Poll Results: Listeners Pick the Best Albums of 2022
All Songs Considered's most grizzled hosts — Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton and Stephen Thompson — haven't assembled in the same room since March 2020. Blame the pandemic, the ease and convenience of working from home, or the hosts' fervent desire to remain in separate rooms, but this conversation marks a minor milestone in our return to what counts for us as normalcy. Nature is healing, etc., etc.
Now, if you've been following NPR Music's year-end coverage — perhaps starting by clicking here for the year's 50 best albums and here for the year's 100 best songs — then you have a pretty good sense of how much great material 2022 had to offer. But you've only gotten our side of the story. So we asked listeners to participate in a grand online poll, then aggregated your Top 10 albums.
The resulting list is impressive enough on its own, with its mix of breakthroughs, blockbusters, barn-burners and Beyoncé. But we also had a rollicking conversation about your picks, in the hopes of providing useful context. We encourage you to dig deeper into each record with the help of the representative samples below.