The Best Albums of 2022

A strain of retrospection unites two of the most popular albums of the past year: Beyoncé’s Renaissance, her throwback to disco and the house music of the late 20th century, and Taylor Swift’s Midnights, her return to the club-night fun that helped make her a pop star. For each, a look into the past provided pleasures that the uncertain present did not seem to offer. Meanwhile, an impressive number of artists have turned in a different direction—inward—to create new works that aim in a range of ways to take up personal, enigmatic matters of the heart and mind.