The songs on this playlist, which were passionately and exhaustively debated by our in-house music experts, represent the very best of 2023. In the interest of representation, we’ve limited our selections to one track per artist, but let’s be honest: Nobody had a bigger year than Taylor Swift. Our Artist of the Year’s gleaming star shined brighter than ever this year thanks to her record-breaking, earth-shaking Eras Tour, a spectacle that stretched the bounds of live music production—and showed us what delirious, pure-hearted fandom really feels like (her Seattle shows reportedly caused seismic activity equivalent to that of a small earthquake). Historic stuff, but she wasn’t the only one making waves. The past 12 months were dominated by many incredible female voices—boygenius, Dua Lipa, Beyoncé, Mitski, SZA, Peggy Gou, Olivia Rodrigo, Ice Spice, the list really does go on—all of whom brought extraordinary levels of vision, style, and guts to their art. Sometimes, though, the greatest gifts are those that take us by surprise, and this year’s explosive rise of música mexicana—a rapidly evolving regional sound that Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado, and Grupo Frontera are beaming into the future—was the transportive, bilingual, intergenerational adventure that we didn’t know we needed.