Apple Music’s end-of-year charts are based on plays between 1 November 2022 and 31 October 2023. In some ways, the sounds that dominated US music charts this year felt eerily predictable, full of those all-American comforts we’ve come to rely on: a steady stream of hip-hop from mostly familiar names (Gunna, Future, Metro Boomin and Lil Baby are a few), clear-cut deliveries from Nashville’s new guard (Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen) and two re-recordings of blockbuster albums from Taylor Swift, our Artist of the Year. Yet in other ways, the year glowed with surprising new sounds. Take, for example, the skittering pop-electronics of PinkPantheress and Ice Spice, the impossibly stylish psychedelic explorations of SZA or the explosive (if improbable) growth of música mexicana, a regional sound that genre-blending torchbearers like Peso Pluma, Natanael Cano and Grupo Frontera have thrust onto the world stage. While it’s true that the sound has been bubbling up for a few years now—a lane that was paved in part by Latin sensation Bad Bunny, our 2022 Artist of the Year, who teamed up with Grupo Frontera on “un x100to” in April—it’s nonetheless endlessly inspiring to see hungry young songwriters and fans sink their teeth into rich, niche sounds and make them feel wholly new.