Klava Koka broke a record, they still believe Shevchuk: “ZD” named the best songs of 2023

On the one hand, these are just dry statistics compiled from public voting over twelve months. It lacks the emotional outbursts that usually accompany the annual ZD AWARDS music plebiscite. And while emotions are still far from reaching a state of reasonable balance, mathematics helps to evaluate media passions in a relatively balanced manner and call them statistical, and not persistently promoted, sometimes for completely non-musical reasons, the so-called. “hits” of the year, to separate, as they say, the wheat from the chaff. This “separation” ultimately showed a result that, on the one hand, was expected, and on the other, not without unexpected surprises

The calculation rules in “ZD” are constant, like two and two. For each first place in the monthly Top 20 Hits tables, a song receives 20 points, for the twentieth – 1. The results are summed up to form the final chart.

This year, the final twenty included, as paradoxical as it may sound, 24 songs. Last time, we ranked the tracks that scored the same number of points, placing higher the one that chronologically entered the charts earlier or stayed longer in them, in order to limit ourselves to the notorious “twenty”. This time we decided to slightly change the rule, and now some positions contain two songs that scored the same number of points over the year.

In the end there were ten of them, which provided the final table with five bonuses, which are not at all superfluous for a more complete assessment of the annual musical clearing.

Over the course of the year, 69 songs passed through the ZD song charts. Probably, there could be more of them, but an impressive part of the music content, the producers of which happen to be outside Russia, practically does not make it into the local media space for reasons beyond ZD’s control. So we have what we can afford.

Another number of songs remained unaccounted for, since at the data collection stage these compositions did not even reach the “twenty” in the monthly tables. There were quite a few of these over the year, but we did not keep statistics. Among them were those that were quite persistently imposed on the air, but, apparently, the efforts of the “promoters,” no matter what motives they were guided by, did not always resonate with listeners, leaving behind only a trail of indifference, or even ridicule.

The artistic record is four songs in the charts during the year, and the record holder was Klava Koka, she shook the charts with the tracks “Married”, “Not With Me”, “Crying”, and “If You Weren’t There” in a collab with Feduk. With three songs in the Top 20 Hits during the year, Lolita (“Marlene”, “On the Titanic” together with Instasamka, “North” together with Tkimali), Anna Asti (“I Want to Get Married”, “I Believe in You”, “Tsaritsa”) were noted “), Marie Crimebreri (“Otherwise All This Is in Vain”, “Around the Cities”, “I’m So Lucky”), Dabro (“We Must Repeat”, “I’m Not Scared”, “You Know, Mom”).

Among the most hardworking, girls unconditionally win, but the Zasidkevich brothers from Dabro managed to most successfully convert their hard work and found themselves at the top of the final list of Top Hits 2023 with the track “Need to Repeat,” which can be called somewhat prophetic after the triumph of their “Youth” which became one of the main hits of 2022.

Dabro, probably more successfully than others, at least at the moment, are mastering the patterns of the style, which critics, not without malice, called “Zhukov-pop” (the world, of course, has no idea about such a genre), hinting at the incredible vitality of the group’s musical model “ Hands up!”. The Zasidkevichs, of course, are not yet destroying Luzhniki, as Sergei Zhukov did for two years in a row, but overall they have a chance to move somewhere there. “Hands Up!” themselves placed in the annual chart in a quite honorable 5th place with the hit “Black Sea”.

It is symptomatic that in the top three (actually the top four in terms of total points) only Olga Seryabkina is fashionable and slightly complicates the sound with all sorts of rhythmic delicacies. Kravets and Gio Pika offer an unobtrusive “Leps-light”, and Dabro and Instasamka believe in the triumph of lo-fi and, apparently, are winning. The loudly self-proclaimed “Queen” (picked up from friend Fili) Anna Asti is only the fourth, Klava Koka with her status as a pop princess and enviable fertility is even the seventh.

For the first time in many years, summing up the song results is accompanied by a downright scandalous question: where are Philip and Nikolai? The absence of songs by the “royal” couple (one, as we remember, is the “king of pop”, the other is the “pop emperor”) in the final twenty looks like a serious challenge to the established order of things. And this despite the fact that it is not entirely correct to call the past year a downtime for the golden couple.

Baskov released two singles: “You Are Irresistible” (as if selected from what did not suit Alexander Revva) and the languid slow song “I’m Starting to Live.” Kirkorov released as many as five new songs in 2023. And if the soundtracks for the films “Nuremberg” and “Yolki 10” sounded demonstrably routine, then three collabs with Jasmine (“Personal Body”), Mikhail Shufutinsky (“Dubai Heat”) and Lyusya Chebotina (“Queen”) did not go unnoticed. regularly appeared in ZD reviews and were generally accompanied by media noise.

However, we have already mentioned above that media attention does not always correlate with the passionate reaction of the public. Apparently, against the backdrop of former bangers like “Mood Color Blue” and “Rolex”, the current song Philippiks were greeted more often with neutral politeness than with enthusiastic empathy. Philip started the New Year with the song “Rumors”, in which he set to music his last experiences due to noise, hysteria and punishment after a “naked” party. Well, who would have thought that the usual pleasures, outfits and entertainment for the pop beau monde, which have been the norm for 30 years, would suddenly become almost outlawed?! The future will tell whether this heartbreaking new product will make it into the January chart, but for now let’s hope that this year the king of pop will not lose his usual courage and offer not only simulated confessions, but also catchy, frivolous songs. In any case, the artist’s fans probably want to make sure that Philip has not lost the ability to be reborn like the Phoenix bird.

Against a backdrop of spectacularly seething, still iridescent rainbow colors and sometimes impressive, but still pop foam, two cliffs rise proudly. The first one, which has retained excellent form, is rock and roll. The second, which stands out among the chanson-hookah attempts, is truly hip-hop. Yuri Shevchuk demonstrates strong musical integrity, and the public, judging by the results, believes him.

At the same time, there was real music, if not in abundance, then in a fair amount in two other monthly ZD Charts tables, dedicated to albums (Top 10 Albums) and radio rotations (Top 10 Moscow Radioplay). We usually don’t calculate these lists at the end of the year, but in connection with all the recent chaos, an important question has arisen: to what extent, for example, the repertoire of radio stations reflects the realities of the global musical landscape.

For clarification, ZD turned to Igor Kraev, a specialist who is not only unbiased, but also professionally researches the music broadcast market. We also use data from his TopHit platform in our charts. According to him, Russian music broadcasting is still at the cutting edge.

“Some international labels have indeed left the local market,” Mr. Kraev explained, “but, under Russian law, a radio station can take any phonogram published in the public domain, download or buy it, say, for one dollar on a specialized platform, and use on air without the permission of the copyright holder, but with payment of remuneration to RAO. And no one cares how this money will reach copyright holders abroad in the current circumstances. That’s all! Except in cases where the copyright holder does not send a notice to a specific radio station that it prohibits the use of its work or phonogram on air. But such precedents have not yet been recorded.”

At the same time, as our counterpart explained, for streaming and other music platforms aimed at mass consumers, different rules apply, and works and catalogs can actually be withdrawn from the country’s market as a whole. However, “thanks to the fact that Moscow music editors at radio stations are still very well versed in musical trends, modern Western popular music is presented very well, in general, Russian radio broadcasts can be considered relevant against the background of existing world trends.”

We can only wish that the coming year will allow us all not only to maintain faith in real music, but also this music itself…

Sincerely yours, Sound Track.