While there's been plenty of great music this year, Ghost's 2022 album Impera continues to shines above all else, topping numerous album of the year lists, including Metal Hammer's annual album poll.
Not only was the record vastly acclaimed, but their song Mary On A Cross (from 2019's Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic) hit the viral stratosphere on TikTok. After such a successful 12 months, it only makes sense then to find out about the music behind it all. So what has Ghost leader Tobias Forge been listening to?
In a new interview with Revolver, the visionary frontman names his favourite album of 2022 - but with a twist. He also shares some insight about his Spotify Wrapped results, revealing that the artist that he listened to most was Marillion.
Although the prog rock band did actually release a new record this year (An Hour Before It's Dark) it didn't make it as his favourite 2022 album.
Technically, his actual choice wasn't even released in 2022, rather in November of last year, but Forge puts his out-of-date pick down to an inability of keeping up with what's new.
"I am so bad at listening to other records, other band's records, I must say," he admits. "Simply because I'm just too full of myself. [Laughs] No, but I'm just too busy listening to old records. I listen to a lot of music, but most of it is older. I just had my end-of-year summary of what I listen to the most on Spotify, and it turned out to be Marillion.
"But I think that in the year that has passed, the record that surprised me, the that most made me happy was probably the new ABBA. That was a cool record," Forge declares, speaking of the Swedish pop royalty's first album in four decades, Voyage.
"It was surreal hearing it because, in many ways, it was like hearing a new Beatles record" he continues. Obviously there are natural reasons why a new Beatles record wouldn't happen.
"But besides Bjorn [Ulvaeus] and Benny [Andersson] being ever-active, making musicals and just being prolific songwriters and artists, the girls [Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog] have been pretty much MIA over the years, almost to the point where it feels almost like they rose from the dead coming onto this record. So it almost had that sort of resurgence from a mortal perspective feel. Yeah, I think it felt like a very important event."
