The Freshman 15: 2022's Best Debut Albums

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 8, 2022

Next week, we'll release our final overall list of this year's best overall albums. But our ongoing best of 2022 coverage continues right now with a look at this year's top newcomers in music.

Above is our list of the 15 best-reviewed debut albums of 2022, ranked by Metascore. Note that albums must have at least 7 reviews—and be a full-length LP (or mixtape) rather than an EP—to be eligible for inclusion. Albums are ranked by Metascore prior to rounding based on scores as of December 6, 2022.

1 of 16 photo by Columbia/Promised Land

82 Gifted by Koffee

(#15) The first full-length album from 22-year-old Jamaican reggae artist Mikayla Simpson (who records under the name Koffee) followed her groundbreaking 2019 EP Rapture, which made her the only woman in history to win a Grammy for best reggae album. (Gifted was just nominated in the same category.) One complaint about the otherwise well-reviewed new LP: At just 28 minutes, it's too short.

“Gifted keeps giving: Koffee achieves a brilliantly confident debut with the promise of more good things to come.” —The Telegraph

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