The Best Songs of 2022 Ranked

It’s impossible to overlook The 1975’s impact. A band with the most stalwart of fanbases - who have mostly been there through their measly beginnings - there’s an unspoken rule book for how they’re supposed to behave, and what the music should sound like. After an underwhelming start with “Part Of The Band”, here, Matt Healy returns to the hair-flipping archetype that started their trajectory and “Happiness” marked their biggest fan success since 2020's “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”. A little sprinkle of 80s sheen, sax solos, and backing from Jack Antonoff goes a long way. HANNAH BROWNE

We’ve all been told that holding onto grudges is bad for our health, but Sky Ferreira actually celebrates them on “Don’t Forget”. An extraordinary comeback track, Ferreira has seen her share of betrayals and setbacks in the music biz, but the song’s pulsing energy and bravado prove that she’s a survivor. Some resentments never fully heal, but they can provide fuel for fabulous songs like “Don’t Forget.” It’s great to have one of the most original voices of the 2010s return to top form. LARRY McCLAIN

The task that umru so clearly relishes on “heart2” is to eliminate the spaces around guest vocalists Petal Supply and Rebecca Black, then bomb everything else into submission. The chaos he sows represents the world exploding around them, the knee-buckling realisation that someone doesn’t love you anymore. Supply and Black – the latter in the midst of a hyperpop reboot at age 25(!) – refuse to entertain the absurdity: but you’re supposed to love me, I have it all worked out. “heart2” is a larger metaphor for the death of youthful optimism, the cold replacement of the way things should be, with how they are. The speed and confusion create the disorientation that send so many down the wrong paths. STEVE FORSTNEGER

There couldn’t have been better timing for Jeshi’s 2022 album, Universal Credit. A soundtrack to inner-city malaise – and, poignantly, the UK’s cost of living crisis - with jarring instrumentals, “Protein” is a standout that once heard, it sticks with your forever. “How money weigh me down, anchor on my neck / No sense, empty pool, gliding through the stress”, he sings, while accepting a blunt reality against the beat-laden chorus led by Obongjayar. It’s artful and flips the script, while Jeshi reaches the heights of his successors. Most of all, though, he’s on the people’s side. HANNAH BROWNE

Yung Lean is picking FKA Twigs for a joyride in his white limousine tricked out with chandeliers; waiting in an extravagant tulle wedding dress, she sends a text via spreadsheet: ‘WHERE R U? X’ Together, they stir up a Molotov cocktail of sleazy glamour on “Bliss”, taken from Yung Lean’s mixtape Stardust. Cruising down the highway, the destination is a motorik dreamscape drawn from the foundations of Soviet post-punk track “Ha Заре” by Альянс. That propulsive, almost Brutalist bassline refuses to loosen its grip until an interruption of a service bell that chimes like the flash of a smile, a quick wink. Less a track and more a story, “Bliss” is a fantastical hybrid of two world-building artists bringing to life the furthest extremes of your imagination. SOPHIE WALKER