The 50 Best Songs of 2023 So Far: Staff Picks

It’s a little funny to do a midyear songs list in 2023. More than perhaps any time previously, this year has forced us to ask: What does it even mean for a song to be from “this year”? The Billboard charts are more confusing than ever on those grounds: With 2023 Hot 100 hits from Lady Gaga, Miguel and Tyler, the Creator all originally released in the 2010s, and a No. 1 from The Weeknd coming via a new remix of a 2016 deep cut, old is new again on top 40, and there’s never been less of a dividing line between catalog and current. When even Taylor Swift has to deviate from her planned Midnights promotional cycle to push a song from four albums ago, clearly anarchy reigns on the contemporary pop timeline.

Still, even with the past now in constant competition with the present, 2023 has managed to give us an impressive bounty of genuinely new jams — songs actually making their debut, or poking their head onto the charts for the first time — to keep us from totally drowning in reruns. Rising stars have leveled up with their biggest crossover moments to date, fresh sounds and scenes have made their presence felt on a global scale, and unexpected collaborators have helped push one another to greater chart success. And of course, some of those most-familiar names are back with brand new songs as well as older ones, proving they can still go viral without TikTokers even needing to go digging into their back catalog.

Here are the Billboard staff’s 50 favorite songs of the year so far — still keeping to songs that either were released or first really impacted the charts, though realizing that our definitions are going to have to continue to shift with the times. Pop music is a strange and unpredictable place in 2023, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, really.