The year is nearly over. The music magazines mags gave their top picks, Spotify got unwrapped, & now it’s time for our 5th annual (!) list of songs from Turkey.
Here are my mini-reviews & a playlist of my 50 favorite songs + a few extra for luck. This was originally published on X.
Here’s the playlist link. Read along as you listen.
The songs range from indie to punk to R&B, rap, electro, & pop.
I spent hooours carefully sequenced the playlist for your listening pleasure, so listen from start to finish for the smoothest flow.
1) The grand matron of contemporary jazz vocalists in Turkey, Birsen Tezer, is back with an astonishing album: Kağıttan Kaptanlar (Captains Made of Paper). It’s close to the confessional spirit of 1970s Joni Mitchell but with a jazz-inflected rock band backing her.
2) Another of 2023’s high points was the debut album from Dilhan Şeşen. It’s indie rock, I suppose, but with stormy, complex arrangements often with multiple separate “movements” in each song as in classical music. Simply astonishing songwriting and musicianship.
3) Synthpop darlings Jakuzi are finally back with a new single ahead of a new album cycle. Imagine driving through the rain in a cherry red Mustang with a fatally attractive person beside you. That’s what the 80s nostalgia of the music & vocalist Kutay’s velvety baritone evoke.
4) I’ve never heard such brutally depressive music wrapped up in such a light package. Brek is, no doubt, one of the best songwriters of his generation. But you’ll be reaching for a pack of smokes before you’re done w/ this song. It’s never been so fun to be this miserable.
5) Ah Mabel Matiz, what have you done to us? His new album “Fatih“ is the crowning achievement of an already prolific career. With 25 songs clocking in at over 1 hour and 45 minutes, Mabel shows that Türkçe pop can be an art. In this, he is line as the true successor of Sezen Aksu.
6) Seda Erciyes has been on every list since we started this tradition in 2019. Because I’ve long been a fan, I’m so pleased to see that 2023 has been her breakout year. Starting the trend of neo R&B with Turkish lyrics, she outdoes herself with the self-love anthem “YABANİ”.
A quick break:
Some of you might be wondering who the hell I am. In addition an academic focusing on popular culture, I’m also a journalist. So I’m going to include some additional material for the curious. Here’s an interview I did with Seda Erciyes.
I’ve been following the Turkish local music scene closely for years, listening to literally every new song that comes out on Friday and curating a playlist and weekly Instagram stories (in Turkish) describing the tracks I find most interesting.
This list comes from that work.
7) Moving on, you may know Onurr from the classic rock band Sakin. He’s also a pop powerhouse. In addition to penning some of the biggest recent Turkish pop hits, he has 3 solo albums of raunchy, poetic pop.
Here’s my interview with him too.
8) Not to brag, but I saw this coming. I went out swinging for London-raised Onur Sevigen in 2021 with “PARAMI VER”. It was an early example of hyperpop in Turkish. Now he’s going viral on TikTok for doing alaturka melodies over 808 beats with “Angara Angara.” Come join the party.
9) “We’re the only nation to get PTSD from our Spotify Wrapped” someone joked on Twitter last week. Well, that’s the effect of hearing “Padişahım” by Paptircem now, which was the unofficial opposition anthem during the May elections, only to be promptly deleted from memory…
As a side note, Paptircem had a fantastic year far beyond “Padişahım.” Check out “Öl İçimde” and “Sandım Ki” for some heartbreaking anthems with great production and arrangements.
With some many new artists each year, sometimes you can just tell who’s going to last. She’s one.
10) Take a deep breath because this song is a real one. Tuğçe Şenoğul has been making goth-tinged art pop since 2018. But she’s outdone herself with her new EP “Atlas”, as you can see with this gorgeous dirge featuring otherworldly accompaniment in Arabic from Lella Fadda.
Now that we’re done with the first 10 songs, let me remind you that the list is not rated from best to worst song or anything.
The playlist is designed so that each song effortlessly flows into the next, even though there’s a wide range of genres here. This means that often genres will be clustered together. These first songs were mostly from indie musicians with a certain pop touch. Now we’ll be heading into a mix of more mainstream pop and also R&B, which has become more widespread in Turkey among certain circles.
11) If you follow Turkish music at all, Melike Şahin is a name you know. She’s one of our best contemporary vocalists & represents a more artistic wing of mainstream T-pop. Just like Mabel Matiz who – surprise! – gifted this song to her. The song’s a moving tribute to true love.
12) This song is an earworm if there ever was one! Aybüke Albere has struck gold with “Yak,” which will have you singing along by the end of the first listen: “AL SEEEEV BENİ DELİ DELİ.” The song was co-written by popstar Edis & pop mastermind Serhat Şensesli.
13) Selin Geçit is another fast-rising star in Turkish pop that you better start following now. An accomplished vocalist who first went viral for classic Turkish covers, she makes anthemic rock in this collaboration with veterans.
You’ll be shocked to hear I also interviewed Selin on my show 🙂
Maybe it’s self-indulgent to repost these here, but TBH I’m proud of my work at Medysacope creating English-language content on stuff pretty much no one else covers.
14) Istanbul-based singer/songwriter Bade Nosa has created one of the most delicately gorgeous albums of 2023 with “Zemheri Bitti.” You’ll see why her songwriting is so impactful in this hopeful song about returning homeward as the darkest days of winter come to an end.
15) Bade is another of the best artists doing neo-R&B in Turkish. But she also masterfully does code-switching by incorporating English lyrics. But don’t take my word for it, elder stateman of Türkçe pop Kenan Doğulu has even added her to his Doğulu Music roster!
16) Even if you don’t know their name, I can promise you’ve heard a KÖFN song if you spend time in Turkey. “Her anın aklımda her kıvrımın…” sound familiar? Anyway, the duo continues to release top-notch hits, as in this collab with the ethereal-voiced Berika.
17) SUH.EYL is a talented young singer, dancer, and saxophonist from Antakya. But as this hilarious/heartbreaking song shows, Istanbul life is no piece of cake. The mention of the horrific 6 Feb. earthquake in the song is brief, but it gives me goosebumps every fucking time.
18) “Bu nasıl bir rezalet? / Yemin ederim yatcak yerin yok.” If you speak Turkish, you know how righteous these first lines of Nova Norda’s “BAS GİT” are. This anthem for jilted lovers is done in an impeccable reggae-inspired electro dancehall style with syncopation for days.
19) Billur Battal is one of my favorite new voices on the scene. She’s actually long been a part of Dolu Kadehi Ters Tut, but since 2022 she’s struck out on a solo career. Keep your eye on this one for sleek, modern pop with an EDM sensibility.
Let me interrupt myself one more time to ask:
Did you notice how *chefskiss* perfectly avant-garde and forward-thinking the production on the last two tracks was?
That’s because both were done by ARSAN SALARYFAR, Istanbul indie’s secret weapon.
Remember the name.
20) Let’s take things down a notch. How about some smooth R&B over a funky beat? Add some introspective lyrics about the difficulty of loving and being loved–why not? That’ll give you the fantastic track “Bencil” by huner, one of my favorite new voices of 2023.
21) Istanbul-based artist, designer, & musician aia put out the bilingual album “pearls.” It draws on R&B, trap, soul, & other genres each like unique pearls on a string, as she describes it. She also put out an accompanying visual album, the first of its kind in TR.
22) 3pillie (alias of Turkish multi-instrumentalist Doğa Ocak) is a great example of the kind of talent bubbling up out of Turkey. But you might miss it if you don’t know where to look. He has a great singing voice and raps English so effortlessly it’s like he’s from the Bronx.
23) “I miss the old Ezhel, straight from the Ank’ Ezhel.”
Naw, don’t get it wrong. Ezhel still has it. From the Aşık Mahzuni sample to the political double entendres, on “Paspartu” he shows that he still raps with the best of them. And watch for that INSANE beat switch at 2:40.
Let me pause to say something about how I chose the songs I did. I tried to balance quality & popularity. The list tends toward new faces & independent-minded music, but I have no problem adding mega hits too. That said, I didn’t add anything JUST because it got a lot of listens.
So some of the biggest names of 2023 (Semicenk, Blok3) make bad music so I didn’t add them. Go find them on Spotify’s “Top 50” list, you don’t need a critic like me. Other mainstream names I like (INJI, Motive) felt unnecessary here while others (KÖFN, ALIZADE) are irresistible.
Alright, with that out of the way, let’s keep going 🙂
24) All of that was to say I’m more likely to indulge in weirdo intellectual rap than the mainstream arabesk fare. Enter RSPC, a collaboration of Armonycoma or slt & ağaçkakan. “FFF” is one of the best albums of 2023. For fans of wordplay, backpacks, billy woods, & existential dread.
25) I know for a lot of you reading, the last Turkish rapper you followed was Ceza. So let me explain Baneva this way: he’slike the speedy-syllabic rap veteran’s younger cousin. Same technical skill & rapid-fire flow, but au courant when it comes to beats & production.
26) I mentioned mainstream names that I like, but let’s just register for a second how unusual ALIZADE’s rise has been. This Russian “trash rapper” of Azerbaijani descent spits unapologetically explicit lyrics about sex & getting high. She even landed herself briefly in jail.
I’m gonna need one more tweet on ALIZADE because the outpouring of love for her, the hilarity of the memes (comparing her to Barış Manço or Aşık Veysel as a modern bard of the city), and her broken Turkish on TikTok (“Kızlar just vermek yapmıyor kızlar çalışıyor da”) are epic.
27) Eftalya Yağcı is another bright new figure. She’s a classically trained musician with a conservatory education. But she topped the charts after a duet with the (terrible, but wildly popular) rapper Lvbel C5. Her actual style, though, is experimental trap-soul & hyperpop.
28) You better know who Güneş is by now. She’s only the second-most streamed woman in Turkish music after Sezen Aksu! She’s an accomplished vocalist (though you wouldn’t know from the autotune) doing urban pop à la The Weeknd. I wrote about her last year.
29) Mavi is a new model for the Turkish rapper. Androgynous, sensitive, gaunt and gothic, an Anglophile through and through–more rock star than rapper, really. He’s also moving more into the urban pop genre. The next successful Turkish export?
30) Kaan Dinç is another one from the pretty boy/bad boy mold. Like a lot of music in the next section, it’s trap-inflected (with the autotuned vocals and cavernous production) but more pop than rap. It’s also an example of a specifically Kadıköy sound that’s starting to spread.
31) Here’s some more Kadıköycore (a genre name I just made up to describe this local mix of trap and punk) from the inventive rapper Rinxlaya and Denzi of the experimental metalcore band Frozen Clouds.
Phew, getting tired?
We’re more than half-way through now.
I’m going to take you through some of the most experimental and underground names we’ve had on this list so far. Then we’ll head to some of the best Turkish rock songs of the year before ending on a more mellow note.
32) The duo Sorry Nobody are another good example of the kind of sound that is growing. They’re both current with the major trends of counter-cultural internet genres worldwide and somehow managing to adapt it to the “mahalle” culture of the urban Anatolia.
33) Most of you might not like this next song, but I’m obsessed with Azure Wrath. A young rapper from Izmir and a digital native pushing the edge of music in Turkish by drawing on internet scenes like hyperpop and digicore.
34) UZUM3 comes from the same world of music perfectly of the digital age and its myriad subcultures. But notice how she utilizes breakbeats in this song, nodding to the nostalgia for drum & bass and jungle subcultures of 90s UK.
35) I’m adding these songs to show how in step the Turkish music scene is with global trends, like the drum & bass revival that has propelled people like the British singer PinkPantheress to global stardom. Another case in point: adakanbo.
36) You can hear the same DnB beat in this Min Taka song, Istanbul’s twee pop princess with a clever trope in “Melatonin”: “I can’t sleep when you’re not beside me,” she sings. She’s one of the most inventive alt-pop minds we have.
37) As we limp slowly towards the rock portion of tonight’s show, indulge me in one last DnB song. This time brough to you by Sabriyeva Galaktika, the alter ego of one Ecem Çelik. Think Soviet space-age nostalgia, pastel mood boards, & avant-pop for a post-Grimes generation.
38) Skylark is doing a beautiful mix of rap and mellow house music. The production is sleek and dreamy, perfect for headphones as you gaze out the window at the city on a rainy day. The added vocals from Melis Karaduman make it just right.
39) You just gotta love these kids. The Soft Analog duo create a perfect replication of how a 20-something would imagine the dance music of the 80s. With their coiffed hair and bright red shoulder-padded jackets, they cut a fine image on stage too.
The promised vibe switch has come! And just as we enter the final stretch.
Take a breath, shake out our limbs, and get ready for something a little different.
40) A song called “Alive” which is actually a moving & somber meditation on death and what comes after. “I hope there’s music,” Övünç Dan sings in the chorus. Me too. If you like the music of The Cure or enjoy the aesthetic of the film The Crow, I think you’ll get this project.
41) Deniz Tekin made a name for herself quite young for her delicate, quivering voice and emotional lyrics. If you’ve followed her career closely, though, you’ll know that she’s also a serious shredder! Her new album is a departure of sorts, but a welcome one.
42) I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but I think the band Yangın might just save the genre of Turkish rock. Back in the day, bands like Duman developed a great synthesis, but most local rock bands today are flogging a dead horse. Here, however, there’s something beating and alive.
Yes, alongside Deniz Tekin’s “Yüzyıllardır Aynı Dert”, Yangın’s new album “PLASTİK“ is one without a doubt one of the strongest albums of the year. I’ll be writing at length about my favorite albums for an upcoming list for the Turkish site DarkBlueNotes. Stay tuned.
43) Burkut Kum could have just milked his adoring adolescent fans’ endless hunger for trap tracks. Instead, he sat down with some friends & made what is (again, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself?) one of the best Turkish rock albums of all time. One of the must-listens from 2023.
44) Even if I didn’t play in band myself with Parham A.G and didn’t know what a sweetheart he is, I would still be a fan of his solo project. Besides our work together in AŞK and his playing in both Frozen Clouds and Second, he puts out 10/10 Turkish pop punk under his own name.
45) Another slick and impressive example of this new breed of Turkish rock is Voyvo Their “Zaman Zehir” is another contender for one of the best albums of the year. You know, if you like that kind of thing, good music or whatever.
46) “Okay, Kenan, we get it! There’s some really good Turkish rock coming out. Enough already!” Well, too bad, because we haven’t talked about Mojave’s “Nefessiz” yet. It’s heavy, it’s brooding, it’s real. It’s a damn good song, trust me.
47) Never has a band more aptly named than Goblin Daycare. There’s something both sinister and childlike about their music, you can immediately picture green scabby goblins jumping and pushing each other in a playpen. Lo-fi punk that’s getting noticed across the world.
48) Superb 80s worship. Gothic guitars over a disco beat. CANAVAR is another act still obscure for now but likely to blow up in the next 1-2 years.
49) Connoisseurs of genres like emo and shoegaze will be happy to know such scenes are alive and well in Turkey. The talented duo Yiğit and Berk use distortion, reverb, and poppy melodies to take you back to crying in your bedroom as a teenager.
50) It Will Pass is a band that lived up to its name. A supergroup of sorts bringing together young members of the Izmir punk scene, the band released an impressive EP, did a quick tour within Turkey, and broke up. You gotta respect the commitment to concept.
5 more songs below.
I know I’m cheating by going over 50, but I promise you’re going to want to hear these last 5 songs. In fact, our final song is perhaps the best released this year, so don’t miss it.
51) Eve Dönüş Yok is an indie rock band creating tightly crafted, emotional songs with beautiful harmonies. On “Kâşif” (The Explorer) they take you on aboard a “ship with a broken rudder.”
52) A song that sounds like it’s from a 50s Hollywood soundtrack, a Phil Spector-style wall-of-sound string section, sad lyrics of the self-flagellating kind, an indie cult artist who wears a mask on stage & hides her identity? Yep, you guessed it: our beloved Lin Pesto is back.
53) There’s a lot of melancholic music out of Turkey and it’s not always my thing. But there are a few names that do the emotional approach with subtlety and grace. Can Oflaz creates lightly electronic music that hovers between Turkish pop and indie. You can just feel the quality
54) Kardelen has been making a name for herself with habibi R&B. I just made that up, but her brand is a distinctly Middle Eastern inflected contemporary pop. She’s also a talented vocalist, as you can tell from the brooding emotional journey that is “HANCI.”
55) Büyük Ev Ablukada is the most important rock of Turkey’s last decade. They’re fresh back with a brand new album.
In its powerful finale “Yangın Akvaryum,” you can see why this band inspires such devotion among fans, who come to shows singing along passionately to every lyric.
That’s it, folks.
You’ve got 3 more weeks to catch up on the music you missed from this year, so keep listening!
Keep your eye out for my Best Albums of 2023 list & follow me on Instagram if you want weekly updates on what’s happening in Turkey’s music scene.
Happy new year!
