Without pretensions of completionism, but not even that of giving full voice to the editorial staff's rankings, we thought we'd let you listen to the playlists that best represent each person's “musical year”. The songs that stood out within a certain genre, the symbolic songs of revelation artists or great confirmations – or, more simply, the songs that meant something to us who listened to them.
Gabriele Benzing
We ended up in the timeline wrong? Pandemic, war, climate crisis… as Mattia Salvia tells us in “Interregnum”, the present increasingly resembles that episode of “Community” (now a meme) in which a throw of the dice takes the protagonists into a dark timeline, where everything that can go wrong goes fatally wrong. “Don't look back”, replies Chris Bathgate accompanied by the sigh of the old organ of “The Significance Of Peaches”. Point your gaze towards the new day that comes. Don't stop to regret what could have been. Perhaps this is the secret to escaping from the parallel dimension in which we have been stuck.
“We've got to live in the moment”, to put it in the words of another god songwriter most inspired in America today, Simon Joyner, with his rugged songs for stolen guitars: when the tornado has passed, we'll see what's left standing. And even after a season in hell, as Jeff Tweedy sings in Wilco's generous return to origins, we will at least have one story to tell. We won't be came out betterprobably, but we may have learned something. Maybe the lesson that the Mountain Goats put at the end of the fierce revenge fantasies of “Bleed Out”: “I'm gonna tell my friends to all go to hell/ And wish my enemies well”. Well, this would already be a good way to stop looking back.
Marco Bercella
My personal selection of 40 songs taken from my 40 favorite records of 2022, obviously in…radio-friendly order. Happy listening!
Valerio D'Onofrio
Paolo Ciro
Matteo Contri
One hundred and one songs to retrace an extremely up-and-down 2022, with a small spoiler on my album of the year.
Michele Corrado
There are so many musical genres and scenes, global and national, that today it is possible to follow and so many treasures that each of these areas holds, that with each passing year it becomes more difficult to produce a playlist that is concise and satisfying.
The only way to tackle such a mission is to impose stringent rules on yourself. In my case, otherwise I wouldn't finish it, I said to myself “okay, 2022, only 22 songs”. Thus was born an inconsistent and uninhibited string of songs, which doesn't care about genres and limits, but only about beauty and “stickiness”.
I promise that next year I will choose 23 songs instead and the next year 24 and so on, until one day something stops me.
Giuliano Delli Paoli
We fly from Natalia Lafourcade's Mexico to Ralph Kaminski's Poland, and from the Franco-Belgian scene, in great shape – be it a magnificent return like that of Stromae or an inviting surprise like the extroverted Lomepal does the same – to the stars with dizzying numbers of mainstream like Taylor Swift. Then there are the new mothers from Portland who continue to make us dream like Alela Diane and the timeless muses who instead crave maternal prosperity by pulling yet another pearl out of the drawer like the unattainable Lana Del Rey. In short, there is (almost) something for every taste, for an elusive yet dense vintage.
Claudio Fabretti
From the King Hannah revelation to the consecration of the Fontaines Dc. My “dirty thirty” is also a summary of my ranking of the albums that I loved most in 2022. A selection in which a conspicuous female representation could not be missing, led by the wonderful Natalia Lafourcade with the title track of his very refined latest work and composed of now first-rate stars such as Anna Von Hausswolff (also amazing in live format), Angel Olsen (this time in a country version), Natalie Mering alias Weyes Blood (already record of the month on these frequencies) and the always versatile Cate Le Bon. Richer than usual, due to the habits of the undersigned, the hip-hop section, with an entirely French-language outpost formed by the duo Stromae-Lomepal (return and surprise of the year respectively), and with the new prowess of the biting Kae Tempest and the tandem Danger Mouse-Black Thought.
There is also no shortage of big names: The Weeknd, who never betrays, the evergreens Suede and Beach House, the ineffable Alex Turner driving the increasingly sophisticated machine of his Arctic Monkeys, The Smile declination of the Radiohead verb, the guru Brian Eno, who has returned to lend his voice to dense ambient textures, the other electronic master Jean-Michel Jarre (another who seems to never want to age) and the now historic Porcupine Tree of Steven Wilson, whose return to the track was one of the most welcome surprises of the year. The folk side is dominated by the two very solid albums by Wilco and Big Thief. The picture is completed by the Italian revelations of Messa (in the doom-metal context) and Bruno Bavota (another album of the month) whose magical plan has also bewitched the Dutch Chantal Acda. And the instrumental piece by Arnaud Rebotini is also a little Italian: it is, in fact, the theme of Dario Argento's latest film (“Occhiali neri”). In short, there's something for all tastes… I'm listening to you.
Fabio Ferrara
A handful of songs in no particular order from this 2022 which, between absolute debutants, returning horses and welcome confirmations, has given us a lot of interesting music. I tried to create one compilation of some tracks that I listened to most frequently. It does not claim to be exhaustive. In some cases the songs are contained within works that did not fully satisfy me. Conversely, albums that I loved very much are not represented in this list. To give a semblance of regularity, I tried to order them by assonance but they can be listened to in random sequence.
At the end, a special tribute to our land with 5 songs by Italian authors.
Valeria Ferro
Stefano Fiori
There were several albums from this 2022 that I appreciated and listened to a lot but paradoxically there were few individual pieces that really got under my skin and ended up in an ideal ranking of my favorite songs of all time. I therefore took refuge in the most brazen pop, the one with airy and perhaps even a little childish refrains, in the bittersweet ballads with a 90's aftertaste and in the now essential urban-pop mix.
Fabio Guastalla
Vassilios Karagiannis
Faithful to the completely self-imposed limit of 30 songs, a playlist that tries to draw a summary of the songs that most characterized my 2022. One piece per artist, with only one exception, evident from the beginning of the setlist: PinkPantheress, absolute dominator of the year that is coming to a close and bearer of excellent sensations for the next one to come. For the rest, among the best contribution of Floating Points in years now (“Somewhere Near Marseilles” by Hikaru Utada), the few valid moments of a year for the k-pop very modest (the extraordinary energy of Kwon Eun Bi's “Glitch” and the creativity of the samples of “Attention” by rookie NewJeans), a lot of tradition that is both orthodox and revisited (“Time Escaping” for Big Thief's album-consecration; the rumba step for “Como un guiri en Barcelona” by Diego Lorenzini), the new British jazz that knows how to be more explosive and immediate than so much insipid pop in circulation (see under The Comet Is Coming), an explosion of timbres and colors, less focused on identifying a precise center of gravity, much more careful to highlight the beauty of a musical universe increasingly less interested in barriers and limits. That's enough for me.
Claudio Lancia
Here is part of my compulsive listening in 2022, to which I tried to give a sequence vaguely similar to the chart of my favorite records of the year. A calm navigation through some of the albums that I have listened to, appreciated and loved most in the last twelve months. Listening to everything in sequence makes a certain impression: all things considered, the quality was very high this time too. Happy listening, and Happy New Year to everyone…
Alessandro Mattedi
Daniel Moore
Cristiano Orlando
Lorenzo Pagani
Damiano Pandolfini
Hello? It's the coochie calling…
So much sadness, so much indolence, then so much desire to scream and dance: thanks Shygirl, Beyoncé And Rosalia for stirring things up, thanks to those born losers at 100% Silk for embroidering them. And thanks also to Loraine James, lovingly warm and relevant like a hug that never ends.
Federico Romagnoli
A pop, rock, rap, folk and jazz playlist, with the usual cosmopolitan character. A couple of essential songs missing from Spotify should be added: “춤을 추어요 (Chumeul chueoyo / Let's Dance)” by Korean producer 250 and “Oppression Blues” by Tatsuro Yamashita.
Marco Sgrignoli
A selection for lovers of progressive music, in the broadest sense. Few, or rather very few, revivalist sounds, and many explorations across genres, with some pillars: harmonically rich pop, the traditions of different corners of the world, contemporary jazz, the alien sounds allowed by metal and electronics.
Like last year, I wanted to split the playlist into two halves. One is dedicated to songs, sometimes with a decidedly pop edge (Stromae, Louis Cole, Harry Styles), others with a more expanded and experimental horizon. The other grouping is made up of tracks with a more marked instrumental character, although not necessarily without sung parts (the female voice has an important role both in folktronics deconstructed by the Catalan Marina Herlop and in the jazz/traditional hybridisations of Daniel Herskedal/Emilie Nicolas and our local Rhabdomantic Orchestra). The two sections are connected by a sequence that is the most recognisably progressive of the lot: Without Waves, Extra Life, CKRAFT and The Algorithm, with decidedly deep and metallic traits, interspersed however with the jazzy illuminations of Fievel Is Glauque.
Between Afrobeat and Mediterranean echoes, soft/loud, nu jazz, singer-songwriter hip-hop and stomp-rock certainties, the twenty-five tracks touch on well-known names but I hope also many surprises: the hope is that listening will arouse curiosity and indicate new, exciting and current directions, albeit far from the most beaten indie/alternative tracks (even if, at times, very worn out).
Antonio Silvestri
I didn't want it to be simply a collection of songs from my favorite albums of this year: I tried, but the playlist It just didn't seem to work to me. Because if I put one of the in a sequence gargoyle by Galas or a colossal song by White Ward, for example, every rhythmic continuity breaks for me, the groove it goes to hell and even on a more emotional level it is difficult to continue with anything else.
This playlist of 50 songs, therefore, was built in an attempt to give space to many beautiful things listened to and published in 2022, lined up in a mix of full-blown successes, delicious trash'n'kitsch and refinements for music lovers. Sometimes they are great songs from great works, other times successful pieces from less brilliant albums, still other curiosities or unexpected solitary hits. There's also a hint of provocation, which in my opinion never hurts!
Maria Teresa Soldani
Ossidiana Speri
Martina Vetrugno
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
