The 40 Best Albums of 2022
The gallery on this page contains Metacritic's list of the 40 best-reviewed albums of 2022, ranked by Metascore. This list only includes new albums receiving at least 7 reviews from professional critics.
Otherwise, all full-length studio albums (or mixtapes) released between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022 are eligible, though reissues, live albums, box sets and other compilations are excluded. (Those excluded titles are included in a separate list at the end of the gallery.) Albums are ranked by Metascore prior to rounding based on scores as of December 19, 2022.
(#5) A last-minute addition to our list (it was released less than two weeks ago), SZA's long-awaited second album arrived over five years after her stunning debut CTRL. And S.O.S. is somehow even better, both critically and commercially. The album had the fifth-best debut on Billboard's charts for any title released in 2022, making it the first #1 album of SZA's career. And S.O.S., which features appearances from Travis Scott, Phoebe Bridgers, and Ol' Dirty Bastard, finds the artist at a career peak, according to critics, even if a few reviewers suggested that the very long album could have used an edit or two.
“It is an absolute monster of a record that clocks in at just over 67 minutes with a staggering 23 tracks — and boy, was it worth the wait. If Ctrl was a near-perfect debut, S.O.S might be an inch closer to masterclass status.” —Consequence
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