This list of NPR Music's best songs of 2023 looks unlike any we've ever made before. It's not just the number of songs that has changed. There are no rankings here — in fact, the 123 songs below ...

Since 2000, metal has shape-shifted drastically. From primal nu-metal and core anthems, to the zenith of tech-death and prog, to a revival of classic thrash and occult doom, and post-genre ...

Seventy-one tracks that asked big questions, found new kinship between genres and helped us see the good in Ken. By Jon Pareles Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz Jon Pareles The album may be imperiled ...

A side effect of the way we listen to music in the streaming era is that it's harder than ever for new stars to break through. Or it was until 2024, anyway. This year, it felt like a page turned, the ...

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week (the eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight). This week’s countdown is below, and you can listen ...

Summer is so close, we can feel it. As we approach the halfway point of the year, there are so many great songs that have served as the soundtrack to our senior year and helped us work our way through ...

A standout on the tail end of the Everything All the Time tracklist, “Monsters” is one of the most overtly Southern-sounding songs from Band of Horses’ debut. Sparse without feeling austere, the warm ...

From "I Saw Her Standing There" to "Live and Let Die" to "Freedom," EW offers a career-spanning list of Sir Paul's best tunes. Though it was not the first song written by McCartney as a member of the ...

Rock was alive and well in 2021, with the pandemic hold up of 2020 providing us with one of the strongest years of rock music in recent memory. There was a lot to be grateful for in music from the ...

One of the great joys of listening to music in the ’90s was then being able to curate your own best-ofs. It was the decade of cassette mixtapes, the highly personal, labor-intensive home recording ...

Things are starting to look up for all of us. As we venture out of our homes and (hopefully) to shows for the first time in almost 18 months, we’re reminded of the ways that music served, perhaps more ...

This year, the pop-music world felt more wide open than ever. Our list of 2021’s best songs includes a beautiful indie-pop celebration of queer love, a reggaeton star tucking into some sweet Eighties ...