Top 22 Films of 2022

A strange year for cinema, with a very obvious hesitancy from the big studios in terms of their release strategies. Quite a few films that would’ve been tentpole multiplex releases pre-Covid instead got dumped straight to streaming (Turning Red, Prey) or rushed through a very limited cinematic release (Glass Onion was the most curious example of this, as it could easily have made good money in theaters).

These portents of doom for cinema-going were balanced by the thumping successes of things like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar, on the one hand, and Everything Everywhere All at Once and RRR, on the other (smaller) hand. Yet for every success story there were multiple failures, some of them incredibly dispiriting (turns out very few care about Spielberg’s origin story, The Fabelmans, at least in the US). So it goes every year, but this year the stakes felt higher, with every high-profile failure of an original content film seeming more and more like an ominous sign for the future of such things being released into cinemas.

The solution is to go and see as many original films in cinemas as you can, if and when you can, rather than giving in to the temptation of waiting till they get released on streaming platforms. Otherwise, we will soon see cinemas becoming the exclusive reserve of blockbuster sequels and Disney/Marvel content, whilst all smaller films just go straight to streaming.

That’s already the situation here in China, where I’m living, with the result that in actual fact I, a serious cinephile, have seen a grand total of one new film in the cinema this year (Avatar: The Way of Water – it was ok). Almost no good things are released here, simple as that, just the sure-fire multiplex-fillers. But that just goes to show that the variety of different films available for us to view in the west is as a result of a relatively healthy democracy, of artistic freedom and therefore variety of expression. If we lose that variety, I can’t help but worry what it will do to our already splintering sense of democratic freedom. A monolithic culture, of the sort that the Chinese government aspires to, is not the sort that I believe we should aspire to in the west.

These are all big-picture worries about the industry, though. In the meantime, as always, I found many reasons for optimism in the film industry on a smaller level, in terms of the many considerable talents still working in film today. I continue to be blown away by the consistent quality of work coming from directors from all over the world, from Joachim Trier in Norway to Park Chan-wook in South Korea, Ryusuke Hamaguchi in Japan to Terence Davies in the UK. Fighting the good fight and producing thoughtful, meaningful works that tackle modern-day issues, or those of the recent past, it’s still possible to learn things about the world from these masters, plus from new blood like Charlotte Wells (whose Aftersun is easily the most promising debut of the year) and relatively new blood like Jordan Peele (who finally won me over with a film about a monster that’s an allegory for cinema, amongst other things).

If there are no big blockbusters on my list below, don’t blame me. I tried. I’m apparently immune to the charms of Top Gun: Maverick, as I am to any film where special effects are the main reason for watching, though maybe watching it on my laptop was the problem. I liked what I read about The Batman being a noir-like detective piece so much that I sat through the whole thing before throwing up my hands in despair at yet another generic superhero flick being way overhyped for being “dark”. It caused me a lot more pain to conclude that Everything Everywhere All at Once and RRR weren’t quite good enough to make my list, because I was (and still am) rooting for them, as inventive original ideas but also as subtitled fare in a market that usually precludes such fare from success. I’m glad they made money, but I can’t lie about my mixed reactions to them. Perhaps because I’ve lived in China for a few years and encountered quite a few gay people here struggling with their parents, the cheesy chocolate-box resolution to the family conflict in Everything Everywhere All at Once didn’t impress or move me like it did so many others, and the hyperactive editing just made me pine for more solid, quiet moments like the scene between the two rocks. Meanwhile, RRR was absolute dynamite in its action scenes, sure, but the romance sections that took up too much of its running time were so terrible – in writing, acting, music; all departments – it made it impossible for me to wholeheartedly endorse the film.

I’m a picky bastard – that’s what watching films obsessively does to you. It makes it harder to accept mediocrity when it arises, due to the awareness that there are much better films you could be watching instead.

These are those films.

1: The Worst Person in the World (dir. Joachim Trier)

Third part of the director’s “Oslo Trilogy” (after Reprise and the outstanding Oslo, August 31st) is the most expansive and ambitious of the lot, and a little unwieldy as a result. But it succeeds as a romantic comedy with updated topical concerns: this is a film about love in the age of climate anxiety, and how that impacts our affairs and also our desire to have kids. As with all of Joachim Trier’s films, it’s rooted in characters that you would want to follow and live with well past the film’s end. There’s not a sign of a “Worst Person in the World” in sight; main character Julie (delightfully played by Renate Reinsve) may flirt with cheating on her longtime partner, a middlle-aged cartoonist (Trier mainstay Anders Danielsen Lie), but she emphatically doesn’t want to hurt him. Trier’s depiction of Oslo’s middle class (nobody seems to worry about money in his films) is warm and affectionate, filled with flawed but never intentionally evil inhabitants, just trying to get by and using all of their powers to resist the impulse to do self-destructive things. A couple of fantastical sequences allow Trier and his cast to have some fun, utilising special effects, prosthetics and animation, all in the service of laughs. But cast, crew and director alike all get serious for an ending filmed with great empathy and haunting simplicity.

2: Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook)

A cat-and-mouse thriller about the sexual mind games played between a detective (Park Hae-il) and female murder suspect (Tang Wei), which makes it very reminiscent of Vertigo. But Park Chan-wook is his own man: more arty and less suspense-minded than Hitchcock. And he’s certainly one of the major figures in world cinema right now. For starters, he’s using digital photography like nobody else, with sharply composed wide and high-angle shots in high locales here that are as effective in creating a dizzying sense of disorientation as, well, the famous dolly zooms in Vertigo (that’s the last time I mention it, I promise). What’s more, to my delight, he’s slowly moving away from an obsession with grotesque violence to an obsession with unusual or, in the case of this film, even perverse romantic and sexual entanglements. Decision to Leave is a film about the difference between people who prefer mountains, with a clear view of everything, to people who prefer the sea (or fog), with a clear view of nothing. It’s a film about people who need mystery and violence in their lives in order to function. It’s all about the “thrill of the chase”, both in police investigations and love affiars. It’s about why people would leave one country for another, one city for another, the state of being alive for being dead. It’s a film you need to see.

3: Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

Superb horror-western-comedy-satire, that like Get Out works on multiple levels, but feels slicker and even better to me. On its surface, it’s a simple monster movie, about a brother and sister, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, trying to capture a mysterious flying creature on camera. But it’s no accident that there’s a subplot about an ape that loses its shit in a TV studio, plus there’s good reason why the California family’s business is training horses for movies. Because Peele’s overarching vision is of how the natural world, spectacle, and human beings with their cameras always at the ready intertwine in the modern world. There always seem to be humans ready to risk disaster to capture footage of dangerous natural phenommena, just as there are always humans ready to turn around and say “Nope”. I think Peele finds both groups fascinating, and proves that playing them off against each other makes for a great horror film. Shot with sweeping imagination using Imax cameras, performed with brittle humour by the cast (a laconic Kaluuya proves that he can do anything), edited and sound-mixed with supreme care. I say give Jordan Peele $100 million a year to make whatever he wants for the rest of his life.

4: Benediction (dir. Terence Davies)

Terence Davies’ second biography of a famous poet necessarily feels more personal than his Emily Dickinson one. Focusing on the secretly gay Siegfried Sassoon allows Davies to turn in a tragicomic look at how queer youths in the first half of the 20th century were forced into a “shadow world”, which was nearly as disabling for them as the First World War was for the lives of so many young men. Siegfried Sassoon actually existed in both shadow worlds, as a survivor of the war and as a hidden homosexual. That he lingers in metaphorical shadows means that he is in many ways as unknown to us at the end of the film as he is at the start, though the final scene, with him breaking down as he stares at a legless man and is reminded of Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled”, is as close as we get to a glimpse of the real man. Luckily, the shadow world he lives in is smothered in a glossy layer of Terence Davies’ usual box of cinematic tricks (long panning shots, classy dissolves, classical music, stock footage from films). It’s also enlightened by the brutal wit of most of the film’s inhabitants: this is the funniest biopic in many years. Creating an immaculate, impeccably witty surface was how many gay men – who necessarily had to keep much of their lives hidden – learned to cope and survive in those days, after all.

5: Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)

A beautiful warm haze of a debut feature from Charlotte Wells, about a father and daughter holidaying together in Turkey in the late 1990s. Supposedly told in flashback, from the daughter’s perspective as an adult, it mixes footage from a home camcorder recording the trip with remembrances from her so-called “mind camera”, which is of course the film’s actual camera. We get the sense that she’s trying to piece together details about her troubled father from her memory, and we also get the sense that this effort is in vain: he’s too guarded, and she’s too young. Mysteriously, there are also moments that see the director either take us away from the daughter’s perspective altogether, to show us the “reality” of her father Calum’s situation, or alternatively are fantasies still emanating from her (adult or child?) mind. Either way, they add fascination to the film, though you have to concentrate hard to catch them. Frankie Corio is an absolute joy, and an absolute natural, as the 11 year-old daughter, very touching in both her curiosity towards her dad and also dipping her toes in the waters of adult sexuality for the first time. And Paul Mescal continues his roll: Normal People was superb, but this is arguably even better. It’s a last dance between a father and daughter, before the waves of time and other tragedies of life drag them apart.

6: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Made in the same year as his Oscar-nominated Drive My Car (but released in the UK this year), I actually prefer this anthology of stories about how chance and misunderstandings shape our encounters with other people. Hamaguchi may not be the most stylistically unique director – his compositions and camera placements are perfunctory and unfussy – but he is truly outstanding with actors, so the fact that this trio of “short stories” contains so many different actors works hugely in its favour. The final story, like Drive My Car, even works into its narrative an explicit tribute to acting itself, made all the more believable because of how clear it is that Hamaguchi loves actors. The three stories are of two friends who fall in love with the same man, a student who tries to get an older college professor fired by seducing him, and a school reunion where mistaken identity leads to a surreal encounter. The last story is the best, not just for its intriguing fantasy premise where all of the internet has suddenly been wiped and its data lost (the connections between us are so fragile, they can be so easily lost), but also for how it shows us a literal wheel of fortune and fantasy, which I won’t spoil.

7: The Souvenir: Part II (dir. Joanna Hogg)

A sequel to what was my favourite film of 2019, this follows Hogg’s alter ego Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne reprises the role beautifully) as she navigates her way through film school and the recent death of her Foreign Office boyfriend. I can’t think of any other films that so well capture the awkward cadences of everyday conversation, or at least of everyday English conversation. Characters fumble awkwardly in their interactions, but not too awkwardly – it’s not overdone. And if we’re paying attention, we learn to love them all. The one exception is Richard Ayoade, playing a fellow film student, who blossoms with every shot into more and more of a pretentious prick: his show-off attire and hair quickly become a comic highlight, to match his overblown tirades. But it’s it’s the quietly sensitive Julie whose blossoming those of us who treasure these films really want to see, and our patience is rewarded. Julie’s final triumph is not an obvious one, but the harder you look the clearer it shines. For her final film as a student, her coming-of-age if you will, is shown to us not as it really was but as a fantasy playing in Julie’s mind. Nostalgia reworked to acknowledge the element of fantasy involved in remembrance: that’ll do as an intelligent ending to Hogg’s fiercely intelligent two-parter.

8: Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)

Almodóvar’s filmography as a whole could in fact be named “Parallel Mothers”: after all, mothers are his favourite type of character (along with actresses). Here’s a film about several more mothers, most of them divorced or single, the main two played by Penélope Cruz (wonderful) and the younger Milena Smit. As Peter Bradshaw pointed out in his review for The Guardian, they aren’t exactly “parallel” mothers, more like “intersecting”, because their lives keep crisscrossing and touching each other in unexpected ways. But what interesting ways those are! As the two reveal to each other aspects of their pasts and futures that had never occurred to them, the threat of Fascism, past and possibly present, looms over them constantly. As Almodóvar argues, Spain has not yet properly confronted its Fascist past: thousands of bodies are still buried in unmarked graves (literal victims of war crimes). That intergenerational trauma, passed down from mother to mother, is clearly shown, and Almodóvar’s attempt to break that chain through this film is beyond admirable.

9: Fire of Love (dir. Sara Dosa)

Must-watch National Geographic documentary about the lives of married-couple volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, a geochemist and a geologist, respectively. Their eager pursuit of samples and footage from the world’s most dangerous volcanoes shows them to have as much of a death wish as Biggie Smalls. Just like Biggie, they meet an inevitable early demise, at the foot of Mount Unzen in Japan. So this is partly a film about the dangers of humans trying to capture the wilds of nature on film. It would make for a suitable double bill with Nope, then, or pretty much any Werner Herzog documentary (I found out after watching that Herzog had actually made two documentaries about this couple). The mock-poetic narration, delivered in a monotone in the style of a Terrence Malick film or a Nathan Fielder show (without the humour), is an irritant: why not let the poetry of the images speak for themselves? Because the photography of the volcanoes – mostly captured by Maurice Krafft himself, at unbelievably close range – are not just some of the most spectacular images I’ve seen in any documentary this year, they’re among the most spectacular I’ve seen in any film.

10: Cow (dir. Andrea Arnold)

Documentary that follows a pair of cows, showing us their daily lives, without voiceover or any other evident form of human input (though there are farmers onscreen, of course). It’s so successful at capturing the world as experienced by these cows, thanks to eye-level camera placement (sometimes the camera is actually kicked or headbutted by the cows) and immersive sound mixing, that it quite genuinely made me feel hungry for grass at one point. That’show fully it allows you to enter and inhabit the world of these animals. The ending is inevitable, but still shocking and heartbreaking. But on a lighter note, to my untrained biologist’s eye, it seems to show in one scene that cows indulge in foreplay. Who moo?

11: Flee (dir. Jonas Power Rasmussen)

A real-life refugee’s tale, narrated by a survivor who fled with his family from Afghanistan after the mujahideen took over Kabul, eventually making it after terrible struggles to Denmark via Russia. It’s told using jerky hand-drawn animation, yet like Waltz with Bashir it doesn’t flinch from showing the brutality of adult conflict. Humankind’s collective failure to take care of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet is etched into every frame; to watch it is to feel shame as well as immense sympathy. Yet like Persepolis, this is so involving as human drama it never overwhelms you with depression. The end result is enlightening: a film about secrets, and about when and how to let them go.

12: Moonage Daydream (dir. Brett Morgen)

This documentary goes for a philosophical rather than a biographical reading of David Bowie’s extraordinary life, so those wanting a straight telling of everything Bowie did and achieved would be better off reading his Wikipedia page. Since Bowie’s approach to life is what he describes early on as a “hodgepodge philosophy”, Brett Morgen himself takes a hodgepodge approach to assembling the hundreds of hours of newsreel clips, interviews, film footage, paintings, music videos, animations, and various other bric-a-brac that comprises this phantasmagoric effort. Bowie’s greatest insight was that life, or at least human existence and our perception of life, is nothing but a series of “Changes”, metamorphoses going off in infinite directions, which he tried to mirror in his ever-morphing artistic personas and musical styles throughout his career. This film successfully shows that, and proves how it makes for a fabulous approach to life. Bowie inspires alll those who connect with his art – which is millions – to try and live forever in the ever-shifting moment, whilst acknowledging that everything is in fact temporary, constantly changing, and efforts to resist that are futile. There’s great beauty in that idea: as there was in Bowie, as there is in this film.

13: Licorice Pizza (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Of course the subject matter is a direct challenge to conventional morality and audience expectations: this is Paul Thomas Anderson we’re dealing with. For better or worse, his films can be seen as a series of provocations – usually for better, because he’s so very, very talented, but also because provocation is vitally important to keep any artistic medium fresh and alive. Unfortunately, some of PTA’s “daringness” can be cringingly cheap, as it is here in the “jokes” about someone doing a fake Japanese accent, moments I hated so much it nearly made me dismiss the entire film. I’m still not sure where I stand on the central age-gap romance thing; a reversal of the “older male” narrative, sure, but an uncomfortable power dynamic nonetheless, and not as ingeniously devised as Phantom Thread. But PTA’s so brilliant and hilarious everywhere else in the film, he won me over in the end. Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper excel when given free rein as utter slimeballs; the troupe of 15 year-olds who try their amateur hand at any roughneck business they can get their hands on generates comedy gold; and Alana Haim makes the whole freewheeling adventure seem worthwhile.

14: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (dir. Richard Linklater)

More boomer nostalgia, this one has very little new to say about the era of space age optimism and political turmoil that was the late 1960s. But it says its nothing very well, with a breeziness to the rotoscoped animation and editing that is very winning, often hilarious, and evokes the slipperiness of memory perfectly. Its basic observation boils down to just one essential point, but it’s a comical doozy of one: that the moon landing broadcasts were mostly just very boring; they probably put kids to sleep, and a trip to a theme park – or dreamland – would have been preferable as an entertainment choice for them. That wry humour extends to the family sequences, which remind me of A Christmas Story in their careful attention to the details of growing up in a middle-class suburban household. As an added bonus, there’s a scene where one plucky kid changes a song in music class to include the word “balls”, which is the hardest I’ve laughed at anything in a film all year. Just goes to show that some of us never grow up.

15: Bergman Island (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve)

Come for the Ingmar Bergman-styled marital crisis of filmmakers Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth, who go on holiday to the Swedish island of Fårö that Ingmar Bergman lived on to get inspired to write their own screenplays. Stay for the, surprisingly, far more engaging relationship crisis that occurs between Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie (on a roll this year, see also The Worst Person in the World), in the film-within-a-film that springs from Krieps’ mind. Plus, you’ll get a complimentary tour of Fårö, getting to see famous sites from Bergman’s life and films, plus factoids and debates about his merit as a director (my opinion, for what it’s worth, is that he’s equally deserving of his status as a genius and as a scoundrel: both a top 5 director and a miserable user of women). Mia Hansen-Løve’s own merit as a director is starting to become firmly established.

16: Great Freedom (dir. Sebastian Meise)

A prison drama set in post-war Germany, with a gay twist. It also has a rug-pulled-under ending that shows how freedom might have come too late for a certain generation of gay men. This was a generation who came of age too soon before the legalisation of homosexuality, and were forced in and out of jail (and concentration camps) all their lives just because of their sexuality. Truly a lost generation. Anyone who’s been paying attention to German cinema in recent years will know Franz Rogowski, an actor who’s outstanding as usual as one of the lost generation. But it’s Georg Friedrich as his hesitant kind-of-lover – a comforting presence and murderer, compassionate listener and aggressive bully – who is most deserving of close attention. The relationship between the two jailmates is the most curious and surprising one I’ve seen onscreen since Titane. Amusingly, it’s also the second film this year to depict the moon landing as not just a seminal event, but also a very boring one to watch (see Apollo 10 1/2 above).

17: Elvis (dir. Baz Luhrmann)

The most ridiculous film on this list. But also one of the most entertaining. This is another music biopic that’s full of shit, that makes up plenty, and fails to make its characters sound like unscripted people. What’s new? Baz Luhrmann’s irreverent disregard for linear time, conventional space or anything else that might limit his vision (anachronistic rap versions of Elvis’ hits play at times) makes his shit stink a lot less than the “Based on a True Story” pretence of most music biopics. I give him points for casting Tom Hanks in an atypical villainous role, though I agree with most that Hanks goes too far over-the-top (even for a Luhrmann film). Anyway, Austin Butler as Elvis is the true star of the show, in more ways than one. I don’t think it’s an all-time performance, but it’s very clever in showing a man of instinct channelling forces he’s hardly aware of (at least at the start) into a new kind of musical sensation. Thanks to his and Luhrmann’s efforts, Elvis emerges as something of a person, not just a frozen icon of a statue in this film. He really was something new, something unprecedented, and the scenes of early female audiences realising this, with gasps that they hardly even realise are escaping from them, are so well done that they’re worth the price of admission for this film alone. That the film has done so well at the box office cheers me greatly: it shows that people haven’t yet lost interest in Elvis, the person or musician. As they shouldn’t have.

18: A Hero (dir. Asghar Farhadi)

Asghar Farhadi makes films in which seemingly simple decisions by honest-seeming people have unintended consequences, which causes events to quickly spiral out of control, and usually leads to tragedy. Because he’s so careful at showing the justifications of all of these actions, he’s arguably the spiritual successor of Jean Renoir, whose mantra was famously that “everyone has their reasons”. Farhadi’s visual sense isn’t as masterful as Renoir’s, and he’s not quite got the same breathtaking ability to move with ease between comedy and tragedy. But his films, like Renoir’s, are complex moral webs that show competing interests clashing in a modern society where everyone has their reasons but their reasons are often flawed or not sensitive enough to other’s feelings. This results in people constantly sparring with each other, though rarely explosively. A Hero is no exception, showing how a man who appears to be trying to do good in returning a lost bag with gold to its owner, despite his own money troubles, accidentally sets off a chain of events that will serve to disgrace him and his family. It’s heartbreaking and riveting, if not quite as masterful as Farhadi’s earlier works.

19: Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller)

“Stories are like breathing” is the film’s best line. Stories are how we try to organise our lives, to convince ourselves that they’re not just meaningless and random, when of course they really are. Stories about his life are what Idris Elba’s djinn is compelled to tell Tilda Swinton’s scholar in Istanbul, when she rescues him from a bottle and wishes only for his companionship. Stories are what this is based on: overtly a short story by master storyteller A.S. Byatt, though the film’s also informed by thousands of years of mythology stretching back to the Arabian Nights. This is a strange choice for director George Miller to follow Mad Max: Fury Road with, and it flopped commercially. But I like it very much. Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba don’t quite catch a spark in their scenes together, but we can see the longing in the eyes of both: the longing to discover meaning through stories, love, and shared stories about love. And that gives the film poignancy. Also, because George Miller runs the millennia-spanning plot at a brisk pace, we never get lost in their self-pity, or our own.

20: Turning Red (dir. Domee Shi)

The whole teenager-turning-into-a-giant-red-panda thing is the best Pixar gambit in a long while. It’s also one of the best metaphors of recent years, because it’s so mutable. It could represent any aspect of change that teenage girls fear: periods, altering bodies, weight and size issues, being unable to control their emotions, sexual awakening, the weight of family expectations… The list goes on. Plus, in the specific case of Mei, a Chinese-Canadian girl, there’s anxiety about the cultural split in her identity between two countries that (coincidence? I think not) both have red dominate their flags. So whilst this film, like all Pixar films of the last 10 years, could have done with more wit and less sentimentality in the script department, its open-endedness and understanding of all young girl’s hopes and fears still makes it a must-watch.

21: Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (dir. Robert B. Weide & Don Argott)

I’ve only read Slaughterhouse Five, but that’s enough for me to regard Kurt Vonnegut as a genius and one of the 20th century’s most important writers. So naturally I was hooked by this documentary, which shows that Vonnegut was every bit as sharp, witty and thought-provoking in public as he was in his writing. The film perhaps spends too much time on Robert B. Weide (best-known to me from his work on Curb Your Enthusiasm) and his friendship with Vonnegut. But those moments, interspersed as they are with past interviews and snippets from the author’s life, do help to give the film the kind of time-bending quality that was one of Vonnegut’s (many) fortes in writing. Note to self: MUST. READ. MORE. VONNEGUT.

22: Censor of Dreams (dir. Léo Berne & Raphaël Rodriguez)

Intriguing short that’s apparently hotly tipped for Oscar nomination this year, about a team who create and censor dreams for a woman dealing with a traumatic event in her past. It may be a little crude psychologically, its understanding of how dreams are constructed leaning heavily on Freud. But from the brilliantly framed, kaleidoscopic opening shot onwards, it has a nervy energy to the filming and acting that makes it non-stop compelling to watch.

Top 10 TV Shows of 2022

Are we still in a “Golden Age” for television? Certainly more good TV is being made than at any other time in history. But that’s made it impossible for any one person to keep track of it all: there’s too much good stuff. What’s more, the proliferation of streaming options might give the illusion of greater access to everything for everyone, but really most people can’t afford to subscribe to more than two or three of them. This results in it actually being harder than ever to sample all of the highest-rated shows of the year, which makes it harder than ever to tell if we’re in a “Golden Age” or not, or what the hell is going on overall in terms of a wider cultural picture. You instead get caught in a “bubble” of what’s suggested to you on the two or three streaming platforms that you can pay for, and each person separately judges the quality of the year on that limited basis alone.

I try to get out of those self-limiting bubbles, when I can. I even subscribed to Apple TV for a while just to catch Severance, which was thankfully worth it. But as you can probably see below, Netflix remains my first port of call (for TV – it’s less than useless for films), and that has inevitably impacted my list. Just as if you mostly used HBO Max, that would impact yours, making it look a very different list from the one below.

So as I feel obliged to mention every year, this is not a comprehensively researched, or even remotely close to “expert” list. It just reflects my TV-watching path this year, or at least the routes of the path that I felt were worth taking, and would recommend to others if they have the time or the interest (or the streaming capability). It’s chaos; I don’t detect any pattern in the below 10, except for the appearance of Ken Burns twice, which I’m not at all surprised by (I follow everything Burns does and haven’t been disappointed by anything he’s released yet).

Some notable omissions that I did try to watch and couldn’t finish: The Bear exhausted far more than it impressed me; Sherwood seemed to me a rote police procedural with miner differences; The English didn’t give me enough reasons to care about its bloody revenge plot (nothing makes me yawn like bloody revenge plots); Andor didn’t give me any reason at all to care about Star Wars again, despite so many insisting otherwise (everyone says it gets better after episode 3 – I’ll just have to take their word for it, I’m not going back).

Some notable omissions that I finished but didn’t quite make the cut: The White Lotus was slick and funny as hell and was the list’s nearest miss; The Rehearsal was a great idea that immediately became less interesting to me when it became clear that it was all just an excuse for Nathan Fielder to talk about his own uninteresting midlife crisis; Stranger Things went on for so long I couldn’t remember whether or not I was enjoying it by the end; Atlanta went super-ambitious and undershot with mudddled execution time after time; Better Call Saul was enjoyable but incredibly dubious – if not outright deceitful – in its conclusion (career criminals never, EVER redeem themselves in such a fashion, which just goes to show how soft-headed the show’s makers always were over their lovable amoral huckster).

Any other omissions are because I haven’t seen them yet, so do let me know what your favourites are, so I can get them down on my own ever-expanding, “Golden Age”-hued list of things to watch.

1: My Brilliant Friend: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (HBO/Rai)

The third part of this adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, set in the 1960s, is arguably the best yet. This is despite the fact that there are much less scenes of Elena and Lila together, now that they’ve moved into adulthood and separate married lives. But the scenes where they are together are as complex as ever: this is easily the most fully-realised depiction of a friendship in television history. When Lila phones Elena at EXACTLY the most dramatic moment possible in the final episode, it’s so perfectly timed it made me gasp out loud. It shows that these are friends who always seem to be there for each other at EXACTLY the time when it’s most needed, but usually it’s to pour salt on each other’s wounds in such moments, not make each other feel better. As their rivalries deepen in this series, so do the rivalries between the different gangs in the Neapolitan area. This leads to violent clashes between the communists and Neo-fascists, some of them truly horrific, which seem to mirror the rising emotional intensity of Elena and Lila’s personal lives. All of it builds, with perfectly modulated performances, to an unbelievably riveting climax, that’s more absorbing than anything I’ve seen on any screen, big or small, this year.

Available to stream in the UK on Now TV.

2: Heartstopper (Netflix)

Unrelentingly charming, to the point where I finished watching it once and immediately started over again (this time with my wife, who squealed with delight at its many adorable moments). It’s a queer teenage love story based on the webcomic by Alice Oseman, and it successfully integrates elements of comic-book styled animation to heighten certain charged moments. Kit Connor and Joe Locke have the sweetest possible chemistry as the leads, so that you’d be willing to lead a march on Netflix headquarters were they not to get together in the end. It’s a little hard to believe in Joe Locke as a rugby “lad”, but he’s believable off the pitch, and it’s nice to see another kind, considerate but self-conscious jock winning the heart of a social outcast at school, following on from Normal People. The subplots follow other interesting queer characters whose stories you’ll want to see beefed up in the next series. The whole thing works: it feels so real in capturing the lives and concerns of younger teenagers (sex isn’t yet a big topic of discussion), and it’s very touching as a celebration of how trying to be yourself is the ultimate ideal, whilst recognising that that’s so hard to achieve at school, and at such a young age.

Available to stream in the UK on Netflix.

3: The U.S. and the Holocaust (PBS)

Ken Burns’ documentary joins the list of many worthy, important ones about the Holocaust, with the difference this time around being that the focus is on the U.S.’s response to Nazism and anti-Semitism. Starting in 1933 and moving slowly through 3 episodes that are over 2 hours apiece, this takes its time, but it needs to, because it’s a purposefully comprehensive (for television, at least) catalogue of U.S. failures in foreign policy in the lead-up to the war and during it. Roosevelt by all evidence was a decent enough president, opposed to Hitler from the start and generally pro-Jewish (he won 86% of the Jewish vote in his first election), but he fails to get America to do its clear moral duty and increase the quota of refugees throughout a decade of increasingly terrible persecution of Jewish people in Europe. There are appalling stories here of Jews trying, and failing, to get into America, prevented because of bureaucratic obstructions, the opposition of the majority of Americans – but mostly because of the stubborn racists and anti-Semites in Congress blocking any attempt to increase the quota of Jews allowed in. The historians interviewed, in the classic “talking heads” Ken Burns style that works so well, make clear that whilst this could have been America’s finest hour, it failed abysmally to meet the moral challenge of the time. Everyone should be taught these stories in school – not to feel ashamed, but to learn from the past so as not to make the same mistakes again.

Available to stream on PBS.

4: Barry (Season Three) (HBO)

Most TV shows test your credulity, at least once an episode. But that’s for chickens: Barry does it several times a scene. The things that happen to Barry, the hired assassin who dreams of becoming an actor, and his friends in both the acting and drug-dealing worlds, are so ridiculous that if I wrote them down you’d never consider watching the show. But you should watch the show, if you haven’t yet. It gets away with patent ridiculousness partly because it’s styled as a comedy as much as a drama. Many of the characters are nothing but punchlines, constantly setting themselves up to be put down by others’ wryness (Barry’s manager Fuches asks a woman on a farm: “What do you and your people call water?” The woman coolly replies: “Water. You know you’re only 20 miles outside of L.A.? There’s a Starbucks right over that hill.”) It also gets away with it because the action sequences are so brilliantly done that you’re too gripped to notice how absurd they are: a motorbike chase in this series is far more exciting, and filmed with far more originality, than any action scene I’ve seen in a cinema in years. This is Bill Hader’s baby, and he does decent work in both the acting department (he’s the lead) and director for many of the episodes. The series turns “jumping the shark” into an art form.

Available to watch in the UK on Sky Comedy.

5: Severance (Apple)

High concept isn’t always enough to kick-start a series, but it is in this case. The idea of a company that “severs” the brains of employees, so that their memory of the outer world is “wiped” as soon as they step foot into an elevator going down to their office, is an immediate fascination. That’s because, just as soon as you’ve had the thought “that might be nice”, the series immediately shows you a whole host of reasons why it’s not. In fact, the more you think about it, and the show encourages you to do so, the more you start to realise that the “severed” employees are slaves being kept in a captivity they can never escape from (as soon as they leave the building they will revert to the “outside” version of themselves). So it’s a concept that has a chance of being genuinely Kafkaesque, showing people trapped in a bureaucratic system that’s completely out of their control. Whether it reaches the level of Kafka is another question, as it often goes for soap opera/classic TV cliffhanger material rather than leaning into the surreal (although it does do that on occasion). Featuring Adam Scott in the lead, better known for comedy (Parks & Recreation), and largely directed by Ben Stiller, also better known for comedy, it’s a credit to both that they don’t go for easy laughs but allow the weirdness of the situation to generate its own brand of unstrained humour. However, the entire creative team should stop being coy, and give us the audience what we want: the chance to see John Turturro and Christopher Walken making out.

Available to stream in the UK on Apple TV.

6: Benjamin Franklin (PBS)

Ken Burns again, with an in-depth look at the life of the oldest Founding Father (he was nearly 70 years old at the start of the Revolution). Clear-eyed and unsentimental about Benjamin Franklin as both public figure and private man, it goes long on his extremely mixed record on slavery, as it should (at first Franklin owned slaves, then refused to discuss the issue during the creation of the Constitution – a critical failure – but later in life became an outspoken abolitionist). But it doesn’t miss a chance to let us know why he was so rightly revered, arguing convincingly that he was the most brilliant diplomat in American history, particularly for his work as Ambassador to France, where he secured a military alliance and funding without which the Americans would likely have lost the Revolutionary War. It also goes into absorbing detail about his many inventions, including lightning rods, bifocals, the charting and naming of the Gulf Stream, and his pioneering work on electricity. A true polymath, and truly worthy of the Ken Burns treatment.

Available to stream on PBS.

7: Cheer (Season Two) (Netflix)

For unavoidable reasons, this is a lot more disjointed than the first series, which was a pretty straightforward inspirational sports doc. Firstly, there’s the disruption of the pandemic, which puts an end to dreams of competing in the 2020 Daytona Cheerleading Championship once it’s cancelled. Then there’s the matter of the breakout star of the first series, Jerry Harris, being arrested and charged with child-related sex crimes (he was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier this year). Finally, there’s the greater media attention focused on Navarro College following the international success of the first series, which leads coach Monica Aldama and others to chase celebrity status at the expense of the team (Monica actually leaves to do Dancing With the Stars for part of the series, which results in other breakout star La’Darius leaving the team). So the show was wise to also film the preparation of another team competing for the Championship this time around, Navarro’s great rival Trinity Valley. That gives the show a more sturdy team to contrast with Navarro when it’s falling apart, and puts you in the conflicted but exciting position of rooting for two teams in the Championship final, which helps to raise the emotional-involvement stakes. It’s a messy series, but such is life: people are just as likely to fall in their private lives as in cheerleading routines.

Available to stream in the UK on Netflix.

8: The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix)

Because it’s based on Andy Warhol’s published diaries, which he only started to dictate via phone to a friend in 1976, this documentary takes the unusual step of skimming over Warhol’s greatest period of success, the 1960s. It instead allows the diaries to dictate the focus, which is on his later years, and his romantic attachments to a series of hunky younger men. That’s fine, because it gives us a deeper sense of the man, rather than his works and the milieu he created with The Factory: there are countless other films, books and documentaries for that. The series adds a further, perhaps unnecessary, curiosity though, in using AI to morph narrator Bill Irwin’s voice into Andy Warhol’s, hence allowing “Warhol” to read from his own diaries. It’s a bit unsettling at first, but you get used to it. Meanwhile, the peek into his romantic life is genuinely new and exciting, because Warhol refused to ever talk about it, or, if he did, then he would cheekily suggest that he was asexual. The most poignant is his relationship with Jon Gould, a Paramount Communications executive who lived with him for quite a while, but tragically died from AIDs-related illness. But the most exciting is Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist of perhaps equal but more likely greater talent than Warhol; the two of them loved and drove each other mad with their competitive egos (when they collaborate on an art project Basquiat sometimes completely paints over something Warhol has done), spiralling towards another tragically young death. All throughout, the stock footage and music and interviews give crucial embellishment to the diaries, which are sparse and dry in Warhol’s typically reserved way.

Available to stream in the UK on Netflix.

9: Ozark (Season Four) (Netflix)

A flashback scheme that asks us twice to watch a very dramatic moment that turns out to have no impact at all on the overall plot is one of several witty highlights of this show’s final series. As with Better Call Saul, Ozark has a tendency to off characters you’ve been following for a long time and then move on swiftly with barely a shrug: no character is as important as the forward momentum of the show. I don’t like this tendency at all, in either case, which shows that even the highest-praised TV dramas have a long way to go in order to achieve the genuine tragic weight of great novels, plays or films. But unlike Better Call Saul, Ozark has an ending that’s cunning and believable, and that doesn’t indulge our fantasies about criminal redemption arcs. Ozark knows that natural-born career criminals keep on going until the law or death stops them. Nothing else ever will.

Available to stream in the UK on Netflix.

10: The Essex Serpent (Apple)

A mythical serpent said to live in the Essex waters near the village of Aldwinter, during the late Victorian era, is the MacGuffin that sets in motion a plot where Gothic horror and period romance collide. A wealthy widow, played by Claire Danes, who comes to investigate the serpent with her son, soon finds herself torn romantically between a heart surgeon and a clergyman, and then finds herself to be a lightning rod for all of the locals’ fears and prejudices about the unknown. That her would-be lovers represent two different ways of dealing with the unknown, science and religion respectively, is the artfulness of the story, which comes from a novel by Sarah Perry. Clio Barnard, one of Britain’s finest talents, directs the whole thing with a keen eye for mystery, and though her tendency towards melodrama overcooks some of the drama, her way with actors always works a charm. That’s true with Danes, but also Tom Hiddleston as the clergyman and, best in show despite not being a star name, Frank Dillane as the kind of proud, ambitious yet well-meaning surgeon who will be familiar to readers of Middlemarch.

Available to stream in the UK on Apple TV.

Top 22 Albums of 2022

We should’ve known, really, that it would be the best new year for music in a very long time, after news emerged that the four best mainstream artists of the last decade were going to release new albums. In descending order, those are: Beyoncé, Miranda Lambert, Kendrick Lamar, and Taylor Swift. I would’ve predicted that all would make my top 25 list by the end of the year, but music is full of surprises, not all of them good ones. So though I struggled valiantly to appreciate them on their own terms, countless replays of Kendrick’s and Taylor’s albums failed to excite me in the way that I expect great music to do. Taylor’s seemed to me her weakest album since Reputation, with nary a great song, never mind that it packed the Billboard 100’s top 10 for the first time in history. Kendrick’s album, meanwhile, though bolder and more admirable, was too thorny and free of hooks for me – when he insists I listen for 6 minutes to two people having a boring argument, or a two-note piano riff being endlessly repeated, for example, my indulgence for his genius quickly wanes – though I’ll love him forever for including a pro-trans anthem, at a time when being pro-trans is in no way a given in the hip-hop or any other community in America.

Speaking of being one of the best mainstream artists and pro-trans, Miranda Lambert released her own pro-trans anthem, “If I Was a Cowboy”, on her typically superb album released this year, and Beyoncé delivered an entire album-length tribute to the dance music scene that black LGBTQ+ voices created, including many trans artists. Unlike Kendrick, Beyoncé went way beyond the merely admirable, laying down an instant classic with RENAISSANCE that doesn’t flag for a second, despite being over an hour long. Where Kendrick went spare and hookless, Beyoncé packed every available moment with hooks galore, a bonanza of samples and voices and fresh musical ideas that keeps erupting in your ears like flowers blooming in fast-motion. Pretty much everyone responded to RENAISSANCE – it’s topped all of the year’s significant music polls, including the big two, Rolling Stones’ and Pitchfork’s. If she keeps going at this rate, she’ll inherit the title of greatest musical polymath from Prince; if she hasn’t already.

It would be boring to only listen to the big pop smashes of the year, though, no matter that RENAISSANCE is so addictive it could easily be the only thing you listened to all year. In underground news, indie artists established (Big Thief, Soccer Mommy, The Mountain Goats), new (Wet Leg, Plains) and relatively new (Black Country, New Roads, The Beths) delivered some of their finest work this year. Heroically prolific alt-rapper Homeboy Sandman released an EP, an LP and a mixtape, two of which made my list. Gogol Bordello came out roaring in support of Ukraine, Bob Vylan in support of healthy eating and punching fascists, and Willie Nelson at 89 in support of old age and not going to funerals.

It felt like everyone had cultivated a wellspring of pent-up musical ideas and new ways to express themselves during the pandemic, and 2022 saw the unleashing of that wellspring on the world. I sweated over my top 10 more than any other year, as there were so many releases competing for places – usually I have to let a couple I’m less passionate about fill in the lower spots, but not this year. I don’t know why people like me sweat so much about things like this, but we do, so don’t call lists arbitrary. They’re not – I’d be willing to argue with you about any of the placements on this list, all of which I thought over carefully.

I’d be willing to argue with you about anything I left off my list as well, though with a much heavier dose of irony. I don’t mean to offend you, if you’re really into The Weeknd, Rosalía, Alex G, Mitski… I tried, but they’re just not for me. Though I could rationalise why, I don’t mean to put off anyone who enjoys them, so I won’t.

Below is the list of things that really stood out to me. I had my fill at the well this year.

1: Beyoncé – Renaissance

At first, RENAISSANCE strikes you simply as the most unified work Beyoncé’s done so far, a consistently upbeat hour of music that never strays for a second from the dancefloor. But then it gets deeper. It’s all hip-charming rhythms, supple basslines, outrageously stacked multi-tracked vocals, and raps injected at exactly the right moment to raise the energy further. The music on RENAISSANCE is a constant up, a great mood enhancer that should work fine either as antidepressant or aphrodisiac, depending on your needs. It’s a thrilling tour through the history of dance music, from disco to the present day, with plenty of nods to the black LGBTQ+ quarters, like house and ballroom, that Beyoncé knows full well is where the music had its origins. Many all-time dance classics are sampled, interpolated or otherwise woven into the fabric of the album, such as “I’m Too Sexy” and “I Feel Love”, and it’s a lot of fun to pick them out. What’s more, many of the all-time heroes of dance music actually appear as guests, including Grace Jones and Nile Rodgers himself. Put all of this together, and there’s a good case to be made for this being Beyoncé’s most consistently exciting album (though B’Day slaps start-to-finish as well). That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily her best – Beyoncé and Lemonade were stronger lyrically and conceptually. But it’s her most musically accomplished, for sure, with every single second containing several different exciting ideas thrown at once into the mix. This leads to a heady brew that, as Ann Powers opined, “[is] her Sistine Chapel, and it deserves to be discussed that way.”

Inspirational line: Impossible to choose just one. Literally every line on this album is inspirational (even the one about “tig ol’ bitties”), and in unique, brilliant and surprising ways. Just click play anywhere on the album and listen. That’s the one, that’s the inspirational line.

2: Gonora Sounds – Hard Times Never Kill

This group from Zimbabwe play Sungura – the most popular genre from their home country, famous for its fast, guitar-driven melodies – with an enthusiasm and musicality so infectious that they actually went viral in 2014 with the song and video for “Go Bhora”, a chant for the Zimbabwean football team. The core of the group is the amazing blind guitarist and singer Daniel Gonora, and his teenage son Isaac, who plays the drums on a homemade kit with incredible virtuosity (his youth was a big reason for “Go Bhora” going viral – he was only 13 at the time). And on the first 3 tracks here it’s just them, father and son playing alone, including on a re-recording of “Go Bhora”. They’re more than good enough on their own. But then, all of a sudden, they’re joined by a full band on the 4th track, including a bassist and backing singers. This opens the music up in a thrilling way. Each time I hear the album played in sequence, I’m blown away by this transition, which is the musical equivalent of leaping from black and white to colour photography in “The Wizard of Oz”, or indeed of leaping from “Hard Times” to a celebration of life that can’t be put down. From there on, until the very end, it’s a non-stop party.

Inspirational line: Well, it’s mostly in Zimbabwean, and I can’t find English translations for the lyrics online, so I’m going to have to go with the title “Hard Times Never Kill”, which admittedly only sounds inspirational if you don’t think about it much (of course hard times can kill, come on). Anyway, it’s the music you’ll come to this record for.

3: Black Country, New Road – Ants from Up There

This young band is often described as an English Arcade Fire, because they’re a mixed-gender band of multi-instrumentalists, but also because of the unabashed emotional maximalism of their music. Yet on this sophomore effort, there are only a couple of times (on the chorus of “Chaos Space Marine” and the ending of the epic “Basketball Shoes”) where they really sound like the Canadian collective who nobody will probably ever want to sound like again. Elsewhere, they delve much further into prog-rock-styled excess, with track lengths that would’ve scared the shit out of a young Arcade Fire. They indulge in multi-act suite song constructions, folk-rock and jazz detours, unusual time signatures (for popular music at least – “Good Will Hunting” is partly in 6/4), and at times impenetrably obscure lyrics. Yet they never lose touch of a heart-on-the-sleeves emotionalism that puts them way ahead of the current prog-rock pack. They manage to pull off the difficult trick of being complex and accessible at the same time. As such, the album already seems like a future landmark, one that’s so steeped in beauty it overcomes any objection you might have about the opacity of the lyrics (what’s with all the Billie Eilish references? Do they just really dig her?).

Inspirational line: “I was made to love you/Can’t you tell?” (from “Concorde”)

4: Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

That title might be the most off-putting thing about this double album from the folk-rock heroes who expanded their fanbase considerably in 2019 by releasing not one but two of that year’s best albums. Here they expand their musical arsenal to include country fiddle and jaw harp, let their love of corn shine as clear as the moon in June on tracks like the delightful “Red Moon”, and make several surprisingly comforting songs about death (really they do). At its best, their music reminds me of nothing less than a flock of birds flying in a slipstream. The band play with such unity of purpose, in such perfect formation, on track after track, that it seems as if they move as one – purely by instinct, like said flock of birds. It’s so nice when guitarist Buck Meek joins Adrienne Lenker on backing vocals that you wish the album had more of his singing, but the whole is certainly improved by having drummer James Krivchenia on production duty, audibly bringing the band even closer together. Any closer, though, and we might worry that they’ll implode on us like a dying star.

Inspirational line: “I wanna be the mountain kiss the sky/Yeah, I wanna be the vapor gets you high/Yeah, I wanna feel so happy that I cry/Yeah, I wanna be the shoelace that you tie/Yeah, I wanna live forever till I die” (from “Blue Lightning”)

5: Wet Leg – Wet Leg

An indie-rock duo from the Isle of Wight, whose “Chaise Longue” went viral last year, leading them to capitalise on its success with this, their full-length debut. In the great punk/post-punk tradition, these gals transcend limited vocals with a whirlwind-rush energy to their guitar-playing and songwriting. It’s a formula that works as surely as blues-derived chords in its ability to work rock fans and music critics up into a frenzy. But it’s far from easy to pull off; how many new rock bands emerge each year, and how many become as quickly and universally beloved as Wet Leg? Their jokes all land, their riffs all stick, their minor variations on the punk formula all work. They’re just plain better than most new rock bands. And with “Wet Dream” they even manage to come up with the snotty-nosed, wry punk version of Inception. I’d love them to assign someone to butter my muffins.

Inspirational line: “I just need a bubble bath to set me on a higher path” (from “Too Late Now”)

6: Miranda Lambert – Palomino

In Spielberg’s Minority Report, there’s a moment where Tom Cruise announces: “Everybody runs.” It’s so casual, but for me that line sums up America. Europeans like Bono might be “Running to Stand Still”, but Americans are always “Born to Run”, or “On the Road Again”. Like Jack Kerouac and Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert throughout her career has been obsessed with the imagery of being on the road, of American highways as both a potent symbol and the very definition of the American Dream. A restless troubadour, Miranda Lambert identifies with Mick Jagger’s “Wandering Spirit”, a song that she covers here with added gospel uplift from the McCrary Sisters, because it speaks to her of the freedom of America and the open road – even of the “Pursuit of Happiness”, no less (another song title). Palomino is an extension and deepening of her absolute favourite theme, then, which would be the most notable thing about it, were the music not such a hoot. Lambert and her band conjure up a thrilling musical landscape that encompasses stuttering guitar riffs, honky-tonk sweetness, tender but not mushy ballads, and always-expert singing that constantly adapts to its surroundings. So Palomino as a whole succeeds mightily in capturing her “Wandering Spirit” (that really should’ve been the title of the album). And then, to top it off, Lambert finishes with a story of a trapeze artist who must come to terms with the fact that “every show must end”. It may or may not be veiled autobiography, but it’s one of her finest stories in song regardless.

Inspirational line: “I’m runnin’ just as fast as my heart can/Some call me a fool and some just call it restlessness/But I keep on runnin’/Changing tires and changing plans/I call it my pursuit of happiness” (from “Pursuit of Happiness”)

7: Willie Nelson – A Beautiful Time

“Willie Nelson Sings About Ageing and Death” has become one of my favourite musical subgenres. It’s the way he sings, weathered yet undimmed by age, always off the beat like an old jazz master. It’s the way he plays Trigger, his “old beat-up guitar”, with more abundantly evident love than just about anyone else plays their instrument. It’s the songs he feels compelled to write about life as an 89 year-old, and the humour and compassion and unflinching realism that he fills these songs of ageing with. It’s his choice of covers, which reveal his passion for music in many varieties (“Tower of Song” and “With a Little Help From My Friends” are two highlights here). His is one of the most moving latter-day album sequences from an artist since Johnny Cash, another country master as it happens, whom it tickles Willie to imagine meeting and partying (and sharing Patsy Cline) with in heaven. Those of us who have loved Willie’s music for many years will notice, with great sorrow, the loss of his pianist sister Bobbie on this record, who died earlier this year. But the album lives up to its title nonetheless.

Inspirational line: “There’s something to be said for getting older/Dusty bottles pour a finer glass of wine/An old beat-up guitar just sounds better/And wisdom only comes with time” (from “Dusty Bottles”)

8: Ashley McBryde – Lindeville

A concept album about life in a fictional town named after the Nashville songwriter Dennis Linde (best known for writing Elvis’ “Burning Love”). Lindeville as it springs from Ashley McBryde’s imagination is a colourful place full of characters who are usually seeking love, but immediately fuck around on the side, soon as they find it. There’s plenty of sinners, but no sign of a saint in this town. Meanwhile, we get a fuller picture of the place as radio spots advertise a diner, a pawn shop and a family funeral home that chirpily offers “two-for-one cremation”. We also hear from the “Missed Connection Section of the Lindeville Gazette” – and it’s as hilarious and desperate as you’d imagine. McBryde is the clear auteur of the piece, but she doesn’t actually sing on many of the tracks: this is a group effort, co-written and so-sung with several other country stars, including Brandy Clark. As McBryde explained: “We stayed in Tennessee in this little house close to a lake. It was eight bottles of tequila, two cartons of cigarettes, one kitchen table and six individuals out of their minds.” Regardless of their state of mind, she manages to rope them all in to sing a spirited rendition of “When Will I Be Loved”, a cover choice that sums up all of the energy and quiet desperation of all the colourful characters of Lindeville.

Inspirational line: “Hallelujah, hallelujah/Jesus loves the drunkards and the whores and the queers” (from “Gospel Night at the Strip Club”)

9: Bob Vylan – Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life

You read that right: it says “Vylan”, not “Dylan”. This is a radical group of British rap-rockers, whose name is just one of their many provocations against the white establishment. On this exciting full-length debut, they variously threaten to dig up Margaret Thatcher’s corpse, pull down Churchill’s statue, shoot Boris Johnson in the chest, and wipe their ass with the St. George’s flag. And that’s just the start. They’re pro-healthy eating (helps you gain the strength to fight the police), anti-pacifism (some of their strongest venom is reserved for “Liberal lefty cunts” that oppose punching fascists), anti-Elvis (in a line lifted from Public Enemy), anti-radio and all of its pretty little songs. They don’t know what GDP is and they don’t give a fuck. All they care about beyond politics is writing nifty little guitar riffs and catchy choruses – only, however, as a means of rallying people against a “wretched system” designed to beat black people down. All in all, an exhilarating blast of nihilistic punk. As they observe: “England’s ending and its death is well-deserved”.

Inspirational line: “Eat right, stay active/Stay strong ‘cause the revolution is real/Never know when a man might have to dash/And a pig can’t kill what a pig can’t catch” (from “Health is Wealth”)

10: Craig Finn – A Legacy of Rentals

My favourite thing he’s done since the heyday of The Hold Steady, which given the consistency of his output is really saying something. The short stories he sets to song here are as literate as ever, and as fascinated with the criminal underlife of America, in a way that’s still totally (and uniquely) unromanticised. These are stories of drug dealers, petty criminals, wild kids, and generally people who live in rented accommodation for whom crime is just another way of living, nothing more. There’s nothing heroic about any og their stories: their lives are ordinary, focused on the daily grind of just trying to get by. Piano keeps plunking away in support of these humdrum lives, as well as female backing vocals. Drum machines gently keep tick-tick-ticking, like a source of constant anxiety for them. And yet the melodic bass and string section keep giving you every reason to return to them.

Inspirational line: “It was nice to finally feel a little something/This is what it looks like when we’re joyful” (from “This is What It Looks Like”)

11: Harry Styles – Harry’s House

“Matilda” was my way in: a gorgeously plucked acoustic number that seems to be about a platonic, not at all romantic (how refreshing!) affection for a girl who’s been cruelly mistreated by her family. Next to catch my attention was “Music For a Sushi Restaurant”, with its witty scatting and the catchiest horn chart in years. Then “Late Night Talking”, with its Prince-lite charm. Then of course the mega-hit “As It Was”, with its vague yet well-expressed nostalgia and “Take on Me” rip-off of a riff. Then… Before I knew it, I was through the door, and I’d fallen in love with Harry’s whole damn House. I’ve always admired the guy, but never before have I felt so welcomed by his music, which I can now see has an attention to detail and command of dynamics worthy of Vampire Weekend. There’s not a bad song on here, and like any interesting house, you’re able to explore it on multiple levels, if you so wish – or simply luxuriate in its surface pleasures. Don’t believe me, because of his ex-boy band status? That’s your loss.

Inspirational line: “I bring the pop to the cinema/You pop when we get intimate” (from “Cinema”)

12: The Paranoid Style – For Executive Meeting

A series of shout-outs from singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nelson to famous people that either self-destructed (Jack Kerouac, P.G. Wodehouse), never got the recognition they deserved (Adam Schlesinger, Steve Cropper, Doug Yule), or both (Barney Bubbles, David Berman). Then, just when you’re wondering why her attentions only ever go out to old white men, she pulls the rug out from under you with an unexpected – and unexpectedly incredible – cover of Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache”. Now that’s what I call sequencing an album in style, paranoid or otherwise. Meanwhile her band keep on rocking out, with greater focus on guitar squall and piano than on their previous albums. They’re as heroically amazing in the face of inevitable public ignorance to their existence as any of their heroes. I wish they were better known, but in the meantime all I can do is echo their own words right back at them: “This is a shout out to you/When no one’s listening/This is a shout out to you/When the silence is deafening/This is a shout out to you/To the ones who could hack it”. So far, they’ve shown they can hack it. But as Nelson well knows, from the lives of her heroes, that may not last forever.

Inspirational line: “I swear I’ve got another record in me” (from “Doug Yule”)

13: Danger Mouse & Black Thought – Cheat Codes

If that double-star billing doesn’t whet your appetite, maybe the list of guests who appear on their collaborative effort will do the trick: MF DOOM, Raekwon, Run the Jewels, A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$. Well, if that doesn’t spell fun for you, all it means is that you’re not an old-school hip-hop head, which is very much the target audience for this release. But if the above constellation of stars does appeal to you, though, let it be known that this is old-school hip-hop-head heaven, and that Danger Mouse’s inventive, sample-heavy production does all of the above justice. Most of all, it does wonders for the springboard flow and ideas-drunk rhyming of Black Thought, who has rarely sounded better outside of The Roots. The two have been working on this intermittently since 2005, which is a long time for ideas to gestate, yet sometimes ideas do need some time to gather juice. It worked for this album, which as released is overflowing with juice; it’s oozing from the soulful and playful beats, dripping from Black Thought’s enthusiastic flow, still there in the appearance from the late MF DOOM, which is a mighty boon indeed for hip-hop-heads worldwide.

Inspirational line: “The future brighter than cellos and violins fortified/With eight essential minerals and vitamins on the side” (from “Violas and Lupitas”)

14: BLACKPINK – BORN PINK

Like Bollywood or anime, K-Pop is a world so vast and unknown to me that it intimidates me a little to dip my toe in the waters. But Rob Sheffield’s glowing review convinced me to try this quickie from one of the biggest bands in not just Korea but the whole world. Straight away, its mixture of East Asian, Western (pop and hip-hop), Middle-Eastern, and even classical sonorisms, won me over big time. It sounded – and still sounds – to me like the music of the future, the music of the Spotify Internationale: any genre is game to quote from and no country’s music is off-limits as a source of inspiration. Good on these girls and their songwriting/producing team (which is, of course, vast) for marrying the insouciance of their music to lyrics of surprising emotional range and depth. When Rosé sings “I’m hard to love”, you not only believe her, you root for her to find someone who makes her feel truly loved. “My heart only wants you/The moment you say no” may be a sentiment as old as time and pop music, but the girls make it sound truly new and urgent.

Inspirational line: “I say fuck it when I feel it/‘Cause no one’s keeping tally, I do what I want with who I like” (from “Tally”)

15: Plains – I Walked With You a Ways

Plains are a new collaborative project between Katie Crutchfield (who usually performs as Waxahatchee, and is one of the loveliest singers and songwriters around) and Jess Williamson. Both are Southern ladies, from Alabama and Texas respectively, who in their careers at first resisted but then later embraced country music roots. Here they embrace them fully, remarkably so. With harmonies that sound as natural as a sunset, and gently lilting melodies sweetened by steel guitar and banjo, it goes down so easy that it can take a while before you notice just how smart the songwriting and the album’s pacing are. This has been whittled down to a lean 31 minutes, so that it can pass through you like an ephemeral breeze, if you let it. But then if you stop to concentrate, just as when you’re in nature, its apparent ease of construction starts to appear more and more complicated, until it just might take your breath away.

Inspirational line: “And if you keep calm in my hurricane/I might keep it at bay/I know you’ll love me anyway” (from “Hurricane”)

16: Homeboy Sandman – There in Spirit

What distinguishes this 22-minute EP from the rest of his massive oeuvre? Not much – but the minor distinctions he never gets bored of loading his music with are what keep his work so fresh for his fanbase (including me). Here, at first it’s flute that musically distinguishes the project, providing fluttering hooks on “Keep That Same Energy” and “Voices (alright)” that keep one attached to the music despite the jitteriness of the backing tracks. Those are followed by a couple of ordinary songs, but then the jittery production returns on “Feels so Good to Cry”, which combined with the soulful female vocal that humanises it makes it sound like a Burial track. Then the EP finishes with an “Epiphany”: people dissing Homeboy are just mad because they don’t have swag. He follows that revelation up each time with cries of “OHHHHHHHHHH!” Each time they’re funny and invigorating – much like Homeboy’s wordplay and songcraft.

Inspirational line: “These people do not have swag/They’re all just angry that they don’t have swag/OHHHHHHHHHH!” (from “Epiphany”)

17: Soccer Mommy – Sometimes, Forever

So widely praised that it seems like she’s been around for aeons, when in actual fact her debut album came out in 2018, this indie singer-songwriter seems to me to be getting stronger with each release. It’s not just that her songs are getting catchier, although that helps a whole bunch, as someone who cites Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne (alongside Mitski and Slowdive) amongst her influences well knows. It’s that her style is getting more defined, combining spooky atmospherics (“Unholy Affliction”, “Following Eyes”) with semi-depressive romanticism (“With U”, “Still”) to create a solipsistic world that’s all her own. That she’s learning all the time how to hide the faintness of her voice amidst production choices and woozy guitar lines so clever that you don’t even notice said faintness is a bonus, no doubt enhanced by her collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never this time around, who’s kind and supportive enough not to try and radically alter her sound. Only on “Unholy Affliction”, with its glitchy bass and clamouring drums, does he really show his presence. Mostly it’s all her.

Inspirational line: “Being with you is all I can do/The stars and the moon can’t compare” (from “With U”)

18: Homeboy Sandman – I Can’t Sell These

Literally – this is a mixtape of songs that Homeboy hasn’t been able to release commercially over the years, because he can’t get permission from the producer or clearance on the samples. It’s as eclectic and full of mixed results as mixtapes usually are. But it’s also where you can learn what Homeboy’s favourite Disney movie is, why he gives money to the homeless, the pros and cons of different Queens (New York) bus routes, and what’s as funky as a monkey in a tree. It’s also where you can hear him rap over the theme song to Parks & Recreation, a soundtrack piece from The Last of the Mohicans, an obscure Fiona Apple item, and a chorale played on organ. Make of all that what you will. I make of it high social and entertainment value: it’s the kind of funk-suffused-with-heart that young trap-rappers seem to struggle with.

Inspirational line: “’Cause even though I have fear deep within my mind/I will always rhyme in my life” (from “Always Rhyme”)

19: Mama’s Broke – Narrow Line

Canadian folk duo whose harmonies and fiddle/banjo-playing tends dark and ruminative. This is minor-key folk balladry of the kind that’s been around for hundreds of years, but with lyrical concerns that speak to today’s troubles, with the “Narrow Line” in the title track being the arbitrary one at the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance, invisible yet causing untold human suffering. Borders are lines that are narrow in so many ways, but that shape all of our lives; Mama’s Broke limn that border line with compassion, bringing something new to the table despite the timelessness of their Celtic melodies. That goes double for “God’s Little Boy”, a cynical song spitting venom at a conceited man, which sounds tied inseparably to today’s MeToo era, in all except the ageless traditionalism of its music: “And all those girls with their words are gonna be sorry”. A cappella sections reveal the strength of their singing, crisp production highlights the dexterity of their acoustic instrumental playing.

Inspirational line: “Let my hair grow long, let my heart be found” (from “Windows”)

20: Sudan Archives – Natural Brown Prom Queen

I prefer her debut, Athena, but this was still a solid choice for no. 2 album of the year from Pitchfork. It’s almost as joyful and restless a musical eruption as Beyoncé’s album, a quite amazing cascade of sounds and musical styles that are all unified, despite their eclecticism, by the overarching concept of black female beauty and power. It sounds like the future of R&B, whereas Beyoncé’s this year was an apotheosis of past genres and trends. That’s why this might appear a little less certain of itself, at times, at least to me. But it may also prove to be the more influential work in the long run, in which case I’ll be running behind it all the way. Even if few other future R&B artists will likely be able to boast some mean violin-playing as amongst their array of skills.

Inspirational line: “Fuck all of that shit, give me some ass” (from “NBPQ (Topless)”)

21: My Idea – CRY MFER

An indie-pop duo, Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos, who during a global pandemic decided not only to make a go of starting a band together, but also a relationship with each other. The relationship didn’t last, but the band did, leading to the creation of this fraught, Rumours-like debut album. It’s about the complicated ways in which they fucked each other, before proceeding to fuck each other over. That’s right, all very Fleetwood Mac. They now describe each other as “best friends”, according to their Bandcamp page, so there’s something of a happy ending. And there’s plenty of tunefulness to their music, if not on the level of a Rumours, then at least on the level of a Tusk. I wish they didn’t finish the album with a “Beat Version” of their most annoying song. But ignore the bonus tracks, and both versions of “Breathe You”, and you have a tight little relationship drama, told in songs of moderate commercial viability.

Inspirational line: “Want you to heal yourself/Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah” (from “Yea”)

22: Gogol Bordello – SOLIDARITINE

This self-described “Gypsy Punk” band, whose lead singer Eugene Hütz was born in Ukraine, have much to rage about this year. They don’t explicitly call out Putin or Russia by name, but with hooks such as “Lying, lying, lying, lying…” and “Look at them all, look at them all/Pining for easy victory”, they don’t exactly have to. The snarling passion of Hütz’s vocal attack registers as political uplift, even when he’s not singing about politics. And his band’s defiant Romani-American music – “gypsy” in its violin/accordion and melodies, “punk” in its guitar/drums and attitude – is a utopian statement of internationalism, which has never felt more necessary than in the face of Putin’s nationalist aggression. Give this band, and of course Ukraine, all the shots of solidaritine they need to make it through “The Era of the End of Eras”. They’re gonna need it.

Inspirational line: “Wake up beauty/Oh wake up and see/Look at them all/Look at them all/Pining for what/Can be done in unity” (from “Shot of Solidaritine”)