Usually I used to discredit this “___ is the worst year in terms of music” discourse. But this year, I can’t come to think of 5 good mainstream releases, a good breakout artist taking the world by storm, a song that defined the year, a solid debut album, an elite music video, nothing.

Only year to come close is 2014 but even that one had a D’Angelo album and Piñata and a strong resurgence of mainstream pop music with Pharrell’s Happy and the peak of Sia, Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, etc… meanwhile 2023 is a year that will not be remembered in any genre of music except maybe Country but that’s it.

What do you think?

It’s gotten better this quarter but yeah a weird feeling year overall

no

Best year since 2018

the way some of yall digest music I cannot fathom how you could enjoy it lmao

Mainstream rap has been forgettable as f*** this year

Underground/Indie rap was better imo

Great year for music, maybe even better than 2022

Some people should listen to more than just 1 genre

Nah it was fire

That’s a hot take

It’s all bad now

What junk have you been listening to

yea it's been pretty underwhelming and feels even weaker cause 2022 was one of the best years of the past decade

Way better than 2014

This was a fantastic year for music

2014 was fire too

Sampha, Sufjan, Travis, JPEG, Danny Brown, MIKE, Earl sweatshirt, Olivia Rodrigo, Jessie Ware, Victoria Monet, Kali Uchis, Foo Fighters, Paramore, Zach Bryan, Billy woods, Kelela, Yeule, Skrillex, Nas, and Amaarae all dropped heaters

And there were pretty strong mainstream releases from Travis, bad bunny, Olivia Rodrigo, and Zach Bryan

It was an amazing year

Not just rap imo, mainstream in general

One look at the charts rn and you’ll find 8 old Taylor Swift songs in the top 10 it’s just there’s nothing to compete. There’s no “song of the year” to me imo and the only mainstream album I’d look back onto is probably UTOPIA. Underground was pretty good tho

You need to be stuffed in a locker

A lot of incredible music dropped actually. Yall can continue calling everything trash after one listen

year was stacked tbh and we still got Danny Brown coming down the pipeline

best Drake solo project since 2017 as well

genuinely loved this year, it just started a bit slow

mainstream rap wise, definitely the worst year of the 2020s but there were tons of underground gems that dropped in rap and other genres actually stepped it up imo.

My take as well

I wholeheartedly can't remember any mainstream rap releases this year besides Trav, Drake, and Ken Carson if that counts

Underground was ferocious this year and outside of hip hop was fantastic. Country lowkey might be genre of the year

No 2009 was

You should specify if you mean mainstream, cause yeah… overall I’m rocking with this year more than last which I also liked