It’s that time! We are here to highlight just a few of my favorite albums and songs from 2023, talk about music that made me laugh, cry, pump my fist, and dance, and generally just bathe in the glory that was the musical year. No format, no order, just a mess of the tunes that really did it for me in 2023
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Red Chuck Radio 2023 will be live, so you’ll have a single playlist available full of the tracks I loved most this year on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music.
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Let’s dive in!!!
Jamila Woods– Water Made Us
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An album about what it means to love and to stop loving and what is owed to all parties in both those cases, not to mention every scenario in between.
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Favorite tracks: Bugs, Tiny Garden, Practice
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love is the warmest weather
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Ben Folds– Kristine From The 7th Grade
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…this world can be
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Wonderful too, yeah
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Do you ever see it that way…
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There’s a break in the rain
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A perfect time for a walk
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The smell of wet leaves
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And warm smiles and hellos
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These things exist in the real world, you know
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100 gecs– 10,000 gecs
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Weird, chaotic, and wonderful. On the surface, you may think this album would be obnoxious, but there’s a humor that’s in your face one minute and subtle (if that word can be used to describe anything on this album) the next.
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Favorite tracks: Dumbest Girl Alive, Hollywood Baby, Frog On The Floor, I Got My Tooth Removed, mememe
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Natalie Merchant– Keep Your Courage
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Merchant only improves as her career goes on. This prompted a relisten to her entire catalog for me and I’d put Keep Your Courage up against any of her classic albums.
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Favorite tracks: Big Girls, Come On Aphrodite, Eye of the Storm
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you’re hail stoning the deck, you’re the ship about to wreck
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Zach Bryan- Fear and Friday’s (Poem)
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I’ve learned that every waking moment is enough
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and еxcess never lеads to better things,
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it only piles and piles atop the things
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that are already abundantly in front of you
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like breathing and chasing and slow dancing
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and love making, fighting and laughing
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Atmosphere– So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously
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I needed this album this year. Such an amazing collection of work.
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Favorite tracks: Okay, Talk Talk, Bigger Pictures
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it’ll be okay, even if you’re feeling like there ain’t no way
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The Erly– Culture Fever
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One of the local scene’s best bands, particularly when it comes to their live show. This album is a gem of sounds old, new, and unique, melded into one.
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Favorite Tracks: Somewhere In My Mind, Red Roof In, Take It As It Goes
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Blondshell- Salad
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It wouldn’t be so bad
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It wouldn’t hurt the world
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Zach Bryan– Zach Bryan
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The album from which the poem above comes from. I have yet to hear a track from Zach Bryan that I dislike and there are very few that fail to move me. With this album, we also get a collaboration with Michigan’s own The War & Treaty…that is hard to beat.
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Favorite Tracks: Fear & Fridays, Hey Driver
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forestlike- sinking stone
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https://youtu.be/m5kL_PaqaPQ?si=EbPTlMW94nht-4AD
Amanda Palmer- The Ballad of the New York Times
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i don’t understand why the world can be so fine, i don’t understand how the world can be so unfine
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Other tracks or albums not to miss: the latest from former local band (and still locally loved) After Ours, Daniel Deitrich‘s new rocking track, Let It Run, Rebel Noire & The Accomplices highly anticipated EP, the new/old Drive-By Truckers vinyl rework of The Dirty South (including a few previously unreleased), Michigan’s own The Accidentals and the absolutely brilliant Time Out, Janelle Monáe‘s The Age of Pleasure (the most wonderfully horny collection of music released since Prince was on top), the latest release from Spaceships, Kalamazoo’s Jake Simmons with My American Dream, and Jenny Lewis giving me all the feels, Nashville-style, with Joy’All.
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Again, be sure to check out the Red Chuck Radio 2023 playlist full of the tracks I loved most this year on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music.
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Seeya next year!
