Still, even with the past now in constant competition with the present, 2023 has managed to give us an impressive bounty of genuinely new jams - songs actually making their debut, or poking their head onto the charts for the first time - to keep us from totally drowning in reruns.

When even Taylor Swift has to deviate from her planned Midnights promotional cycle to push a song from four albums ago, clearly anarchy reigns on the contemporary pop timeline. 1 from The Weeknd coming via a new remix of a 2016 deep cut, old is new again on top 40, and there’s never been less of a dividing line between catalog and current. More than perhaps any time previously, this year has forced us to ask: What does it even mean for a song to be from “this year”? The Billboard charts are more confusing than ever on those grounds: With 2023 Hot 100 hits from Lady Gaga, Miguel and Tyler, the Creator all originally released in the 2010s, and a No. It’s a little funny to do a midyear songs list in 2023.