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Beyoncé saved our soul. Bad Bunny and Rosalía schooled us on Spanish. And Harry Styles made us believe that it was “just us” and him.
From house to mambo, here are the top 10 tracks that pumped up the power of music in 2022.
There were arguably even better songs on album of the year “Renaissance” (see “Cuff It” below), but “Break My Soul” — surprisingly, Beyoncé’s first No. 1 solo hit since 2008’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”— found the über-diva capturing the moment better than any other artist in 2022. Dropped just as pent-up party people around the world were ready to release their post-pandemic wiggle, it was a cathartic throwback to the spirit-reaffirming house music of the ’90s as clubgoers emerged from the worst of the AIDS epidemic. The positively euphoric effect even had folks wanting to follow Bey’s lead and quit their jobs.
At this point, any Lamar album is an event. And after the certified classics of 2012’s “Good Kid, m.A.A.d City,” 2015’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and 2017’s “Damn,” 2022’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” was no exception. The LP’s epic, near-seven-minute highlight (featuring Portishead singer Beth Gibbons) is a hauntingly moody meditation on black family trauma — and breaking a “generational curse.”
His third solo album may have been called “Harry’s House,” but it was really Harry’s world in 2022.
