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.

5 of 16 photo by Ghostly International

83Whatever the Weather by Whatever the Weather

(#11) English electronica artist Loraine James has a number of releases under her own name, including last year's excellent Reflection and the just-released Building Something Beautiful for Me. But this self-titled set is the first album from her new side project Whatever the Weather, which finds James detouring into mostly ambient music.

“Even when she's still working with high BPMs, James lets the tracks on this album breathe in a way that she doesn't on her other releases, making Whatever the Weather a standout in her rapidly growing catalog.” —AllMusic

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