As the new year approaches and the retrospectives for 2023 roll out, we’re asking you for your own lists.
What were the top five to 10 most memorable moments from the past year?
You can put anything you like on your lists — movies, music, television shows or books that you loved or loathed; moments from the news, social media or sports that you thought were great or terrible; notable aspects of your personal, family or academic life; or a mix of all these things.
To help you look back on the year, check out a few of the “Best of 2023” lists that Times critics have written. Then create your own.
In “Best Albums of 2023,” Jon Pareles writes about Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts”:
Adolescence is complicated enough. Throw in celebrity, social-media scrutiny, headline touring and musical productivity, and it’s remarkable that Olivia Rodrigo, now 20, has kept not only a clear head but a sense of humor. The songs on her second album, “Guts,” combine pop’s concision and melody with rock’s potential to erupt. The production riffles through decades of crafty allusions as she deals with self-confidence and insecurity, misjudgments and comeuppances, and the relentless, contradictory expectations placed on a teenage female star.
In “Best TV Shows of 2023,” James Poniewozik writes about “Beef”:
“Beef” was a good story about people getting mad: Amy Lau (Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), whose road-rage encounter descends into a quagmire of terrible choices. But it was a great story about why people get mad. It peeled the blazing onion of their conflict to expose class differences, family resentments and inter- and intragroup tensions among its Asian American characters, in an unsparing but empathetic telling. A big enough collection of last straws, “Beef” said, can build a highly flammable house.
And in “Best Video Games of 2023,” Zachary Small writes about “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”:
A direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, one of the most celebrated games of the past decade, created high expectations for Nintendo. The resulting adventure saw the industrial revolution come to Hyrule, where players learned to combine relics scattered across the ruined kingdom into motorcycles and airplanes. Tears of the Kingdom slightly disappointed those craving more narrative depth from the series, but the Japanese team’s inventive approach to environmental puzzles remains unparalleled. Trusting players to conquer open-ended challenges with a seemingly infinite number of solutions (and roads to failure) has kept The Legend of Zelda one of the industry’s biggest franchises.
Need more inspiration? The New York Times has published lists of the year’s best movies, art, songs, books, comedy, classical music performances, theater, dance performances and more.
