The 50 Best Albums of 2022

A year like this one makes hand-wringing about the death of the album seem silly (if anything we should be concerned about the single). Musicians gave us experiences in 2022. Immersive, ambitious, focused, sprawling, explosive, swerving albums expressed their power in any number of ways: Vibes to make summer stretch on into the year's cold months. Bottomless layers of invention. History lessons that sparkled like the best party you could imagine. There were too many great albums to count, let alone narrow down to a round number. But here are 50 that made us feel awe, ache or adoration, selected and ranked by the contributors, public radio partners and staff of NPR Music.

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30.

Nilüfer Yanya

PAINLESS

Listening to Nilufer Yanya sometimes makes me feel like I'm handling one of those self-defense trinkets designed for girls — a plastic comb that splits at the center to reveal a switchblade, a pretty, innocuous thing with grim intent. The British singer-songwriter often pairs her gorgeous voice with devastating electric guitar melodies and chillingly simple lyricism that only reveals its bruising later. On her second full-length album, PAINLESS, she drags her listener into a maximalist swirl of insecurity and existential dread like never before, filling its tracks with brooding, grungy rock that masterfully honors the quiet darkness of her work. —Hazel Cills

(This review appears on NPR Music's Best Rock Albums of 2022. Read the entire list.)

29.

Lucrecia Dalt

¡Ay!

¡Ay! is Lucrecia Dalt's sci-fi missive from space to Earth, or vice versa. The Colombian experimentalist tells an extraterrestrial's story through bolero, salsa, mambo, son and jazz submerged in a colloquial, nostalgic haze. The alien Preta's interpretations of home, love and the limits of having a body resonate exponentially against a textured, acoustic backdrop, a product of human imagination seeking to operate outside its chains of time, form and grief. Dalt's world-building in sound and theme are jarring in its invention, yet altogether familiar. —Stefanie Fernández

(This review appears on NPR Music's Best Experimental Albums of 2022. Read the entire list.)

28.

Alex Isley & Jack Dine

Marigold

The singer Alex Isley and the producer Jack Dine found refuge in one another with their 2019 EP, Wilton. Many artists hedge their bets on an array of composers and sounds, but Isley and Dine knew they had a good thing going. This year, they locked back in for their first full-length project, Marigold, reestablishing a connection that is magical in its subtlety. The little flourishes add up. It's in Isley's extra layer of harmonies, in Dine's seamless transition from "On & On" to "Still Wonder." The marigold flower symbolizes a feeling of despaired love, yet Isley still believes. On songs like "Without" and "Love Again," she declares her unwavering hope and desire, despite trying circumstances. Her pining exudes warmth, and, ultimately, Marigold is accessible and tender; an album for the lovers and the yearners. —Bobby Carter

(This review appears on NPR's Best R&B Albums of 2022. Read the entire list.)

27.

Jeezy & DJ Drama

SNOFALL

The man behind "My President" now boasts of having "Biden on the text." The man who helped bring glory to the mixtape is now a Grammy winner for his role in making an album. But before all of that, Jeezy was the Snowman, a formidable presence on mixtapes like Trap or Die, a street classic in Drama's long-running Gangsta Grillz series. They reunite for SNOFALL, revisiting where the history-making began: Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, the neighborhood that was ground zero for Gangsta Grillz before it became a tourist stop. So much has changed, which becomes a point of pride for Jeezy: "What you n***** expect? Ten years the same n****? / Waste a whole decade, and that'll be a shame, n****," he smirks on "Street Cred," pleased with his personal and artistic growth. There are subtle tweaks to his message and mindset, but what's most remarkable about the album is how energized and vital this partnership still sounds, all these years and achievements later. —Christina Lee

(This review appears on NPR Music's Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2022. Read the entire list.)

26.

Asake

Mr. Money with the Vibe

A torch was passed in Nigerian street-pop when the influential rapper Olamide signed Asake. Their collaboration, "Omo Ope," an amapiano-blended, chant-inciting bacchanal, equal parts thankful and flexing, sets the tone for the entire Asake experience. His debut, Mr. Money with the Vibe, honors its title, of course — in these songs, an emergent star dons a flamboyant playboy persona — but the album prioritizes atmosphere over extravagance. It's vaguely spiritual music about rising from a dangerous place, finding success and trying desperately to hold on to it. Where many Afro-pop songs have a shiny, synth-powered sound, a lot of Asake's songs are more muted, built out of glowing Fender Rhodes electric piano and programmed strings. The whizzing "Sunmomi" turns an intimate request ("move close to me") into an invocation, repeating the phrase over and over until it becomes a form of worship. At its most profound, the album has that same quality, feeling both sacred and profane. —Sheldon Pearce

25.

iLe

Nacarile

Nacarile is a portrait of an artist coming into her own. iLe (Ileana Cabra) comes from a musical dynasty of a family (she started performing with her stepbrothers in Calle 13) and the familial scrutiny has resulted in three albums since 2016 that show her getting more comfortable with her emotive voice but also her songwriting. Nacarile is her strongest statement yet and makes me impatient for future releases as they keep getting better and better. —Felix Contreras

24.

Immanuel Wilkins

The 7th Hand

Spirit is everything — catalyst and crucible, mother tongue and moral law — on The 7th Hand, the astonishingly assured second album by alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins. His balletic, instinctive quartet moves through this seven-movement suite in pursuit of divine surrender, proving how a blazing intensity of purpose can override the usual divisions of style. —Nate Chinen, WRTI

(A version of this review appears on Nate Chinen's Favorite Music of 2022. Read the entire list.)

23.

Angel Olsen

Big Time

Angel Olsen's singular voice has expanded across dreamy soundscapes for over a decade, navigating the frontiers of folk, garage rock and orchestral pop with both full-band bombast and the poignancy of a lone guitar, all the while revealing wry truths beneath a warm blanket of reverb. Olsen's striking sixth LP, Big Time, upholds her penchant for eluding genre limitations by evoking the nostalgia of classic country. Her voice is at its most compelling, positioned front and center amidst a compendium of pedal steel and Mellotron. Ahead of recording Big Time, Olsen fell in love and came out as queer, just before her parents passed away. The encapsulating nature of love and passion, loss and grief, are at the heart of Big Time, which soars with a steadfast vulnerability that not only embraces the transience of life but celebrates the lasting power of connection. —Desiré Moses, WNRN

22.

Jóhann Jóhannsson

Drone Mass

While Lizzo, Beyoncé and others beckoned fans into the light in 2022, I sought solace in the works of Max Richter, Hildur Guðnadóttir and other composers who find beauty and exaltation in the darkness. Few albums this year were as uplifting or transporting in that way as Jóhann Jóhannsson's posthumous Drone Mass, a stirring mix of strings, elegiac voices and deep, thrumming electronics with text inspired by the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians, ancient writings on creation, faith and salvation. Listening to Drone Mass feels like an invocation to exhale all mortal anxieties and stand, arms outspread, in awe of the infinite universe. —Robin Hilton

21.

SAULT

Air

Glory to Dean Josiah Cover, aka Inflo, the shadow behind Sault and the first Black man to win producer of the year in the 45-year history of the BRIT Awards. After recording NPR's No.1 album of 2020, Untitled (Black Is), Inflo and his anonymous conspirators appeared to have established an identity: The U.K collective made soul music for the 21st century. Little did we know, a change was gonna come. Air, the first of seven Sault releases in 2022, is a staggering pivot that finds Inflo directing a largely wordless choir (courtesy of London's The Music Confectionery) and an orchestra devoid of backbeats or bass lines, like if the Andrew Oldham Orchestra performed the works of Popol Vuh. It's a sublime reminder that Black music has no boundaries — and perhaps the flex of the year by the world's most intriguing producer. —Otis Hart

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