My favourite album of 2022 – Weyes Blood’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow – arrived quite recently. It’s dream-pop with passion, as Natalie Mering’s cut-glass vocal mines for hope amid post-pandemic isolation.
Caitlin Rose returned after a nine-year hiatus with CAZEMI, delivering down-home lullabies with a coating of indie rock grit in her warm Nashville twang.
And Angel Olsen followed her 2019 epic, All Mirrors, with Big Time.
After last year’s double whammy (Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Blue Banisters), Lana Del Rey shunned the limelight in 2022, but still found time for soundtracks – ‘Watercolour Eyes,’ from HBO’s Euphoria – and a Father John Misty cover, ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous.’ Her latest single, ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd‘, comes from the album of the same name, out next March.
In between posting bizarre TikTok videos, Madonna released a bumper remix album, Finally Enough Love, with a world tour rumoured for 2023.
Bobbie Gentry’s 1971 album, I’ll Never Fall in Love Again, was reissued on vinyl, and a condensed version of the 2018 box-set, The Girl From Chickasaw County, was also released.
Among the many artists we lost in 2022 were two of the greatest female singers in music history: Ronnie Spector, leader of the Ronettes and one of rock’s great survivors; and Irene Cara, Latina superstar and undisputed queen of soundtracks. Both women championed equality in an often cutthroat industry.
The siren song of Twin Peaks was hushed as composer Angelo Badalamenti and Roadhouse diva Julee Cruise – both longtime collaborators with David Lynch – passed away.
And finally, the death of Terry Hall has played on my mind a great deal lately. He’ll always be remembered as the voice of The Specials, but Fun Boy Three‘s debut was one of the first albums I bought, and I also remember The Colourfield fondly. A lifelong anti-racist, he became a mental health advocate and spoke frankly of his past trauma. In his unassuming way, this working-class lad from Coventry was a generational poet and the loss to British music is immeasurable.