by Olawale Lala for Playlist Central 

It has been an interesting year for Pop music. Beyonce’s “Renaissance” tour fever ensured her 2022 album would still dominate large parts of the year. Even weirder, was TIME magazine’s 2023 person of the year, Taylor Swift deHning the year with her re-recorded albums and billion dollar Era’s tours but no major new release. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie - perhaps the most pop movie ever, saw its release accompanied by a soundtrack Hlled with triumphant hits and collaborations that, looking back, almost seemed to have been coined by a faultless algorithm. Thankfully, artists like SZA and Olivia Rodrigo still impressively held their own in this year of tours and Tik-Toks with Herce sophomores that deHed expectations.

For the second installment of our best of 2023 series, we asked Playlist Central’s resident Pop enthusiasts for their best albums this year.

LALA's TOP 3

Lana Del Rey - Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard.

This is easily Lana Del Rey’s best work - and it is not the first time I've had those sentiments about a new Lana Album. She seems to peel a new layer as each year passes and you always get the feeling she is being entirely honest about whatever stage in life she is. On this album, 37 year Old Lana Del Rey embodies the spirit of a woman who has fought love’s toughest wars and now looks upon previous battles with satisfaction as she narrates her experience. Imperfect honesty and a desire to hold on to loved ones are recurring themes on the album as she calls on the spirit of her grandfather to watch over her father as the latter fishes in the deep sea and remembers the things that are at the “very heart of things” like children, marriage and marathons by the sea. Lyrics like Fishtail’s “Not that smart, but i've got things to say..” show an acceptance of imperfection that persists in many other tracks as she fades into whispers in the middle of heart-wrenching monologues. My favorite track - Margret, is a marriage song dedicated to super producer Jack Antonoff (who appears on the track under the moniker “Bleachers”) and his actress fiance, Margaret Qualley. She begins again carefree and imperfect “this is a simple song, gonna write it for a friend..”, but at the heart of the near 6-minute track is the answer to a question that tortures all young lovers “How do I know when I’m in love?” To this, Lana sings “When you know, you know.” Lasting 77 minutes, Did you Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard is a long album with long songs that are allowed to reach their emotional climax and drift into almost meditative voyages.

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You

Caroline Polacheck’s second solo album is an outstanding showcase of high risk high reward. The high-concept album explores a longing for desire in ways more akin to art film than pop record. More impressive than Caroline’s almost abstract songwriting is the way her operatic voice constantly lunges forward in one moment and crashes back down to earth in the next. It is with these extraordinary flexes that Caroline Polacheck is able to engulf us with a feeling of endless yearning. The album cover which is one of my favorite pictures of all time (Shout out to Aidan Zamiri) shows Caroline escaping (Or “mindlessly marching away from”) the rat race of city life into a lush sandy beach. Most of the album plays out on this Tropical Island where she hops in and out of sight never seeming to be able to reach this land of desire that she can almost smell. A lot of the songs like Fly to you, Sunset and Butterfly Net, deal with the subject of reuniting with a lover and how the disillusions of surviving alone fade away at the hope of yet another new start. With incredible genius, Caroline manages to leave the door open and suggest unanswered questions throughout the album up until its final track Billions where she revels in the abundance of her lover - in whom she finally seems to have found this land of desire. Or perhaps after fighting and searching fruitlessly, she is finally on her knees begging; “Hand it over…. Give me closure, He’s a pearl, I'm the oyster!” She cries out, “I’ve never felt so close to youuu”. Caroline Polacheck is high art. Everything from her videos to her lyrics are laced with complex narratives and subtleties that make her one of the most interesting voices in modern pop.

Hannah Diamond - Picture Perfect 

Pink Panthress and Amaraee miss out on my list thanks to this gem of an album by PC music’s Hannah Diamond. While she may still be obscure to many, she has been releasing music since 2013 and her 2015 single “Hi” went a long way in shifting my views on what pop music could be. Diamond is a legit pioneer of the hyperpop genre thanks to her hyper-stylised, hyper-feminine songs with characters that seem to rot in bed waiting on text backs and reflecting on insecure relationships. With Picture Perfect, Hannah Diamond replaces her lonely girl with an uplifting pop star. While she may still be in the bedroom, Diamond’s character is mature enough to shift her focus to reflect on her digital self, how the photographed image is perceived and what that means for the girl on the bed trapped in imperfect skin and bones. On my favorite track “Poster Girl” the tone is conversational as she asks her idol image; “Do you think I’m incomplete when you’re staring back at me…I reach out to touch your skin but you’re just ink glistening. Poster girl on my wall I wanna be just like you, a girl too good to be true.” Diamond's lyrics depict a complex girl in a simple world who is only able to express these complex feelings in naive language. It is in this naive language her joy and genius lie. The album inspires deep nostalgic teenage feelings and questions about future relationships in a world where there are more and more miserable girls behind the scenes of beautiful digital images. Like she says on No FX “In a world of windows and screens, i touch nothing and nothing touches me”