Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts is critics’ favourite album of 2023
Olivia Rodrigo has broken the second album curse – with critics naming her messy, intimate, coming-of-age record Guts the best new release of 2023.
Packed with punk-pop anthems and barbed ballads, the album topped a “poll of polls” compiled by BBC News.
Rodrigo told the BBC it was a “happier” and “more playful” record than her debut, Sour, with a rockier sound inspired by her forthcoming tour.
“It’s such a cathartic experience to sing songs like that in a crowd.”
Released in September, Guts topped the UK and US charts, and has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, including album of the year.
Rolling Stone magazine called it “another instant classic”, while AllMusic called Rodrigo an “artist with plenty of things to say, and the confidence and eloquence to say them her way”.
While her debut was largely written about one disastrous relationship, Guts finds her discussing fame, pain, questionable hook-ups, self-sabotage, and stumbling into adulthood.
Vampire is about a parasitic boyfriend, All-American Bitch tackles the contradictory expectations imposed on women, while Get Him Back plays with the duality of the title phrase: Is Rodrigo trying to reunite with her ex, or take revenge on him? Why not both?
The production is loud and melodic and full of clever tricks (listen to how the backing vocals fragment when Rodrigo sings, “I can’t hear my thoughts”, on Bad Idea, Right?); while Rodrigo’s powerhouse voice captures all the seething sarcasm of a resentful teenager.
Guts was the most popular choice on 25 “end-of-year” lists surveyed by the BBC – including NME, Rolling Stone, the Times, Australia’s Double J and France’s Les Inrockuptibles magazine.
Records were assigned points based on their position in each list. The number one album received 20 points, the number two album received 19 points, and so on.
In total, the critics named 171 records among their favourites, from the champagne disco of Jessie Ware’s That! Feels Good! to the sensual R&B of Janelle Monaé’s The Age Of Pleasure.
Here are the albums that made the Top 10, along with a selection of reviews.
1) Olivia Rodrigo – Guts
The Independent: “Gut sees Rodrigo smash her way out of the confines of small screen life and arrive kicking and screaming into her real life.”
Billboard magazine: “She captures what growing up really feels like: Young people are angsty, they’re complicated, they’re emotional, they have an attitude – and despite it all, they have a ton of fun. If that’s not the real teenage dream, we don’t know what is.”
2) Boygenius – The Record
The debut album by indie-rock “supergroup” Boygenius – aka Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker – is also a Grammy nominee for album of the year.
The Telegraph: “A selection of very finely honed songs about love and friendship, studded with fantastic and consistently delightful lyrical details… and performed with joyous energy and a spirit of pleasing simpatico reflected in lovely harmonies and surprising arrangements.”
Mojo magazine: “The Record is beautifully integrated, each song feeling like an ongoing conversation, a harmonious thread they can pick up any time. It’s very much worth getting to know it.”
3) Caroline Polachek – Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
The fourth solo album by Caroline Polachek is an experimental (but never inaccessible) exploration of desire and the outer limits of pop music.
Variety: “A deeply imaginative songwriter with the vocal range and skill to execute her unusual, intuitive melodies that recall Kate Bush and Bjork. Desire is clearly her vision all the way, a forceful and determined effort that vaults her to the front of adventurous pop music.”
Pitchfork: “Caroline Polachek’s best album of her career is a transformative pop experience, a passionate, richly melodic odyssey into the darkest corners of love.”
4) Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?
Like the abandoned Californian tunnel of the title, Lana Del Rey’s ninth album delved into the star’s hidden past – and the repercussions of fame, family and death.
Rolling Stone: “The core of Ocean Blvd is about Lana Del Rey trying to get a closer look at herself, flipping the story as we have come to understand (and maybe even misunderstand) about what she’s trying to tell us. Through stories of her family, a failed relationship, her conflicting desire of being both seen and hidden, Del Rey exposed more than just who she is, but why she is who she is.”
New York Times: “Pop’s divisive princess swings for the heavens on her sprawling ninth album, and even at her most meandering, you have to admire the ambition.”
5) Sufjan Stevens – Javelin
Fusing the bare-bones folk of his beloved 2015 album Carrie & Lowell to the grand, orchestral fantasias of his earlier work, Javelin saw Sufjan Stevens reach new heights.
The Line Of Best Fit: “A deeply personal, Earth-moving masterpiece exploring relationship tensions with the gravitas of an apocalypse and the simplicity of a melody passed down through generations.”
NME: “Amidst a serious health episode, and the loss of his partner in April, Sufjan turned to full singer-songwriter mode for the first time since 2015. His devastating lyrics [represent] another triumph from the prolific cult hero.”
6) Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We
Mitski called her seventh album her “most American” record to date – a compendium of unfinished stories about love, loneliness, family, disillusion and addiction, set to some of her most beguiling melodies.
American Songwriter: “Mitski has proven to be adept at holding a mirror up to humanity, but she expands that skill on this record tenfold. She creates a microcosm of sorts, representative of the powerful effects of love on the other people in her life.”
Slate: “[The album’s] emotional peaks are so moving that the listener may also be convinced that love is a light in a dark world, a pillar of fire in the wilderness. Indeed, Mitski’s ability to pack so many gut-punches and inspired ideas into half an hour remains uncannily impactful.”
7) Blur – The Ballad Of Darren
Damon Albarn called Blur’s first album in eight years an “aftershock record”, written in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the deaths of several close friends. A sense of melancholy lingers, but the album is awash in harmonies that highlight the importance of friendship in tough times.
Rolling Stone: “Blur return older and wiser, reflecting on the here and now while still managing to retain every ounce of the charm and musicality that made them such a brilliant prospect in the first place.”
NPR: “Songs like The Ballad and The Narcissist express angst and regret, but also a version of hope – that wounds will heal, that things will eventually work – that only comes from accrued experience with the cycles of life.”
8) Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good!
“I’m a lady, I’m a lover, a freak and a mother,” sings Jessie Ware on her fifth album – an enthusiastic celebration of sensual pleasure, set to a thumping disco beat, that earned her a second Mercury Prize nomination.
Stereogum: “That! Feels Good! is filled with songs where sex and the club are intertwined – one leads to the other, and that leads to ecstasy. Even when she slips back into ballad mode on Hello Love, she sounds breathless, sensual.”
Double J: “Disco never died, but its constant revival can be patchy in the wrong hands. Jessie Ware holds it close to her heart and as such it feels real. And good!”
9) Wednesday – Rat Saw Dog
With two guitarists and a lap steel player, Carolina band Wednesday can create a visceral wall of sound that’s equally indebted to 90s shoegaze indie and downhome Americana. On their fifth album, singer-guitarist Kelly Hartzman sketches out the lonely, tragic stories of small-town America with poetic compassion.
Uncut: “This is an album full of everyday tragedies: overdoses, police raids, car crashes, ungrounded amps, unwanted pregnancies, head lice, nosebleeds, and a relentless loneliness that floods you even when you’re among friends, bandmates or lovers.”
Uproxxx: “Of its many attributes, what stands out to me the most is how regional it feels. This is the first record I have heard in a long time that feels like it came from somewhere.”
10) Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy
Edinburgh trio Young Fathers say they want to make pop music, but pop music doesn’t normally sound like this. As the title suggests, their fourth album is passionate, furious, exuberant, spiritual and crammed full of ideas that shouldn’t work together. The fact that they do is exhilarating.
Guardian: “Heavy Heavy is a model of economy; 30 minutes of music marked by the thrilling and increasingly rare sense that you’re in the presence of something that’s unique and completely modern, that couldn’t have been made before now.”
The Quietus: “Faced with a decaying world, Young Fathers pack so much conviction into their performances that you cannot help but react to it with visceral movement and awe. They look at the current state of the Earth and draw confident optimism from it, prophesying not that we’ll save it, but that it will crumble into a clean slate.”
The next 10:
11) Lankum – False Lankum
12) Amaarae – Fountain Baby
13) Zach Bryan – Zach Bryan
14) Paramore – This Is Why
15) SZA – SOS
16) Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps
17) Anohni and the Johnsons – My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
18) PJ Harvey – I Inside The Old Year Dying
19) Troye Sivan – Something To Give Each Other
20) Noname – Sundial
The chart was compiled from 25 “best of” lists in the following publications: The Atlantic, AV Club, Billboard, Consequence of Sound, Daily Mail, DIY, Double J, Entertainment Weekly, The Forty Five, The Guardian, Hot Press, The Independent, Les Inrocks, Mojo Magazine, The Needledrop, The New York Times, NME, Paste, People Magazine, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, The Sunday Times, Time Magazine and Uncut.