The Best Vinyl to Gift in 2023

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Who woulda thunk that vinyl would be a perfectly good gift in 2023? After years of streaming dominance, owning your media is increasingly coming back into vogue, with vinyl as the format of choice for audiophiles and Swifties alike. (It’s just so much cooler than a CD.) From anniversary re-releases to special-edition movie soundtracks, these are the records we’ll be spinning under the Christmas tree this year.

Limited-Edition Vinyl

Finally Enough Love: Fifty Number Ones (Rainbow Edition) $200 now 17% off $166

Madonna released this mic-drop of a greatest-hits album last year, celebrating her record-breaking 50th number-one hit on the Billboard Dance chart. This year she came out with a rainbow edition, which spans four decades of Madge eras across 12 brightly colored discs. It should tide the Madonna superfan in your life over until her auto-biopic finally drops. —Emily Palmer Heller

$166 at Amazon Buy $166 at Amazon Buy Nimrod (25th Anniversary Edition) $125 now 33% off $84

“Time grabs you by the wrist” indeed. Green Day’s Nimrod somehow turned 25 last year, and the band re-released its hit album to mark the occasion. The vinyl box set includes a 1997 live recording at Philadelphia’s Electric Factory, as well as some demos of unreleased tracks. —EPH

$84 at Amazon Buy $84 at Amazon Buy Paramore Self-Titled Double Vinyl $37

After Brand New Eyes, and after a painful partial band breakup, Paramore came out swinging with their self-titled record that had hit singles like “Still Into You” and their Grammy-winning “Ain’t It Fun.” Now, ten years later, you can celebrate the record’s anniversary with a handful of variants all colored after Hayley Williams’s many hair colors during that era. I’m partial to the half-orange, half-pink record for the hair she donned for the “Still Into You” music video. A classic!! —Savannah Salazar

Pre-order at Paramore Store Buy Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (50th Anniversary Edition) $45 now 22% off $35

David Bowie shocked audiences in London when he announced that the final date of his Ziggy Stardust Tour would be his last show … as his glam alter ego. It was an iconic moment immortalized in a 1979 concert film, and now re-released in a double vinyl set to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that performance. Both the film and the soundtrack have been fully remastered, with new mixes by longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti. —EPH

$35 at Amazon Buy $35 at Amazon Buy

Movie (and Video Game) Soundtracks

Gone Home (10th Anniversary Edition) $33

This one’s for the gaymers. The Fullbright Company’s beloved exploration game about a young woman returning to her family’s home and finding it abandoned turned ten this August. It’s the perfect candidate for an iam8bit vinyl release, since the moody soundtrack by Chris Remo is a huge part of what makes the game so engrossing. It’s available for pre-order now, with orders shipping at the beginning of 2024. These releases tend to sell out, so it’s worth ordering now. Bonus points if you deliver the news to your giftee in the form of a riotgrrl-style poster. —EPH

$33 at iam8bit Buy Neon Genesis Evangelion OST $40 now 15% off $34

Neon Genesis Evangelion is known for many things — its psychological complexity, its controversies, Pen-Pen — but one thing even my laughably stodgy, all-boys Catholic high school knows about this very weird ’90s anime was that its music fucking slaps. And this colored vinyl release of the soundtrack is an absolutely gorgeous spin: a pair of translucent blue discs housed in a gatefold that opens up to reveal selections of art from the whole series. It’s not super comprehensive: It totals out at just 22 tracks, with only two versions of the series’s iconic uses of “Fly Me to the Moon” included, but that’s two more than were licensed for the show’s recent DVD releases in the States. It’s the “greatest hits” of Evangelion, and that alone perks my ears up. —Eric Vilas-Boas

$34 at Amazon Buy $34 at Amazon Buy Oppenheimer OST $50

Crank unexpected song of the summer “Can You Hear the Music?” on your hi-fi as you sit naked on your wingback chair and stare into the future you never intended to create. —Bethy Squires

$50 at Alamo Drafthouse Buy Barbie the Album $25

It’s hard to pick the song of the summer, but it’s definitely something from the Barbie soundtrack. The original Barbie the Album vinyl sold out, but a new sky-blue printing is shipping out now, with two new tracks for good measure. Merry Christmas, Barbie! —EPH

$25 at Barbie the Album Store Buy Godzilla vs. Megaguirus OST $45

This 2000 Godzilla flick where the King of the Monsters fights a giant prehistoric dragonfly who was mutated during the test-firing of a gun that shoots black holes is pretty stupid, and not one of the great films in the franchise. The score, though, slaps, featuring a booming, building new theme for Godzilla that actually might be even better on Mondo’s snazzy vinyl because you don’t need to watch the rest of the silly movie normally surrounding it. —James Grebey

$45 at Alamo Drafthouse Buy Halloween 3 OST $35

The only Halloween movie not to feature Michael Myers also has one of the best John Carpenter scores. This vinyl pressing was done with love, and features bold graphic packaging that really sells the homemade horror vibes of H3. —BS

$35 at Alamo Drafthouse Buy

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