This is an annotated list of my favourite art from the year: best album, song(s), TV show(s), episode, movie, and book(s). Such year-end lists, with their stark, horizontal numbering, attempt to confront us with the veneer of objectivity—Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai, with the Lord’s Top 10. But I will go in the opposite direction, and embrace subjectivity. Rather than a list of the best art from 2023, this is a catalogue of the best art I happened to encounter this year (although I’ll veer toward this year.) I hope you will peruse it at your leisure, and perhaps find something new that you can enjoy too.

Best Album: No Thank You, by Little Simz

This was such an easy choice for me. Released in Dec 2022, I first heard it in February 2023. I immediately downloaded the whole thing, and have been playing it constantly. I haven’t played a rap album as much since J Cole’s “For Your Eyez Only”. And Simz’s album is better, I think. I am so glad that Adelle made that big stink and got Spotify to ensure that the platform’s default is to play an album’s songs in order, as the artist intended. Because Simz’s album flows flawlessly. The majority of the times that I’ve listened to her, I simply start the first song, and let the entire album play. (In this sense, “No Thank You” reminds me of Jhené Aiko’s album “Sail Out”—best experienced almost as a whole.)

The artist that Little Simz most reminds me of is Lupe Fiasco. And the album “No Thank You” most reminds me of is Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. Especially for Simz’s use of black gospel music as a backdrop (see for example the song “X”); and for the way she has the outrageous (but earned) confidence to just let a beat ride and play out at the end of a song, sometimes for over a minute, such as the entire last half of the song “No Merci”; and especially the ending of “Broken,” which, after such a dark, poignant song, leads into a tune that feels almost like it could open a Disney movie. 

My favourite song on the album is the first song, “Angel”. Just listen to this song—it’s got everything that makes her amazing. The beat: she keeps the beat where it belongs: in the background, restrained—a vehicle for the voice. The lyrics: “I can see how an artist can get tainted, frustrated / They don’t care if your mental is on the brink of somethin’ dark, as long as you cuttin’ somebody’s pay slip / And sendin’ their kids to private school in a spaceship / Yeah, I refuse to be on a slave ship / Give me all my masters and lower your wages.” Indeed, the entire album is a bit suffused with this bitter, chip on the shoulder about the inner workings of the music industry (in ways that remind me of Russ), that keeps cropping up in songs, and I find it compelling. She has songs about systemic racism, sexism, mental health; but also just fun, boastful songs, packed with perky lyricism. And all the beautiful chorus singing, and background tones…

Songs like “Sideways” simply sound ‘cool’, flow so nicely, and make her sound like a genuine, introspective, and supremely confident person. And “Sideways” flows so nicely right into “Who Even Cares” that it took me a month to even realize it was a different song, and not just a beat-switch. Everyone who hears me playing her asks me who she is. You just know she’s going to make it big, much bigger than she already has. She is, without exaggeration, the only artist for whom I have ever actually wanted to buy a concert ticket! And imagine my surprise when I realized my new favourite artist has also been starring in one of my favourite TV shows, Top Boy! What a year Little Simz has had!  

Best Song: Calm Down, by Rema

Yes, again, this was actually released in 2022, but this is still the song of 2023. There’s not much to say here—the song is fun, light, catchy, but not in a tacky way. Listen to it. If you don’t like it, I don’t know how to help you. The last few years, ‘afro’ beats have dominated my listening. It’s the alpha and omega: what all other music in some sense borrows from, and can only ultimately approach. And so I’m glad to see it starting to dominate the mainstream more, as well as penetrate other genres (“Mwaki”, the Kenyan EDM song by Sofiya Nzau (Kikuyu singer) and Zerb (Brazilian producer) was one of the most streamed songs of the year.)

The remix with Selena Gomez is fine, but it made me reflect on what it reveals about the relationships that structure the global music industry, as if Western ears needed this already perfect song to be anointed by our Disney princess in order to fully accept it on our radios. Now Rema’s breakout song will forever be married to her in many minds (I guess it is at least parasitic in both directions.) Compare this, however, to Burna Boy’s break-out “On the Low,” from one of the best album’s of 2019, “African Giant”. He kept that song all for himself, as he should have! Can you imagine if Bieber jumped on that song, in order to punch it up in North America? Ughh. To Selena, I say: if you like Rema, then make a new song together, instead of hopping on an already wildly popular break out song…

Honorable mentions:

“Slowdown” by Yellowstraps. This song is actually from 2023! As I was studying for my French exam, I started listening to more French music, and that brought me to these guys. I love a song that just jumps into it, no build up. Right from the opening seconds of this song, it’s just good, and you’re just hoping they won’t fuck it up. And they don’t. And by the time it’s over, you just want it to keep going. (On that note, there is a 2hour version of the song on Youtube, for those who find themselves so inclined…). The song is really just one verse, a chorus, and then they repeat the same first verse again, à la “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers.  Anyways, I hope these guys make it big too.

“Rush” by Arya Star. Beautiful voice, nice beat, immaculate flow. And perhaps my favourite lyric of the year: “Me no get the time for the hate and the bad energy / Got my mind on my money / Steady green like broccoli”… Amazing.

“Stars Are Blind” by Paris Hilton. I know, wow—left field, blast from the past. But the wonderful movie “Promising Young Woman” brought this old song (2006) back into my life, in a big way. It is used perfectly in a great scene in that movie, and they just let the song play in its entirety, and I found myself sitting there thinking, “Jesus, that song was such a banger!” I see that upon its release a critic called the song Paris Hilton’s “single greatest contribution to human culture.” Although 16year-old Kieran, at that time, may have prioritized another of Paris’s main contributions, 33year-old Kieran is now happy to agree with this assessment. This song is good. It’s fun and catchy (this time in a tacky way, yes), and it’s ‘tropical’. Its chorus is vaguely nihilistic, “even though the Gods are crazy, even though the stars are blind…” It took me a while to realize the song it reminds me of, but it’s Blondie’s “The Tide Is High” (Don’t they sound similar?!)

Best TV Show: Succession [Spoilers!]

Yes, this will be atop most everyone’s list, but that’s for good reason: it was the best show of 2023. I remember once hearing a musician explaining what made the great classical composers like Beethoven so good, and he said it was the “inevitability” of the music: every sound has to be exactly where it is, and when you hear the next sounds, you find yourself thinking, yes, that’s what had to follow, exactly. Beethoven’s music is inevitable in its buildup and progressions and crescendos… Anyways, Succession was similarly perfect in its inevitability.

It was brilliant killing off Logan in the 3^rd episode of the final season. The damn show was called “succession,” and Logan was in a hospital bed from the very first episode, but they make you forget it’s ever going to happen. And then, boom, the inevitability of death hits you as it often does: suddenly, and leaving you scrambling in disbelief. And the kids were always going to fuck it up: Roman was always going to be a sputtering child on the precipice of giving a speech; Ken always had to be left in a boardroom having a fit, screaming ‘this is mine, daddy promised’; Shiv was always going to make the (relatively) smartest move, but be left stuck in the shadow of a powerful man (trading her estranged father for her estranged husband); and Tom…fucking Tom: it was always going to be Tom, wasn’t it! It had to be. Tom winning was both ‘almost’ impossible to see beforehand, and certainly impossible to deny after the fact. 

Allow me to also highlight that it was Tom who also had the single greatest insult in a show chock full of absolutely fantastic insults, when he said, “Everyone’s laughing up their sleeves about your date…because she’s brought a ludicrously capacious bag. What’s even in there, flat shoes for the subway? Her lunch pail? It’s monstrous, it’s gargantuan. You could take it camping—you could slide it across the floor after a bank-job.” It’s the defining insult of Succession: incomprehensibly petty, overtly yet subtly classist, deliciously verbose, and wholly original.

Also, the savage argument that Tom and Shiv have on their balcony in S4E7 is phenomenal (Google “Tom and Shiv Clear the air” and watch it on Youtube). In a show where characters have spent so much time tactfully speaking around topics, this is a scene where they drop all pretence, and the speech acts that constitute an argument become like a dagger fight in the mud and the dark (to paraphrase Logan). When we each come to have our own marriage-altering fights, we can only hope that we find the simple, direct language that so perfectly captures our partner’s defining flaws, and cuts them to the quick. Ha!

Yes, the show is obsessed with the lives of the rich and powerful, and so mirrors (as well as feeds) our own perverse obsession with such people. But it deals with its subjects with more than just the simplistic, sophomoric, socialist, Schadenfreude that characterizes other films/tv in this category, such as “The Menu” or “Triangle of Sadness”. (“Industry” is also OK, but I think of it as “The O.C.” version of Succession.) Finally, we need to appreciate the unprecedented confidence to end with just four, perfect seasons. That is class.

Runner Up: Barry

That is how you finish-off your anti-hero. Nobody else has had the courage to do that: obviously not Dexter, and not Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, or Mad Men etc. They all had to find their own way to give their anti-hero his own terms, in the end… (Perhaps the Sopranos did it, but in a way that didn’t make sense or fit.) Barry was both the funniest and most surprising show on television, right till the very end.

Honorable Mention: “How To With John Wilson”

Just do yourself a favour and watch these three, all-too-short seasons. See the sheer weirdness of people, and how they are all too ready to bare their strange souls to the world (have they forgot there’s a camera rolling??). John Wilson has been behind a camera most of his life, it seems, just capturing…life. And he has developed an unparalleled gift for it. (THE BEST editing of the year. Watch it, and you’ll see what I mean, just from the introductions of each episode.) To watch each episode is to feel like you’ve learnt something important, and witnessed something both unapologetically ordinary yet memorable.

Best TV Episode: “Long, Long Time,” The Last of Us (S1E3)

As soon as the credits rolled, I kinda knew it—hard to beat this episode. The first two episodes of the season do such a great job of setting the parameters of the universe: basically, shit will go bad. Indeed, immediately before they begin telling the story of Bill and Frank, they cut from a death pit where innocent civilians were killed by the government—yeah, grim. So when they suddenly start unfolding this little love story, you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time. Add to this the fact that Bill’s eyes (and his Joker-like face), when wide with excitement and wonder at Frank’s whole setup, seem to hold within them the potential for psychopathy. (He’s going so stab him any second!) But then the other shoe never drops… Yet you know it will, though, they’re just trying to get the audience emotionally invested before the characters are physically eviscerated. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but you are ready to forgive them for it, so long as they do it well. But there’s no question that they are setting up something bad, because the alternative is that they’re just taking the time to explore these two men finding love at the end of the world (a story they entirely flesh out from the video game). And that alternative seems impossible. But then they do it! As Bill says at one point, “From an objective point of view, it’s incredibly romantic.” It was perfect. 

Best Movie: “Incendies,” dir. Denis Villeneuve. [No spoilers]

I have now watched all of Villeneuve’s movies, and he simply doesn’t miss. He doesn’t have a bad movie. And he has such a powerful, fixed vision for ‘tone’ and ‘feel’ and geography and landscape in his movies. Perhaps most importantly, he’s dark, and just weird, and he leans into his dark weirdness. I’m coming to think of Villeneuve as a kind of Spielberg meets Cronenberg: he’s now making big movies, that will stand the time as cinematic lite-classics (Spielberg), but he’s also never going to indulge in camp, or ever make something even close to kid-friendly (Cronenberg). (That’s why it’s so perfect that the Dune universe is in his hands…)

Anyways, Incendies is amazing. It’s violent, it’s supremely disturbing, but it’s somehow also an uplifting story (?). Villeneuve first saw the play, and felt that he was witnessing “a masterpiece.” One might say that through his adaptation, he achieved the same.  I will never, ever stop thinking about this film–it is part of the furniture of my mind now.

And yes, the best movie I watched this year is from 2010. If I had to pick a best movie from 2023, I would still pick “The Banshees of Inisherin,” from 2022. Ha! That is a movie where just the script itself is a joy to read. (I assume.) The language (and yes, the accents) is so, so beautiful. I feel that the better the writer, the more ‘boring’ story they will chose to tell, and this movie captures that perfectly. Martin McDonagh is like, ‘here is the civil war, happening right over there, but I’m just going to tell you this story instead, about two friends who have a falling out, and you’re going to love it.”

It’s hilarious, I had tears from laughing. And I now want a donkey (RIP Jenny!). And somebody please get Colin Farrell’s eyebrows their own star on the Hollywood walk of fame, they deserve it—those two caterpillars on his forehead pack more pathos than most actor’s entire careers.

Best Book: Aftermath, by Rachel Cusk

A slim, elegant memoir exploring the end of a marriage, and the life (and love) that follows. It is full of beautiful, crushing, and hilarious sentences. If you don’t love these sentences, I pity you…Describing arguments, Cusk writes: “An argument is only an emergency of self-definition” (p1). Or again: “Most marriages have a public face, an aspect of performance, like the body has its skin. A couple arguing in public is like the body bleeding” (p52). Then describing the appearance of her date, she describes him as “dressed in the manner of a Christian missionary…in clothes whose insignificance almost constitutes a significance of its own.” When trying to fall in love with someone new, while still heartbroken, she writes “our conversation is like chewing on barbed-wire” (p113). On another date, who she invites to her house, she “showed him around my house, bought flowers, made him a beautiful lunch, like a small country advertising itself for invasion” (p117). Describing her children’s hamsters, she writes “sometimes they climb the bars at the sides of the cages and look out with inquisitive bead-bright eyes, as though, having issued from their usual self-absorption, they now expect something to happen” (p44). She describes her renter’s offensively large television as his “vast black blinking god” (p 46). Finally, musing on femininity, she says “I wonder whether our vulnerability is anything more than something invented to make men feel brave” (p46).

Runner up: “Septology,” by Jon Fosse

Technically, this is a seven volume ‘book’, and at this time, I’ve only read the first five volumes. It’s special. That said, I often find myself wondering, ‘am I actually liking this, or am I just falling into the hype?’ (Fosse just won the Nobel prize for literature this year, and I came to this book through rave reviews.) But my questioning is only due to the fact that it takes a while to get into the “experience” of reading this book—and if you’re not in it, the book won’t work. But when you’re in it, you realize that the prose is simply trying to represent how thinking itself works, I think. And that is really very interesting.

As I understand it, I believe that Fosse is taking the truth that reading (and writing) is ultimately a form of ‘paying attention to the world’ to its ultimate end point: what happens if we hone our attention so as to pay attention to every moment, to every fleeting thought, even those that flit in and flit out, or those that take you into an entire memory, in an instant, before leaving you back where you started… What happens to our attempts at self-narrative when we try to hold together all these aspects of consciousness… All of a sudden, the sentence will take a turn, and it won’t make any sense, and then you’ll realize, ‘oh my, the narrator is entering into a memory, and the memory is slowly dawning on him…’ That is why, I assume, the entire book is written in a single sentence. It really is such an impressive endeavour, carried out perfectly.

Honourable mention: Stop-time, by Frank Conroy

Perhaps the best autobiography I have ever read (OK, not as good as Knausgaard’s “My Struggle.” But for a single, small book, maybe the best.) Hilarious, and honest. He perfectly captures and recreates in succession the feelings and mindset of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. I wish I could share some sentences, but Quentin has my copy, even though I just had to remind him that I’ve indeed lent it to him. Quentin, if you’re reading this, I’ll want that back.