| 1 | Taylor Swift | "Anti-Hero" | Midnights | This isn't a category in which I have ever previously thought to have an entry, |
| 2 | Taylor Swift | "Anti-Hero (feat. Bleachers)" | Anti-Hero (feat. Bleachers) +1 | but my favorite performance of a single word in any new song in 2022 is here, in "Anti-Hero", |
| 3 | Ali Brustofski | "Anti-Hero" | single | where Taylor's high, airy, doubled voice climbs wearily a few steps down the scale to say "it must be |
| 4 | The Animal In Me | "Anti-Hero" | single | exhausting |
| 5 | First to Eleven | "Anti-Hero" | single | always rooting for the anti-hero". |
| 6 | Minority 905 | "Anti-Hero" | single | She sings the hyphen in "anti-hero", too, so that's almost certainly my favorite performance of a punctuation mark this year. |
| 7 | Speak Low | "Anti-Hero" | single | The thing about "exhausting" is partially a callback, of course: |
| 8 | Ray Garrison | "Anti-Hero" | single | "this is exhausting, you know?", she explained in exasperation in the spoken kiss-off bridge |
| 9 | Skar | "Anti-Hero" | single | of the kiss-off anthem "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", |
| 10 | Social Repose | "Mary On A Cross" | single | and the word is uncommon enough in pop songs and kisses by itself, but in both songs it appears in |
| 11 | Palace | "Code to Your Heart" | Retrospection - The Covers EP 4 | a momentary wearying, |
| 12 | Kontrollverlust | "Sweet Child O'mine" | Sweet Child O'mine +2 | dragging the song into focused literalism, or at least through it |
| 13 | Amberian Dawn | "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" | Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) +1 | on the way somewhere else: |
| 14 | Epica | "Wake The World (feat. Phil Lanzon & Tommy Karevik)" | The Alchemy Project | into the gleeful quadruple rhyme-schemes |
| 15 | Tigersclaw | "Joan of Arc" | Titan's Dawn | that are technically AABCCC, |
| 16 | Kassogtha | "Save Us" | rEvolve | but she wedges extra As and Cs into the middles of the lines too; |
| 17 | Crown Solace | "Inside My Mind" | single | into the delirious disarming choruses of "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me", |
| 18 | REMINA | "The Endless City" | STRATA | with the rhymes bracketing the line, |
| 19 | Fate DeStroyed | "47" | single | accepting blame and attention in the same glamorously self-conscious swirl; |
| 20 | Chase the Comet | "Broken Toys" | single | into the elegiac sub-lede "I stare directly into the sun but never in the mirror", |
| 21 | Rioghan | "Home" | single | which could be a chorus in any other song, |
| 22 | Everfrost | "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" | Frostbites 4 | or the end of any other story; |
| 23 | LIV MOON | "El Dorado" | single | into the almost-everything-stops missing-bridge verse about |
| 24 | FATE GEAR | "Unbreakable Wings" | Killers in the Sky Part 2 | murder and wills and hell, where the camera flips around and-- |
| 25 | LiSA | "一斉ノ喝采" | single | "Hi." The rueful runner-up to "exhausted", and it would have won if rueful were only better loved than exasperated, |
| 26 | 結束バンド | "ギターと孤独と蒼い惑星" | single | if only all of Taylor's songs didn't effectively start with a self-aware "Hi, |
| 27 | ReoNa | "Alive" | single | it's me, Taylor, again" by virtue of existing, |
| 28 | Shiina Natsukawa | "passable :(" | ササクレ 4 | at least since Red, |
| 29 | IRIS MONDO | "mundane world logout" | single | and of course all the earlier ones will be reclaimed and parenthetically renamed |
| 30 | 7LAND | "コ・ナ・オ・ト・シ" | single | and reinhabited in time. |
| 31 | Utsu-P | "ララララフレシア (feat. 初音ミク)" | single | So yes, definitively, Taylor is willing to say the same words the same way as many times as it takes |
| 32 | BONES UK | "Milk" | Milk +1 | to retain ownership of them, |
| 33 | Sway | "SWAY ALL DAY" | single | but I think I'd feel the same way if there were only this one "exhausting". |
| 34 | BLÜ EYES | "never got better" | healing hurts 6 | There's so much of her in it. |
| 35 | Breakfast for Dinner | "Can't Get Over You" | single | Or maybe the same amount, but in a coating applied to the maximum surface-area, |
| 36 | Cassyette | "Picture Perfect" | Sad Girl Mixtape | or maybe the same amount of her but more of the version of her persona I identify with, |
| 37 | Alexa Cappelli | "Lose Lose" | single | the one that started by speaking truths now |
| 38 | Ava Max | "Weapons" | Weapons +2 | and for a while spoke those truths through lipstick-stiffened lips |
| 39 | JENNA ALEXA | "JÄISIKÖ MUA KUKAAN KAIPAAMAAN" | single | and now again leans close to the microphone |
| 40 | Rooksein | "10 Uit 10" | Die Onbekende | and tries to whisper through it into hearts. |
| 41 | Concrete Castles | "Where Are You Now?" | single | How deliciously ironic, of course, or maybe just normally complex, |
| 42 | Alarmbaby | "Ohne Dich" | Ohne Dich +1 | that this earnest, whispery record of Taylor's is produced by the guy from fun. and Bleachers, |
| 43 | Emm Gryner | "Valencia" | single | and if you somehow missed this or weren't sure it's profoundly weird there's this remix, |
| 44 | Addison Grace | "Valerie" | Things That Are Bad for Me 5 | "feat. Bleachers" like he wasn't already in the room when it happened, |
| 45 | Zolita | "Ruin My Life" | Ruin My Life +1 | swapping his own muttery lines in for Taylor's like a guy climbing the reconstruction scaffolding on Notre Dame |
| 46 | Dizzy | "Barking Dog" | single | looking for a good place to put a cinderblock with a smiley face on it. |
| 47 | Kate Davis | "Consequences" | single | He's near-sighted, too, |
| 48 | Scene Queen | "The Rapture (but it’s Pink) [feat. Mothica]" | BIMBOCORE VOL. 2 | and climbs without his glasses so he doesn't drop them, |
| 49 | Christine and the Queens | "Looking for love" | Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue) | and when he gets down you'll notice, |
| 50 | Jordana B. | "Leandro Tudela" | Tú y Cuántos Más | but he won't, |
| 51 | Repion | "Barrio Somavilla" | Barrio Somavilla +3 | that he put the smiley-face in sideways. |
| 52 | Soraya | "Segunda Parte" | single | Swapping in "art bro lately" for "sexy baby" is pathetic; |
| 53 | Sharon Van Etten | "When I Die" | We've Been Going About This All Wrong | swapping "Taylor you'll be fine" for "Tale as old as time" is patronizing; |
| 54 | Hyd | "Bright Light" | CLEARING | adding a coy sax hook is appalling. |
| 55 | i9bonsai | "remedy" | single | But the sanctioned remixes, and to be fair the others are worse, |
| 56 | Halflives | "sorry mom x" | sorry mom x +1 | ceremonially open an already-imaginary door to the rest of the world. |
| 57 | aldn | "overpaid (feat. Tom The Mail Man)" | post spring, self destruction | Numerically, this gift is mostly received by piano commodifiers and MIDI transcriptionists, so far, |
| 58 | Button Maker | "Abysmal" | single | but in 2022 this is the basic package, |
| 59 | envy | "Zanshin" | Seimei 3 | and of course Taylor paid for the upgrade. |
| 60 | Mrs. GREEN APPLE | "私は最強" | Soranji 3 | Maybe Ali Brustofski hates Jack Antonoff, too, |
| 61 | Rhythmic Toy World | "青炎" | single | as she delivers the stripped version, |
| 62 | Marmalade butcher | "DePaAk" | single | albeit losing most of Taylor's vocal nuance in the process of dissolving off the fun. production gloss. |
| 63 | Novelbright | "PRIDE" | single | Both my favorite pop-punk cover-bands report promptly for duty, |
| 64 | ROTH BART BARON | "Ghost Hunt (Tunnel)" | HOWL | which makes Violet Orlandi look lazy, |
| 65 | ayutthaya | "fog" | single | but meanwhile The Animal in Me do the beauty-and-the-beast transposition, |
| 66 | yeti let you notice | "highlight" | single | which is fantastic to listen to, |
| 67 | Beret | "Beso robado" | Resiliencia | even if it also kind of misses the point that the narrator is the anti-hero, |
| 68 | Jan Blohm | "Simpel Woorde" | Toe Roep Ek Jou Naam Velvet Blohm | or at least that possibility is the open emotional wound around which the song is unevenly wrapped. |
| 69 | Jupiter Jones | "Ja, sicher" | single | First to Eleven are studiously maturing into a rock band, |
| 70 | Maryland | "Mi Emperatriz Infantil" | single | and theirs is more or less the Foo Fighters version, |
| 71 | Anabel Lee | "El Espacio" | single | but if neither of those are pop-punk enough for you, Minority 905 is greenly glad to spend the day blinking 182 times. |
| 72 | Alone-T | "Minahal at Niloko" | single | Everything you could possibly love is waiting for you somewhere, |
| 73 | End Street | "Overlap" | single | lonely. Abundance is the new loss. |
| 74 | HTTM | "Sentimetro" | Teenage Memories 6 | Speak Low's is the first of these to try to imagine some fundamentally different outcome, |
| 75 | Velveteen | "Just Like Autumn" | single | but there's a reason that rotoscoping fleeing lovers is infallibly compelling |
| 76 | Bears In Trees | "Feel So Empty" | Every Moonbeam Every Feverdream 4 | but you just know that superheroes standing in line at donut shops wearing stretchy dress pants are going to tip badly. |
| 77 | Sara | "Vuosi nolla" | single | You can do exaggeration two ways: a lot, |
| 78 | ENGELSBLUT | "Socken" | Der Krieg ist da | or a lot. |
| 79 | The Dark Atom | "Wormhole" | Luminescence | Taylor, you'll be fine. |
| 80 | Galahad | "Alive" | The Last Great Adventurer | The rest of us, also, we'll be fine. |
| 81 | Oak | "Highest Tower, Deepest Well" | The Quiet Rebellion of Compromise | Fine, or dead, or dreaming. |
| 82 | Ten | "The Tidal Wave" | single | "Anti-Hero" isn't even my favorite song, |
| 83 | Uriah Heep | "Save Me Tonight" | single | and if I had Taylor's money, I'd pay Violet and The Animal in Me and First to Eleven and Skar and Kontrollverlust and Amberian Dawn to do Emma Hewitt's "INTO MY ARMS", |
| 84 | About Us | "Lead My Heart" | About Us | but nobody should have that much power. |
| 85 | Conquest | "Man on the Silver Mountain" | single | We do not gather around the bejeweled firepits of billionaires, |
| 86 | Stormburner | "Burn the Storm" | single | on their skyscraper parapets, |
| 87 | Lion's Share | "Run for Your Life" | single | we stand here on the ground, waiting for walk lights under the glow of Targets, |
| 88 | Galderia | "Answer The Call" | Endless Horizon | trading smiles that want to remind us of something and we let them. |
| 89 | Freternia | "Elvenstar" | single | I have this thing where I get older |
| 90 | Warkings | "Hellfire (feat. Morgana le Fay)" | Morgana | but there's never any less music. |
| 91 | Obituary | "The Wrong Time" | single | All of the bands I've ever loved |
| 92 | Twilight Force | "Twilight Force" | single | are there waiting to be loved again. |
| 93 | Mantric Momentum | "(I'll Never Be) Maria Magdalena - Bonus Track" | Trial by Fire | I used to dream of devices: |
| 94 | Powerwolf | "Blood for Blood (Faoladh) (feat. Melissa Bonny)" | Missa Cantorem II | towering stacks of components and pulsing monoliths at carefully calibrated angels. |
| 95 | Grimner | "Ur Vågorna" | single | Instead I have invisible angels holding themselves against the sides of my ear canals. |
| 96 | NanowaR of Steel | "Armpits of Immortals" | single | The methodical anticipation of other people's criticisms is just an operationalization of doubt. |
| 97 | Kampfar | "Dødens aperitiff" | Til Klovers Takt | We are all monstrous if you stare directly at us. |
| 98 | Oak Pantheon | "Listen!" | single | Mirrors reverse the vertical axis, but not the judgment. |
| 99 | Woods of Desolation | "Illumination" | Illumination +2 | The anti-hero is what's left of the hero after the costume is chewed off by rats. |
| 100 | Drudkh | "Нічний - The Nocturnal One" | All Belong to the Night | It's a popular hobby to infer romantic revelations into Taylor's songs, |
| 101 | Fvnerals | "For Horror Eats The Light" | single | but the main thing you learn from this one |
| 102 | Ahab | "Prof. Arronax' Descent into the Vast Oceans (Feat. Ultha)" | single | is that Taylor has not lost her parents. |
| 103 | Imperium Dekadenz | "Memories ... a Raging River" | single | Of course we root for the anti-hero. |
| 104 | Alles Wird In Flammen Stehen | "Traurigkeit I" | III - Traurigkeit | We respond to need. |
| 105 | Sabackthanny | "River Dream" | River Dream +3 | All of the people we let down fall where we drop them, |
| 106 | Notre Dame | "Yumi" | Yumi EP 3 | which is why you should always schedule uncertain dates in public parks, |
| 107 | &lez | "Harms" | single | or other places with infrastructure, or inside of stronger people's hearts. |
| 108 | Skindred | "Gimme That Boom" | single | The monster on the hill, when you corner him next to the new play-structure, |
| 109 | Zanefa Ngidi | "Silinde Isthutha" | Silinde Isthutha +3 | has only this to say in his own defense: |
| 110 | Mashelela | "Icala lobushende" | Icala lobushende | "It's me, hi. I'm the problem, it's me." If you look closely, and maybe you should have looked closely before inciting this mob, you can see the ends of his Airpods poking through the matted hair around his ears. |
| 111 | Fihliskhwele | "Gegelagege" | Gegelagege | His favorite word for this year isn't "exhausted", it's "traurigkeit", which means "sadness" if you're German, |
| 112 | Umfoka Otho | "Ugeza kanye" | Ugeza kanye 6 | and if you're Russian means it's a lot easier to make alternately hushed and cathartic post-rock records if nobody is trying to kill you and everybody else in your city with missiles. |
| 113 | Makhadzi | "Zwafhela Zwofhela" | single | I have this dream that self-doubt is our only enduring problem, |
| 114 | Mthandazo Gatya | "All The Way" | single | and celebrity self-doubt is our most dysfunctional public sport, |
| 115 | Moonchild Sanelly | "Kokokokoko" | Kokokokoko +1 | and then I remember that the Russians aren't out of bullets and the World Cup is in Qatar and almost half the people thought Herschel Walker would be a good senator. |
| 116 | ROTH BART BARON | "MIRAI" | HOWL | Hi. You and me, us, we're not the problem. Not all of us will be fine, |
| 117 | Christine and the Queens | "Angelus" | Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue) | but the difference between our narcissism and our altruism is not why. |
| 118 | Ciaran McAuley | "On an Ocean" | On an Ocean +1 | Taylor Swift spends too much time flying around in her private jet, |
| 119 | Melt Motif | "Warrior" | single | but her songs are still beautiful and human. |
| 120 | Beli | "Unearthed" | Seven Channel Aura | All of these songs are astonishing and absolutely ordinary. |
| 121 | Imogen Heap | "Evolution" | Chordata Bytes I | Rooting for anything is exhausting. Being awake is exhausting. That's just how it works. |
| 122 | JAMBINAI | "until my wings turn to ashes" | apparition | But rooting for things while you're awake enough is the difference between the humans and the ghosts in the room. |
| 123 | Safety Trance | "AAAEFXX" | Lágrimas | You can pick any of these words, any of these noises, and build a song around them, |
| 124 | A Tergo Lupi | "Anma ed Prèia" | Hide | and then a week, and a year, and in this antiheroic way a life. |