As the year draws to a close, we here at Guitar World like to take a moment to look back and reflect upon 12 months of guitar music that blazed trails and melted faces – and what a year it’s been.
Since January, we’ve witnessed the return of The Rolling Stones, The Hives and Metallica, and welcomed in fresh new cuts from the next generation of guitar from the likes of Covet, boygenius and Jacob Collier. We could go on: the list is seemingly endless.
With the help of an all-star cast of guitarists, the wider GW editorial family and you, dear readers, we’ve assembled a list of this year’s greatest riffs – and now we want you to tell us the best.
As is tradition, we’ve opened the floor to a public poll, featuring approximately 50 riff highlights from the year to date, with artists organized from A to Z for easy reference.
And, just to help you recap the year of riffs, we've compiled all the selected numbers into a handy Spotify playlist, which you can peruse at your leisure below.
You can, of course, name your own if you vehemently disagree with our picks, but beware: anything released as a single in 2022 doesn’t qualify. Oh, and if your favorite player doesn’t crop up here, they may well appear in our best solo and best guitar album polls, which are coming very soon indeed.
With that, we bid you happy voting – we’ll close the polls one week today and reveal the results later this month. Godspeed!
