kieran's 2022 in review

Home
Archive
About
New
Top
Discussion
My top 25ish songs of 2022 (plus 20 honorable mentions)
Here are my top 25 songs of 2022 with 20 bonus honorable mentions. I’ve also made Spotify and YouTube playlists. Thanks for reading, hope you find…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#2 - Nia Archives - "Baianá"
Its recipe may be straightforward: take a sample and mold it around unyieldingly furious breakbeats. But the result is massive. The sunbaked melodies of…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
1
#3 - Bladee & Ecco2k - "The Flag is Raised" / Thaiboy Digital - "I'm Fresh" (tie)
2022 may have been the best year ever for drainers and sad boys. There was Bladee, Ecco2k, and Whitearmor’s iridescent Crest, and later in the year…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#4 - xaviersobased - "far" / "choir" prod. cru (tie)
There’s a crookedness to Xavier’s music that might make you recoil at first. The bass is often brutally blown out, the songs glitch and buffer like an…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#5 - Jane Remover - "Royal Blue Walls"
Jane’s music has gradually unspooled in length and feeling over the last couple of years. Teen Week was pressurized and claustrophobic, drowned in…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
2
#6 - Izaya Tiji - "I drink blood" (prod. Souljaspirits)
Flashy bars and aggressive voices are so fetishized in rap/pop that it can be almost off-putting to hear someone as wispy and understated as Izaya Tiji…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#7 - Hemlocke Springs - "Girlfriend"
“Girlfriend” sprang onto my TikTok feed one day soundtracking an edit of a cat as it was digitally discombobulated: its body parts compressed into a…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#8 - GREED - "summer mixx 2k22"
Maybe the most electrifying underground rap collective right now is GREED. Its current and former artists are making some of the weirdest and wildest…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#9 - Nilüfer Yanya - "stabilise" / "chase me" (tie)
Nilüfer gets so much done with spartan lyrics and subtly disquieting instrumentation. I love the fusion of the wistful chords and drums with the febrile…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
3
#10 - Asian Doll ft. Bandmanrill - "Get Jumped" & Bandmanrill - "BANDTHOVEN" (tie)
I don’t know if it’s possible to listen to “Get Jumped” without bopping your head or jumping around in a frenetic sprint-dance. There’s no messing…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#11 - Sudan Archives - "ChevyS10"
“ChevyS10” submerges you in Sudan Archives’ cinematic sound-world so vividly. The six-minute track is ostensibly about a woman recalling a night when…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
#12 - Ame - "Degree" (prod. Royal, y2tnb, Brycenknwn, Ame)
One of my favorite scenes/sounds this year was Regalia, a regal style pioneered by producers like Royal, Reset, and Gloyourkrazy and rappers like…
 • 
Kieran Press-Reynolds
© 2023 Kieran Press-Reynolds
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing