The best music moments of 2022 (so far)

One strange week in June, an eccentric 63-year-old British art-pop diva found herself rubbing elbows with Lizzo, Future, Jack Harlow, and Harry Styles in the Billboard Top 5 — and scoring her biggest hit to date. After the Duffer brothers featured Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" in a dark, poignant sequence in the fourth season of Stranger Things, the 1985 single (which originally peaked at No. 30) soared back onto the charts and into the hearts of an entirely new generation of fans. The eerily gorgeous track leapt to No. 4 in the U.S., sprinted to No. 1 and shattered three records in the U.K., and suddenly became the only thing anyone on TikTok wanted to talk about. We're still talking about it, all while Bush tinkers in her garden in the remote South Devon countryside, racking up millions of streams — and, reportedly, millions of dollars — and marveling at how, as she told the BBC this month, "the whole world's gone mad" for a song released when Reagan was still in office. —Jason Lamphier

The most exciting part of the lead-up to Harry Styles' third solo album was no doubt his Friday night sets at Coachella. Styles — who was a bit of a surprise headliner himself after the long-postponed 2020 line-up changed — kicked off both weekends with no shortage of delightful shockers. In addition to performing single "As It Was" live for the first time, he blessed the massive crowd of Harries with two then-yet-unheard tracks from Harry's House, "Late Night Talking" and "Boyfriends" (the latter's intro included this iconic line: "To boyfriends everywhere, f— you."). But new songs weren't all the fruit-loving pop star had in his basket: Weekend 1, he brought out Shania Twain (Harries know how much of a superfan Styles has always been) and Weekend 2, he brought out pal Lizzo — whose surprise appearance on the catwalk led to screams so loud I couldn't even hear the opening thrums of "I Will Survive," which they belted in matching Gucci coats. If you weren't a Harry fan from the One Direction days or didn't get drawn in by his Grammys performance, the double dose of Harrychella surely did the trick. —Ashley Boucher

This year, producers of the Super Bowl halftime show placed hip-hop front and center for the first time in history, tapping Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige. Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar — plus surprise guest 50 Cent — to regale audiences with three decades' worth of classics. By inviting Dre, whose former group N.W.A. famously gave us the protest anthem "F--- Tha Police," and Lamar, whose 2015 single "Alright" is now a byword for the Black Lives Matter movement, the NFL could have opened the door for awkward off-script detours and unwanted controversy. But Eminem was the only artist to take a knee (a move the league later said it knew was coming), and Lamar's line "po-po wanna kill us dead in the street" was either nixed or rendered inaudible. What stood out instead was the spectacle's endless barrage of hits — from "The Next Episode" and "In da Club" to "Lose Yourself" and "No More Drama." Its setlist was a Gen Xer's dream come true, and a rousing reminder that these six heavyweights forever changed the game. —JL

After postponing her April 2021 concerts to December 2021, only to cancel most of those dates when her crew contracted COVID, Jessie Ware properly unleashed her What's Your Pleasure? tour in May. Warewolves have waited two long years to see her 2020 album's sparkling disco bangers live, and for their patience they've been rewarded with a swishy, tightly sequenced romp that offers the nonstop thrill of a greatest-hits show. The British siren's set at June's Primavera Sound in Barcelona was easily a highlight of the seaside festival, her backup dancers snapping silk fans and flaunting mini mirror balls to Pleasure favorites like "Read My Lips" and "Ooh La La." The pièce de résistance? Ware singing the record's fetishistic title cut while brandishing a mic that doubled as a whip. Proof that she can serve lust and camp with equal aplomb. —JL

Phoebe Bridgers may write spectral, interior anthems about love and pain and emerging selfhood, but she sees no perks in being a wallflower. In May, she tweeted her abortion story without apology, and pledged to give a dollar from every tour stop to the Mariposa Fund; on stage, she rarely fails to remind the crowd that health care is a human right. But even the fans who adore her outspoken stance on social issues don't come to rock shows strictly to have their consciousness raised, and Bridgers knows how to put on a full production: Her two-night stop this month at Brooklyn's Prospect Park — like her electric set 10 days later at Glastonbury — combined moments of hushed folkloric beauty, thrashing guitar-god freakouts, and truth-to-power messaging dipped in cutting wit and fury. If you're not angry too, she seemed to say with every gesture, then you're not listening. —LG