (Doom Singer) #
“John ‘The Rock’ Cena, Can You Smell What The Undertaker” — Hot Mulligan (Why Would I Watch?) *
This track — about the way growing up religious ruined the narrator’s self-image and gave him lifelong body dysmorphia — absolutely devastated me the first time I actually sat down and read the lyrics. “Losing faith is losing all the folks you thought might give a fuck” is so fucking real, very much my personal experience, and quite possibly my favorite lyric of the year.
“Some of It Was True” — The Menzingers (Some of It Was True) *
“Six Feet” — Real Friends (There’s Nothing Worse Than Too Late)
“i heard they found you face down inside your living room” — Can’t Swim (Thanks but No Thanks)
“The Night John Buck Hit Three Home Runs” — Pkew Pkew Pkew (Siiick Days) #
Pkew Pkew Pkew are known for writing silly songs about frivolous subjects, but when they write something serious it strikes right to my core. “The Night John Buck Hit Three Home Runs” finds the narrator processing his grandfather’s death and their relationship through their shared love of baseball, and it’s as poignant and affecting as anything I’ve listened to this year. An easy Top 5 track of 2023 for me.1
“Go To Hell” — Bayside (The Blue EP) #
“Ghostwriter” — Speedy Ortiz (Rabbit Rabbit)
“Little Fires” — The Gaslight Anthem (History Books)
“Under You” — Foo Fighters (But Here We Are)
“Can We Just Get High?” — Carpool (single)
“California King” — Sincere Engineer (Cheap Grills) *
“California King” is a love song where the narrator begs her partner to move in together, wistfully fantasizing about how it’s all she really needs, and in the year I moved in with my own boyfriend, it’s a track I couldn’t help but to vibe to hard. It’s also a song that fully understands how important geography is to this scene; Sincere Engineer are inextricably linked to the city of Chicago, so when the narrator sings that her desire to move in with her partner has her “thinking of leaving Chicago,” you immediately understand “oh fuck, she’s for real!”
“Noticing Things” — BAT BOY (Fun Machine) #
There’s a very strong chance that, if BAT BOY’s record had been released a few months earlier, it would have taken a spot on my Top Albums of 2023 — I only got to listen to it once before the year ended, but fell in love hard with it while compiling this playlist. There’s a good chance BAT BOY could be your new favorite band — check them out A.S.A.P.
“Portions For Foxes” (Rilo Kiley cover) — Lydia Loveless and Jason Hawk Harris (single)
I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard the original Rilo Kiley version of this song, but Lydia Loveless & Jason Harris as well as Spanish Love Songs both put out pretty kick-ass covers this year. And hey, I used to follow a Tumblr account named “The Talking Leads To Touching,” and now I get the reference!
“Everything I Had” — Sub-Radio (Past Selves)
Sub-Radio have gone viral on TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr for clever parody songs like “Stacy’s Dad,” but turns out their original songs go pretty damn hard too.
“Hollywood Ending” — SUCKERPUNCH! (single)
“Dead End Friend” — Four Years Strong (single)
“Free Rein to Passions” — The Dirty Nil (Free Rein to Passions) *
“I Saw Water” (Tiger’s Jaw cover) — Joyce Manor (Constant Headache/I Saw Water split) *
“Stay Up All Night” — MxPx (Find A Way Home) #
“Sport of Measure” — The Armed (Perfect Saviors)
So, The Armed are pretty much a cult. I like a few of their songs (this one included, obviously), but this piece Dan Ozzi wrote about The Armed is more interesting than any music they’ll ever release (though keep in mind that Ozzi is a true believer).
“New Music Friday” — Taking Back Sunday (152)
This new Taking Back Sunday record is actually pretty good, but if you sat me down and had me listen to it without telling me who was playing, I never, in a million years, would have guessed it was Taking Back Sunday.
“Childhood Eyes” — Yellowcard (Childhood Eyes) #
Here’s what I wrote about this track in my “20 Songs To Get To Know Yellowcard” piece back in August:
This isn’t the first song Yellowcard have written about the power of being young at heart — “Be The Young,” one of the band’s very best efforts, built an entire anthem around the idea — but what elevates “Childhood Eyes’” take on the theme is its timing. Yellowcard’s last few albums/years as a band were focused on new, more “mature” directions that lost the youthful spark that drew so many fans to the band in the first place. Then they broke up; by all accounts it was a difficult, fraught decision, and not a single soul in the band ever expected to be playing music together again. Any new Yellowcard song would have felt like a miracle, but for their first new song in seven years to be this bouncy and fun, for it to look to the future with a childlike optimism that harkens back to Yellowcard’s best material, was a truly unexpected joy. “Childhood Eyes” has ushered in a new era for Yellowcard, and I’m genuinely excited to hear what it sounds like.
“About Me” — The Early November (single)
“ballad of a homeschooled girl” — Olivia Rodrigo (GUTS) #
Thank God — GUTS is the album I so desperately wanted SOUR to be two years ago, full of tracks that capitalize on Rodrigo’s ability to write incontestable bangers; “good 4 u” would be the standard on GUTS, not the outlier. Besides being the kind of song that would have been in at least thirty or forty movie soundtracks had it been released in the 90s, “ballad of a homeschooled girl” was also a track that resonated greatly with me as someone who, to be quite honest, has never really felt like he quite learned how to be a person.
“I Need A New Boyfriend” — Charly Bliss (single)
“FUNERAL GREY” — Waterparks (INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY)
“Crystal Lake” — Mansions (Tuff Luff)
“Going to Die” — Fiddlehead (Death is Nothing to Us)
“$20” — boygenius (the record)
“Outlook” — The Front Bottoms (You Are Who You Hang Out With)
“New Friends” — Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness (Tilt at the Wind No More)
“I Promise To Ruin Your Life” — Best Ex (With a Smile)
“F.A.K.E.” — CLIFFDIVER (single)
“Freak of Nature” — Heart Attack Man (Freak of Nature)
I was obsessed with this song for, like, a good two or three months over this spring and summer. Musically it just hits my aggressive pop-punk sweet spot, and while I’m not going to pretend the lyrics are especially deep, I nonetheless found myself relating rather hard to the narrator’s lament of feeling perpetually anxious, freakish, and out of place (“I feel like I’m about to get/yelled at for something all the time), but also his acknowledgement of finding some pride in it too.
“Duck Island” — Zachary Ross and the Divine (King Dopamine)
“So Good Right Now” — Fall Out Boy (So Much (for) Stardust) *
“Big Island” — Pet Symmetry (single)
This song’s got a perfect chorus. A big, beautiful, soaring chorus. Goddamn.
“Man Overboard” (blink-182 cover) — Future Idiots (single)
I first discovered Future Idiots over a decade ago when they released a record covering every single song on blink-182’s controversial Neighborhoods, a kind of “fix-fic” record meant to show how Neighborhoods “should” have sounded. Over the years Future Idiots have complained about people only caring about their blink covers and not their original music (which is ska — I should give their original stuff another chance now that I listen to more ska), but then every few years they put out another blink cover anyway. I feel bad for them, but their blink covers are also all pretty fucking sick, so what are you gonna do?
“Peel” — Dazy (OTHERBODY)
“Nervous Man In A $40 Room” — Hotel Etiquette (OUCH!)
“Old Keys” — Tired Radio (Lousy, Thanks)
“How To Live With Yourself” — PUP (single)
“One Last F.U.” — Lucero (Should’ve Learned by Now)
“Swan Song” — Flying Raccoon Suit (Moonflower)
“Carrie O” — Joe Gittleman (Wavebreaker #4)
“Get Me Home” — New Found Glory (Make The Most Of It)
I haven’t always been the kindest to New Found Glory lyricist/frontman/guitarist Chad Gilbert over the last few years — his rampant cheating, high-profile divorce from Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, history of dating women far, far younger than himself, and cringy lovestruck forty-year-old-teenager lyrics in NFG’s most recent record have made it easy to criticize him — but I’ve felt guilty about that recently as Gilbert’s publicly fought a battle with a rare and aggressive cancer. The acoustic Make The Most Of It was created primarily to support Gilbert’s treatment and give him a chance to explore his feelings about it, and “Get Me Home” especially is an earnest and plaintive cry from a man who just wants to be with his wife and child rather than in the hospital, and I just cannot find it in me to hold any ill will towards Gilbert right now, especially considering all the joy New Found Glory have given me over the years. Good luck, dude.
“Lychee Ice” — Gay Meat (single)
“New Year’s Reprieve” — Bad Moves (single)
“Bad Actors” — The Menzingers (single)
The Menzingers are primarily an album band, releasing records that are cohesive statements with their own unique themes and moods, but it means their one-off singles and B-Sides tend to get lost in the shuffle. It’s a shame, cause many of those one-offs fucking rule — you can add “Bad Actors” to the like of “The Shakes,” “Toy Soldier,” “No Penance” and “Cemetery’s Garden,” tracks that deserve way more attention than they’ll ever get. I would love to see this one live someday.
“TURPENTINE” — blink-182 (One More Time…)
This is the stupidest song on One More Time… — which is saying something — but for some reason it’s the one that keeps getting stuck in my head over and over and over. If anybody other than Tom DeLonge wrote these lyrics, they’d be arrested on the spot.
“October” — Knuckle Puck (Losing What We Love)
“Tell Me To” — Kid Lightning (Kid Lightning)
“Middle of the Pomps” — The Pomps (Bottom of the Pomps)
“Middle of the Pomps” is my favorite kind of closing track, a song that has a feeling of conclusiveness to it, that feels like the last stop on a long journey. It reminds me a lot of “And Now I’m Nothing,” the final track on The Wonder Year’s Suburbia, and believe me, that’s just about the highest compliment I could possibly give a song.
“Human” — Bearings (The Best Part About Being Human)
“Figure 8” — Paramore (This Is Why)
“Pendulum” — Spanish Love Songs (No Joy) *
We — rightfully — have made a lot of fuss about the synths on No Joy, but the guitars on this record are criminally underrated. The riff in the chorus of '“Pendulum” is easily the best of Spanish Love Song’s career.
“Constant Headache” (Joyce Manor cover) — Tiger’s Jaw (Constant Headache/I Saw Water split) *
“What Keeps Us Moving” — BAD OPERATION (Wavebreaker #4)
“A Lesson in Dramatics” — Jhariah & Save Face (single)
“Insert Storm Names” — The Great American Typewriter (Collected Poems EP)
“Our Favorite Song” — Crooked Teeth (My Favorite Player)
“Mortal Kombat 2” — Danny Dwyer & The Wonder Years (single)
“Spent the Summer Alone” — Roe Knows Best (single)
Roe’s done it again! Behind its upbeat, poppy exterior, “Spent the Summer Alone” is a true emo epic, spinning a year-long tale of heartbreak and longing that is sure to get stuck in your head and your heart. I’m kind of obsessed with it.
“Still Life” — I Call Fives (Not For Everyone)
“Cyanide Stories” — The Penske File (Half Glow) #
“Parallel Haunting” — Hurry (Don’t Look Back)
If you want me to like a song, all you need to do is add horns.
“Overwhelmed” — Audible Ghost (single)
“Henry” — Slaughter Beach, Dog (Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling)
Despite my deep love of Modern Baseball, I haven’t quite been able to fall in love with Modern Baseball co-frontman Jake Ewald’s follow-up band Slaughter Beach, Dog — but there’s still usually one song on each record that captures my heart, and on Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling it’s “Henry,” a slow mournful story about a young man whose fanciful musical ambitions are crushed by his mother. I grew up on 90s country, and this song scratches that itch!
“Girls’ Not Grey” (AFI cover) — Save Face (single)
“Shut Down” — Samiam (Stowaway)
“Rebel Youth Face” — Mustard Plug (Where Did My Friends Go?) #
“Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs” — Alkaline Trio (single)
“Final Summer” — Cloud Nothings (single)
“ups & downs” — typopro (single)
typopro consists of a guy I hung out with at a show once in 2015 on lead vocals and the drummer from Sweet Pill, and together they make a pretty good math-rocky kind of band!
“Ornament” — Screaming Females (Desire Pathway)
“Death Machine” — AJJ (Disposable Everything)
“Good Time” — Teenage Halloween (Till You Return) *
“All my life I just felt embarrassed/like when I had to come out to my parents” is another one of my absolute favorite lyrics of 2023. Oof, there’s nothing worse.
“LIKED U BETTER” — Jeff Rosenstock (HELLMODE) #
“86’d at the Rectory” — Steady Hands (Cheap Fiction)
“Second Best Friend” — Origami Angel (The Brightest Day) *
What a bittersweet song. I’ve been the “Second Best Friend” more than a few times in my life, especially as a teenager, and there’s a special kind of hurt when someone doesn’t like you as much as you like them — even if they like you quite a bit! Longing is such a painful and relatable feeling.
“Grand Canyon” — Rozwell Kid (single)
“Smile Like You Mean It” (The Killers cover) — Spanish Love Songs (Doom and Gloom Sessions)
“Ten Stories High” — The Bouncing Souls (Ten Stories High)
“Learning To Share” — Pkew Pkew Pkew (Siiick Days) #
“Learning To Share” is one of the catchiest songs on Siiick Days, but the reason I chose it in particular for this playlist is because it’s a really clever sequel to “Maybe Someday,” one of the singles from last year’s Open Bar. “Maybe Someday” is a song about a couple moving in together to save money even though they weren’t quite ready; “Learning To Share” is about a couple learning to live together and becoming better people and a better couple in the process. Talk about growth!
“Goodnight Tomb” — Fireworks (Higher Lonely Power) *
“One day I'll take you to see/Where they did medical experiments on me/When I needed money.” That lyric hurts. “Goodnight Tomb” is a song all about wanting to share formative places and experiences in our lives with the people we love, even when those experiences are awful, and man, having to offer your body up for experiments because you can’t make enough money as a touring musician is pretty damn awful.
“Crossed That Line” — Ratboys (The Window)
“Opening Night” — Scowl (single)
“Ride the Vibe” — Dim Wizard w/superviolet, Jeff Rosenstock, illuminati hotties (single)
“The Fringe” — Cheekface (single)
If any band other than Cheekface featured the lyrics “Success is cringe/success is cringe/I want to be on the fringe” I’d turn them off immediately, but with their signature mix of satire, tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, and occasional sincerity, Cheekface can actually pull it off, not only as an anthemic chorus, but as a leaping point to alternative music’s obsession with shunning anything popular. I feel so called out.
“Right Place, Wrong Time” — NORMY (What The Fuck Planet Are These Guys From?)
“Safely” (Hot Rod Circuit cover) — Midtown (We’re Too Old to Write New Songs, So Here’s Some Old Ones We Didn’t Write)
“Are We Ok?” — Omnigone (Against the Best)
“Grizzly Wintergreen” — Magazine Beach (Constant Springtime) *
There’s no other song that could have possibly brought this playlist to a close than Magazine Beach’s ten minute epic, featuring probably my favorite chorus of the year. The verse that brings the song to a close looks to the future with optimism, and that’s exactly the kind of energy I want to bring with me into 2024.
Do You Know What I Love the Most’s “Best Of 2023” series:
2023: A Year In Review
Top Albums of 2023
Top Comics of 2023 (Part 1)
Top Comics of 2023 (Part 2)
Top Television of 2023 (Part 1)
Top Television of 2023 (Part 2)
Top Movies of 2023 (Part 1)
Top Movies of 2023 (Part 2)
2023: A Playlist
To read previous “Best Of” entries for 2020-2022, click this link to browse the directory!
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!
It’s also, oddly, one of two songs I listened to this year that tackled this exact subject, the other being Sincere Engineer’s “Blind Robin.”