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The 100 Best Singles of the 2010s

The 2010s marked the end of what we’ve come to know as the “single,” which officially met its demise in the wild west of the streaming era.

Robyn
Photo: Interscope Records

The 2010s marked the end of what we’ve come to know as the “single,” which dates back to Billboard’s jukebox charts of the early 1940s and which officially met its demise in the wild west of the current streaming era. In the end, though, a single is just a song, and these 100 songs defined the decade that began in the throes of recovery from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and ended with the systematic dismantling of our democratic norms.

The crumbling of our institutions was accompanied by the euphoric beats of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” and Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” the former of which epitomized the increasing irrelevance of radio, the term “single,” and even the charts themselves. Hip-hop served as our cross-generational conscience, with veterans like A Tribe Called Quest and newcomers Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino reflecting and responding to the times. R&B and country, too, both staked a claim to the mantle of the decade’s most empowering songs, from Beyoncé’s “Formation” to Little Big Town’s “Little White Church.”

History will be the final arbiter of what we’ve done to the planet, to the country, and to each other over the last 10 years, but the songs that served as the soundtrack to this modern dystopia are already etched in time. Long live the single. Consider this list its epitaph. Sal Cinquemani


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100. Clairo, “Bags”

With “Bags,” Clairo navigates the line between friend and lover with a crush who could be straight. Her approach pinpoints ephemeral moments with a wide-eyed recollection: the sensation of fingertips on her back, a mane of hair blowing in the wind of an open car window, a love interest standing in a doorway. You get the feeling that the experiences she recounts are firsts for her, so vivid and formative are her memories. Sophia Ordaz


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99. Angel Olsen, “Shut Up Kiss Me”

Most of the songs on Angel Olsen’s 2016 album, My Woman utilize the singer’s marvelously evocative voice for poignant purposes, bemoaning the loss of love in damaged, defensive terms. But the undertone of aggression that undergirds those imprecations bursts to the fore on “Shut Up Kiss Me,” an attempt to salvage a foundering relationship that finds Olsen embodying both traditionally male and female roles simultaneously, delivering soft and hard in equal measure. Backed by a surging tide of guitar and drums, she pushes from wounded desolation to commanding confidence and back, eventually settling for the latter. Along the way, the song pursues a swaying, woozy build-up that walks a fine line between heartbreak and renewal, while working as a strong showcase for the singer’s staggering musical chops. Jesse Cataldo

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98. Taylor Swift, “Look What You Made Me Do”

The similarly themed “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” whose bouncy pop beat and comical overtones recall those of past hits like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Shake It Off,” might have made a safer choice to introduce the world to the New Taylor than “Look What You Made Me Do.” Which is exactly why this droll single—with its deceptively lush strings, pulsing hip-hop beat, and Right Said Fred-aping non-hook—will likely go down in pop history as Swift’s first bona fide misstep. It’s also what makes the track the boldest and, quite frankly, most authentic thing she’s released to date. Cinquemani


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97. Little Big Town, “Little White Church”

Country singers are generally too polite to come right out and ask, “Whose pussy is this?” the way, say, Nicki Minaj might, but that’s still the gist of Little Big Town’s ultimatum here. Karen Fairchild gives a throaty, lived-in performance that spells out exactly what her man stands to lose, lest he make an honest woman out of her. The blues guitar riff that drives the song dirties up the arrangement a bit, but it’s the handclaps-only B section and, as always, LBT’s impeccable four-part harmonies that really make “Little White Church” distinctive and seductive. Jonathan Keefe


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96. Sia, “Chandelier”

As a songwriter, Sia has scored copious hits by channeling the voices of pop stars as varied as Rihanna and Celine Dion. On “Chandelier,” her heart- and lung-rending delivery of a song about addiction feels entirely her own, the kind of full-throttle catharsis that you can’t fake no matter how big the paycheck. From the reggae-inflected verse asserting that “party girls don’t get hurt” to the sky-high chorus declaring the singer’s intent to swing from ceiling fixtures while drinking her face off, “Chandelier” captures how denial can morph into jarring revelations about the extent of one’s self-destruction. The song, however, keeps that reckoning in abeyance, riding its thudding beat and reveling in those final moments of exhilaration before the hangover inevitably hits. Annie Galvin


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95. Katy Perry, “Chained to the Rhythm”

The lead single from Katy Perry’s fourth album is a strikingly subtle piece of Caribbean-inflected protest pop. The breezy track isn’t just a slow burner, but its message—that we’re all living in bubbles, “happily numb”—is also decidedly bipartisan. Whether the song, co-written by Sia and produced by longtime Perry collaborator Max Martin, is an endorsement of self-care or a critique of escapism in times of political upheaval is up for interpretation. What is certain is that a track with a hook that implores listeners to “Come on, turn it up/Keep it on repeat” had better deliver the goods, and this one most definitely does. Cinquemani

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94. Lana Del Rey, “National Anthem”

The fifth single from Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die doubles, much like the album, as a critique and a glorification of materialism and artifice, name-dropping “upper echelon” status symbols like the Hamptons, $2 million sports cars, and Page Six to paint a portrait of a girl looking for love in all the well-fixed places. Del Rey boasts of “blurring the lines between real and the fake” in the lyrics, and though she’s taken on various guises during her short run in the spotlight (“gangster Nancy Sinatra,” Ione Skye from Say Anything…, and, in the video for “National Anthem,” a 21st-century Jackie O), what makes the song feel authentic is the singer’s simple, robotic performance. She doesn’t try to affect a deeper, more “serious” tone the way she has on other songs, content to sing in her more natural higher register. “National Anthem” suggests what it might sound like if trip-hop had conquered hip-hop and Britney Spears actually had something to say. Cinquemani


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93. The Weeknd featuring Daft Punk, “Starboy”

Few people would accuse Abel Tesfaye of being too modest. Yet, the artist known as the Weeknd has described “Starboy” as his manifestation of the “more braggadocious character that we all have inside us.” That heightened swagger finds Tesfaye looking down at the gaudier accoutrements of the celebrity lifestyle, blaming pop culture at large for creating his outsized persona in the first place (“Look what you’ve done/I’m a motherfuckin’ starboy”), all while signaling a transformation that’s portrayed literally in the single’s music video, where Tesfaye assassinates his former palm-tree-afroed self to announce the arrival of his shorn Starboy period, a not-so-subtle nod to David Bowie. By joining forces with Daft Punk, Tesfaye adds gloss to this smooth, bombastic sound, resulting in a song that sleekly and effortlessly thrums and sparkles like one of his beloved luxury cars driven under neon lights. Josh Goller


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92. LCD Soundsystem, “I Can Change”

Self-interested, defeatist, and angry, James Murphy is practically a distillation of every obsessive character from a Jonathan Franzen novel. He is also, like them, open to change, even if it sounds as if it will take much prodding for him to even get halfway there. The silver lining in This Is Happening’s collection of downers, “I Can Change” boasts the album’s most succinct and vivid illustration of Murphy’s doubts and resentments as a lover. It’s woozy, glitchy synths are the sounds of a man wanting but resisting to give in to happiness, light beaming outward from a very dark void. Ed Gonzalez


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91. St. Vincent, “Digital Witness”

There’s something about “Digital Witness” that hearkens back to a song by one of Annie Clark’s most obvious influences: David Bowie’s “TVC15” Both songs use herky-jerky vocal hooks to deliver sly existential horror about the prevalence of technology in the modern age, and almost 40 years after Bowie sang about a television swallowing Iggy Pop’s girlfriend, Clark sounds even more distressed: “Digital witnesses, what’s the point of even sleeping?/If I can’t show it, if you can’t see me/What’s the point of doing anything?” But the funky, chopped-up horn bleats that form the backbone of “Digital Witness” manage to place the tune squarely in the 21st century. Jeremy Winograd

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90. Janet Jackson featuring J. Cole, “No Sleeep”

Giving precisely zero fucks after dispensing a string of albums and singles that were desperate for them, Janet Jackson trusted the soft sell when choosing the lead-off single from her Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced reunion album, Unbreakable. The downtempo “No Sleeep,” languorous (or “plush,” as she coos twice) in every respect but for those sharp, assertive echoing claps on the backbeat, isn’t so much sexy as it is something increasingly less easy to come by in pop: intimate. Which isn’t to say its replay value hasn’t proven tantric. Like making love with someone you truly know, “No Sleeep” somehow gets better the more times you lay it down. Eric Henderson


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89. Luke James, “Drip”

With a falsetto vocal that goes from aching to ecstatic and a wah-wah guitar lead that channels vintage Ernie Isley, New Orleans singer-songwriter Luke James’s “Drip,” the first single from his forthcoming sophomore effort, sounds like it could have fallen out of heaven, or at least the early 1970s. The only real clue to its 2017 origins are the lyrics, which don’t even try to pretend that the title isn’t about what you think it’s about. At a time when contemporary R&B at large was blander and more samey-sounding than ever, “Drip” was a breath of Afro-Sheen-scented fresh air. If every neo-neo-soul track can be this good, then sign us up for the revival of the revival. Zachary Hoskins


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88. Sky Ferreira, “You’re Not the One”

There’s nothing genuinely threatening or dangerous about Sky Ferreira, a former teen model who’s adopted a confrontational stance on her first album, Night Time, My Time, most clearly manifested in a revealing, forcefully unattractive cover photo and a faux-punk aesthetic. Yet these signifiers are useful in establishing the type of artist Ferreira wants to be: fearlessly self-possessed, sexual on her own terms, more focused on lacerating breakup songs than bubblegum love ballads. All these things come through on the intermittingly fierce, completely catchy “You’re Not the One,” its industrial drums and bittersweet vocals setting up another thick-skinned sendoff track from an artist intent on establishing her independence. Jesse Cataldo


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87. Hot Chip, “One Life Stand”

The title track and lead single from Hot Chip’s latest album may be the sweetest and most genuine ode to monogamy that exists anywhere. Forget about dates, forget marriage; Alexis Taylor is interested in so much more, as he affirms “I only wanna be your one life stand” with his convivial everyman charm. It’s a lovely message, and serves as a splendid centrepiece for this single. The verses are accentuated by deformed Caribbean steel drums and laser sound effects, while the chorus boasts a barrage of warm, sonorous synths. This could be the most radio-friendly slab of upbeat pop we’ve heard from Taylor and company, but it struggled to chart significantly on either side of the Atlantic as the record-buying company parted with their money for messages of promiscuity and bad romances instead. Oh well. Their loss. Huw Jones

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86. Azealia Banks, “1991”

So maybe it’s all a bit too on-the-nose as an homage, but it’s not like Azealia Banks is one for subtlety. She’s dialed back the inventive potty-mouthing that made “212” such an attention-grabber, but there’s so much going on in “1991” that Banks could never be accused of slacking off. She spits a rapid-fire 16-bar rhyme that’s a triumph of female sexual agency and makes it sound as effortless as snacking on a little pain au chocolat, and then she nimbly interweaves those rhymes into an onomatopoeic secondary vocal track before unraveling it all so she can do a spot-on impression of Ce Ce Peniston. Keefe


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85. Jenny Lewis, “Just One of the Guys”

There are several very good songs with almost uncomfortably personal lyrics and poppy earworm hooks on erstwhile Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis’s third solo album, The Voyager, but “Just One of the Guys” is one of the few that had the benefit of not being produced by Ryan Adams, with his ’80s AOR-rock fetish. Instead, the Beck-produced single possesses more of a late-’70s singer-songwriter feel that suits Lewis’s voice and personality better. But it’s not the arrangement, or even the incredibly catchy see-sawing chorus that stands out the most; it’s Lewis’s daringly close-to-the-bone bridge: “There’s only one difference between you and me/When I look at myself all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.” Winograd


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84. Disclosure featuring Lorde, “Magnets”

“Pretty girls don’t know the things that I know,” Lorde sings on “Magnets,” an understated offering from Disclosure’s sophomore effort, Caracal. The tropical house track, which features Indian rhythms, backward synth washes, and a patient, pulsating beat, succeeds—with a little help from its fiery music video, of course—at shifting the New Zealand pop singer’s profile ever so slightly from gawky teen to sultry chanteuse, her performance at once singular in its edgy hesitance and startling in its unexpected seductiveness. Cinquemani


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83. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Jesus Alone”

The structure of “Jesus Alone” serves as an appropriate mirror for the emotional state its composer found himself in while formulating it. As the song begins, with a grumbling electronic groan and Nick Cave reciting vivid but obtuse imagery, the singer sounds despondent and detached, adrift in darkness and abstraction. But as the improvised track builds, its cold swirls of electronics, strings, and piano gradually coalesce into a grievingly reposeful refrain, as Cave comes to grips with his pain: “With my voice/I am calling you.” It’s a pretty chorus, but when considering that Cave is “calling” his dead son, it becomes far more devastating than the gloomier musical passages that precede it. Winograd

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82. Kelela, “LMK”

Kicking off in the club and resolving in the gauzy ether of a potential meaningless hookup, Kelela’s “LMK” sounds both ominous and alluring, an aloof seduction condensed to three and a half minutes. In its delivery, the singer turns the standard come-hither suggestiveness of so much female-fronted pop on its head, abandoning intimations of virginal purity or masculine power transfer for cold transactional consumption, all cards immediately laid out on the table. By removing desire entirely from the equation, she reduces the procedural essence of the mating ritual to its barest elements, within a track that pulls off a similar musical process, stripped down to Jam City’s slim ambient production and the singer’s silky, expressive voice. Slinky and soothing despite its aggressive tone, blending plainspoken confidence with low-key virtuosity, “LMK” represents the finest qualities of Kelela’s sumptuous debut, concentrated into a sui generis amendment of pop sexual politics. Cataldo


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81. La Roux, “Bulletproof”

There’s really no explaining how or why British synth-pop duo La Roux managed to sneak itself onto U.S. radio playlists while the likes of Robyn, Little Boots, and other Euro pop acts remained largely ignored. Not that “Bulletproof” is undeserving: It’s all video-game bleeps and stiff beats, with singer Elly Jackson fancying herself an impenetrable computer. But with a malfunctioning communication system (“I won’t let you in again/The messages I tried to send/My information’s just not going in”), Jackson’s declaration that “This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof” ultimately just sounds like wishful thinking. Cinquemani


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80. Autre Ne Veut, “Play by Play”

Arthur Ashin’s mellifluous voice is an instrument that veritably quivers with exquisite pain and lust, and its bruised textures are draped across a chaise longue of indulgent synths and artificial drum sounds on this luxurious ode to frantic, obsessive infatuation. Three minutes of foreplay followed by a two-minute climax, “Play By Play” reaches “Total Eclipse of the Heart”-level critical mass halfway through, but the track is rescued from histrionics by the glimpses of real anguish that flash in Ashin’s vocals. “Play By Play” is that rare beast, a song about sex that’s neither lascivious nor awkward, but instead pulses with tactile sensuality. Mark Collett

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79. Chance the Rapper featuring Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, “No Problem”

With a blissful choir and a crawling bassline, Chance the Rapper’s “No Problem” initially sounds like church, constantly ascending and full of joy. But the song’s subject matter is far from religious: Chance uses his verse to attack the music labels he’s continued to resist as well as the rappers who sign record deals; 2 Chainz sings the praises of drugs and money; and Lil Wayne bemoans his ongoing financial and industry woes. Chance channels his mentor, Kanye West, the originator of repurposed soul music, and a master of misdirection, by making “No Problem” feel like gospel, and then preaching from the book of himself. Jonathan Wroble


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78. Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road”

For a song that launched 1,000 remixes and at least half as many think pieces, “Old Town Road” is surprisingly slight. In under two minutes, this earworm ignited a nationwide conversation about what constitutes country music. With all due respect to Steve Goodman, “Old Town Road” has everything a country song needs: the open road, a cowboy hat, drunken melancholy, and a horse. Lil Nas X is talking about a man clearing his head of his self-inflicted troubles by hopping on a horse and lighting out for greener pastures. It’s got the ethos of a George Jones track, and nobody really needs Billy Ray Cyrus to make it stick. Saddle up. Seth Wilson


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77. Ariana Grande, “Thank U, Next”

By the fall of 2018, Ariana Grande had broken off her engagement to Pete Davidson and mourned the passing of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller. Most artists might lay low in the wake of such loss, but Grande channeled her grief into “Thank U, Next,” a celebration of serial monogamy that finds the singer recounting the various men of her past: “Even almost got married/And for Pete I’m so thankful/Wish I could say thank you to Malcolm/‘Cause he was an angel,” she sings atop a woozy bassline and a collage of percolating beats. The hook is simple but surprisingly catchy and to the point: “Thank you, next/I’m so fucking thankful for my ex.”
Alexa Camp


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76. Fleet Foxes, “Helplessness Blues”

There are a whole lot of ways to like a song, but “Helplessness Blues” struck me in a way that only two or three other songs ever have, nearly bypassing my whole sense of having an opinion about it and confronting me with the recognition that the song was true. When I try to reflect about where I’m at right now in the ongoing attenuation between my ambitions and my real prospects, I can see the push and pull of the forces that Robin Pecknold so lyrically evokes. The gorgeous harmonies are what put the equivocal song decisively on the side of hope as Fleet Foxes offer comfort and perspective to anyone torn between their sense of purpose and their fear of failure. Matthew Cole

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75. Kendrick Lamar, “DNA”

The swaggering anthem of self-reliance has long been a calling card of rap, so it’s no great surprise that on Damn—an album that finds Kendrick Lamar reconnecting with the lean, classicist spirit of 1990s hip-hop—he offers his own onslaught of self-confidence. Nothing’s ever quite what it seems with Kendrick, though, and “DNA” manages to be both an utterly braggadocios track as well as a ruthless self-interrogation. He’s not too proud to call out the “sucker shit” in rival rappers, but it’s only after he fesses up to the mark of original sin on his own troublesome heart: “I got dark, I got evil, that rot inside my DNA.” He’s at the top of the heap but never too confident of what his hands have wrought. As ever, Kendrick Lamar contains multitudes. Josh Hurst


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74. Twin Shadow, “Five Seconds”

It follows that the music video for “Five Seconds” paints a Mad Max-style dystopia: This is an unapologetically cinematic chunk of new wave, its motoring percussion and descending chime melodies ideal for scoring a glamorous, violent car chase as it squeals across the scorched earth. It’s also Twin Shadow’s best track to date, as he channels a myriad of influences—from Phil Collins and Tears for Fears to the Psychedelic Furs and Prince—while casting off all of the residual lethargy he languished in on his debut, Forget. In embracing a new sense of speed, motion, and energy, Twin Shadow rightfully assumes the mantle as one of the most dynamic and committed of the current ’80s revivalists. Kevin Liedel


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73. J. Cole featuring TLC, “Crooked Smile”

J. Cole is that rapper who can take the simplest moment—a sip of apple juice, the snatch of a song heard on the radio—and go all Rachmaninoff, spinning theme and variations until, as though by simple power of word association, he arrives at a mic-dropping moral pronouncement. “Crooked Smile” is the Cole playbook in a nutshell. Its three verses build carefully on one another, until bad orthodonture starts telling us things about self-esteem in the black community, systemic injustice, chemical escapism, and how to game the prison system. Meanwhile, the bass figure bounces off every drawled bit of wisdom, and TLC swoops in to offer a virtuosic hook of positive reinforcement. Yes, Cole’s a post-Weezy rapper who sports an ungilded “twisted grill” Does that make him realer than the rest of them? It’s a question Cole is humble enough to ask, even if he doesn’t enunciate it. Ted Scheinman


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72. Sam Smith, “Stay with Me”

From its plaintive piano chords to Sam Smith’s wavering inflections, “Stay with Me” bleeds vulnerability while proudly affirming the all-too-human need for intimacy, no matter how fleeting the attraction may be. The song builds on an initially spare arrangement of piano, drums, and voice, adding a full choir and Smith’s spiraling grace notes with each chorus. A gospel tune sung by a jazz singer, “Stay with Me” dwells beautifully in its throwback simplicity, refusing to indulge the current appetite for synthesized distractions and showy production. Its massive commercial success attests to the fact that classic American genres can live alongside more contemporary ones, especially in the hands of an artist with Smith’s technical mastery. Galvin

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71. Gotye featuring Kimbra, “Somebody That I Used to Know”

Basically a retelling of Dizzee Rascal’s landmark “I Luv U” for the indie-pop set, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” captures the peculiar give-and-take between someone who views himself as a nice, sensitive guy who has been repeatedly slighted in the aftermath of a breakup and his ex (given powerful voice by Kimbra) who isn’t about to let him off the hook so easily or delude himself so thoroughly. What makes the single so structurally brilliant is its use of dynamics (that final chorus is a full-on bloodletting) to reflect its narrative’s he-said/she-said drama, turning a thesis on contemporary gender politics into a captivating, leftfield pop hit. Keefe


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70. Florence and the Machine, “Shake It Out”

If lyrics about freedom, overcoming regrets that have been collected “like old friends here to relive your darkest moments,” and the simple truth that it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back doesn’t move you, then perhaps the final 60 seconds of “Shake It Out” will, which forsakes language altogether and builds to a cacophony of bone-rattling organ, tribal percussion, and intersecting vocal parts that find Florence Welch finally succumbing to her demons and having drinks in the dark at the end of the road with the rest of us. Cinquemani


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69. Father John Misty, “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment”

As Father John Misty, Josh Tillman feeds the painfully personal through the willfully ironic, dressing up raw confessionals in the boilerplate emotional appeals of post-hippy L.A. cheese—exactly the sort of slick Nixon-era soft rock spoofed by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen’s Blue Jean Committee. It’s a stylistic pose that lends the hilarious lyrical candor of songs like “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” an unshakeable ambivalence. The track takes the form of a venting session, in which he enumerates a lover’s many faults: first her infelicitous use of “literally,” then her penchant for “patiently explaining the cosmos,” and finally the “soulful affectation white girls put on.” Hardly moral failings, of course, and what makes the song so poignant is that, ultimately, it signifies self-loathing, displaced into the vapid women he keeps around as convenient villains, delivered via an unsolicited monologue to a lover with more patience than he deserves. Benjamin Aspray


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68. Sheer Mag, “Need to Feel Your Love”

With no more new-wave swag than it needs, and no more direct lyrical context either, Sheer Mag’s “Need to Feel Your Love” is an omnivorous pop play in the finest sense. With delicately twangy, heavily flanged guitars and lead vocalist Tina Halladay’s snarling, distorted vocals always on the verge of tearing through the song’s midtempo groove like a sai through wet tissue paper, it’s an emotional contradiction. In true state-of-emergency style, the air gets awfully thin “thinking ‘bout times that we had, the good times and the bad.” If ever there was a moment for a wistful but adamant call for do-over to erase the juvenile mistakes of the recent past, this is it, and the truce between rock and disco that forms the soaring backbone of “Need to Feel Your Love” suggests the thrill of retroactive resolution. Henderson

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67. Vampire Weekend, “Harmony Hall”

The resplendent “Harmony Hall” is Vampire Weekend firing on all cylinders. Its sparkling guitar arpeggios, sun-drenched chorus, and baroque piano break are all entirely familiar elements within the band’s oeuvre, but they’ve never coalesced so irresistibly before. Winograd


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66. Azealia Banks featuring Lazy Jay, “212”

“I been that bitch since the Pamper,” Ms. Banks snaps, and then I can’t really repeat most of the rest of what follows. I’d pity the target(s), but Azealia Banks spits some of the most witheringly funny diss-topian wordplay in recent memory that it would be an honor to be in her crosshairs. (Why yes, Azealia, that is what’s caught up in my doo-rag too.) Skittering syllables like paradiddles over a Jaxxian groove from Lazy Jay’s “Float My Boat,” the chick who’d dare dismiss Nicki Minaj as a hipster-kowtowing Lil’ Kim floats like a new Queen Bee, leaving no orifice unturned in what has to be considered the most unforgettable debutante debut of the season. Henderson


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65. Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé, “Telephone”

Lady Gaga originally wrote “Telephone” for Britney Spears, though, as someone who likes to dance and resents having to take my phone everywhere, I could believe that Mama Monster wrote the song just for me. Britney’s probably regretting her decision to pass on the tune, but there’s no doubt that her loss was the dance floor’s gain. It came out of the box with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hooks and a genius double-timed verse, but, for DJs, it was the gift that kept on giving, inspiring countless club-destroying remixes (picks of the litter: Passion Pit and Alphabeat). And thanks to Beyoncé’s hysterically overdriven solo, it’s also one of the rare marquee pop collaborations that lives up to its potential. Cole


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64. Jack White, “I’m Shakin’”

Though his authenticity fetish has been present from the outset of his career, far too many of Jack White’s recent outings as both a recording artist and as a producer have been suffocated by a pervasive self-seriousness, his humorlessness coming to a head when he stormed off stage just 45 minutes into a show at Radio City Music Hall back in September. “I’m Shakin’” stands as a welcome course correction, then, as it’s as tongue in cheek and as purely fun as anything White has recorded in years. The arrangement boasts one of his most loose-limbed traditional blues licks, while his vocal turn, which peaks with a deliberately absurd exclamation of “You got me noivous,” is just one long piss-take. Keefe

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63. Rhye, “The Fall”

Sunday morning music for people who go to bed early on Saturday night, Rhye’s “The Fall” is a refined and delicate come-on, not anonymous in the slightest, but rather one of the most intimate seduction suites to be found this side of Al Green. Mike Milosh’s flawless falsetto vocals, so reminiscent of Sade in their perfectly rounded form, are the gender-bending inverse of Antony Hegarty’s almost confrontational feminism. With passive sighs, Milosh sings not on behalf of a revolutionary eradication of masculinity, but instead contemplating the comforting stasis of Downy-soft domestic bliss. There aren’t many romantic songs that resolve the tensions of heartbreak as convincingly as this, and fewer still get as close to bridging the gap between significant others. Henderson


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62. D’Angelo and the Vanguard, “Really Love”

Black Messiah’s lead single drips with both sensuality and reverence: Spanish guitars, a string ensemble written and orchestrated by the late Clare Fisher’s son, and possibly the most earnest, lovely D’Angelo falsetto vocal to date. While fire-and-brimstone anger at this country’s shameful compulsion toward racially motivated terrorism otherwise pervade the album that very suddenly returned D’Angelo from a 14-year wilderness period, the sometimes-reluctant loverman chose to announce his reemergence with the set’s airiest, most enchanting ballad. And it’s a song that effectively represents this political album’s greatest power. Much like Spike Lee with his new Lysistrata adaptation, Chi-Raq, “Really Love” is a monument to the simple but transformative idea that sex can sometimes be the most potent weapon against violence. Sam C. Mac


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61. St. Vincent, “Los Ageless”

It’s possible that there’s never been a St. Vincent song as propulsive as “Los Ageless,” which grooves to a gleaming stainless-steel beat, Annie Clark’s electric guitar purring on top. It’s a pop song so perfect—so sleek and so addictive in its new-wave pulse—that it only makes sense that Jack Antonoff served as producer. He brings a formal control to the track, but it never blocks out the roiling desire buried just below the surface. A multi-tracked vocal refrain comes in after each slinky verse, playing the role of the Greek chorus: “How could anybody have you and lose you/And not lose their minds too?” The singer is torn apart by longing and loss—and on the song’s bridge, both she and the song lose their composure altogether, that perfect gleaming surface breaking up into pops and static. “I’m a monster!” Clark wails—but it’s just a moment before she’s got everything locked under perfect pop control once more. Hurst


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60. Purple Mountains, “All My Happiness Is Gone”

Imagine a song called “All My Happiness Is Gone,” featuring lines like “Feels like something really wrong has happened/And I confess I’m barely hanging on.” What does it sound like? Propulsive drums? A sing-songy chorus that’ll be stuck in your head for days? Doubtful, but that’s how David Berman decided to grapple with the depression that would ultimately drive him to suicide. Many great songs embrace this extreme level of musical and lyrical contrast (or contradiction). Call it the “Born in the U.S.A.” formula. “All My Happiness Is Gone” is the latest to join that canon, and it’s possibly one of the best. Winograd

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59. Santigold, “Disparate Youth”

From the very first strains of the reggae-tinged pizzicato that marks its opening, the apocalyptic “Disparate Youth” establishes itself as Master of My Make-Believe’s most hummable track. Santigold is on cruise control here, barely raising an arched eyebrow or her resigned voice throughout. Instead, she lets the rhythmic tandem of the song’s snapping drum pads, skittering keyboard flourishes, and raygun-firing guitar do most of the heavy lifting, and the resulting mix of blasé dread and dancehall funk is nothing less than infectious. If you’re going to prevail over both the sins of your fathers and an inevitably grim future, you might as well do it with a mix of derision and style. Liedel


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58. Phosphorescent, “Song for Zula”

The idea to write a breakup song riffing on Bette Midler’s piano ballad “The Rose” could have resulted in a lame bit of ironic self-indulgence, yet Phosphorescent’s “Song for Zula” updates the former song’s plaintive melody and metaphor-upon-metaphor structure to produce a far bleaker, even sinister rumination on how love sometimes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Unfolding gradually inside an echo chamber of fiddle arpeggios and drum-n’-bass loops, the song asserts that love is not “a burning thing,” but rather a cage that entraps and displays the lover to be mocked by passersby. Matthew Houck’s tortured yet measured delivery remains tightly coiled for most of the song, imbuing lines like “I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free” with spine-tingling iciness. “Song for Zula” is many things at once: vulnerable and aggressive, individuated and universal—a song about heartbreak that transcends the details of any one relationship. Galvin


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57. Hozier, “Take Me to Church”

Irish singer-songwriter Hozier’s blindsiding hit “Take Me to Church” is a paean to sensuality, starting out with piano and vocals in all the hushed intimacy of a church whisper and ending with tactile pagan swagger. In the best vein of both Delta blues and Irish literature, ecstatic carnal love and religious feeling are deeply entwined. Orgasm, that “deathless death,” is substituted for any other redemption that religion might offer, and Hozier begs for it in a supple and worn voice. There are no clear winners in the song, other than the listener: The singer presses back against the oppression of “absolutes,” but it could just be the weight of hedonism that he’s feeling, a mistress crueler than any femme fatal. Caleb Caldwell


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56. Radiohead, “Burn the Witch”

Whether Radiohead’s “Burn the Witch” is interpreted as a warning against authoritarianism or commentary on the peril in quashing dissenting viewpoints within a more socio-cultural context, Jonny Greenwood’s expansive string arrangements pair with Thom Yorke’s soaring falsetto to present a song that is, at once, both gorgeous and unsettling, culminating in a discordant swell of twitchy strings as thrilling and ominous as a Bernard Herrmann score. A fitting anthem for a depraved new world. Goller

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55. Thundercat featuring Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, “Show You the Way”

As forward-thinking as Kendrick Lamar remains, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that nearly every one of his most cunning collaborators, from the sound of it, are more conversant with the legacies of, say, Jaco Pastorius, Al Jarreau, David Sanborn, the Mizell Brothers, and those patron saints of egghead craft, Steely Dan. Thundercat, the Brainfeeder bass impresario whose affinity for the cushier contours of vintage jazz-funk fusion has spiked tracks as frenetic as Flying Lotus’s “Never Catch Me” and as chill as his own lumbering heartbreak anthem “Them Changes,” doesn’t mince notes with “Show You the Way.” No, here he invites two of the whitest paragons of blue-eyed soul, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, to kumbaya all over “Yah Mo B There.” The Fender Rhodes on this croon choon is drizzled with enough subtlety to choke a horse, all while Thundercat’s swarthy guests harmonize like a car-trunk CD changer playing all six discs simultaneously. “Show You the Way” is flatly the Justice League of neo-dad rock. Henderson


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54. Tame Impala, “Let It Happen”

Fed up with “rock’s next great hope” designations and John Lennon comparisons, Kevin Parker decamped and made Currents, an album of shattered, psychedelic space disco. “Let It Happen” is the album’s finest moment, a Zen-like reflection on life’s futility and inevitability that’s absolutely bursting with gorgeous sounds. Its urgent opening salve gives way to siren-like synths, a Bach-worthy organ lead, melodramatic strings passages, and, ultimately, a filtered chorus of vocals that owes Daft Punk more than a little back rent. It’s a modern-rock fantasia that errs more fantasia than rock, a missive from one of music’s most bountiful imaginations. James Rainis


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53. Rihanna featuring Drake, “Work”

The disintegrating patois of this track’s language signifies a kind of breakdown of meaning all together. That is, unless you consider the song from its most beguiling and largely unexplored angle: as a furiously manic self-interrogation, with the workaholic Rihanna reconciling with the desires and whims of the impulsive, unpredictable Barbadian youth Robyn Fenty. “I hope that you see this through,” she repeats, but it’s hard to imagine anyone’s unmet expectations affecting Rihanna more than her own. This ingratiating three-and-half minutes finds Rihanna’s personal (affected, individualist vocal) and populist (dancehall) instincts working together seamlessly. Mac


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52. Janelle Monáe, “Make Me Feel”

Prince reportedly helped Janelle Monáe come up with some of the distinctive falling star-like synth tones on “Make Me Feel,” and the single’s infectious funk-pop groove and hypersexual lyrics are unmistakably redolent of the late pop icon. But Monáe wills “Make Me Feel” to transcend mere homage by turning it into a deeply personal anthem of self-actualization. After years of coy deflections of questions about her sexuality, she more or less confirms suspicions right off the bat (“Baby don’t make me spell it out for you…Can’t be explained, but I can try for you”) before proceeding to make it clear that as a sexual being, she’s much more than just the fact that she likes girls. “It’s like I’m powerful with a little bit of tender/An emotional sexual bender,” she declares, strutting her way through the song like the most fearless badass in the world. Winograd

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51. Billie Eilish, “Bad Guy”

Over a synth hook that could soundtrack a safe-cracking montage or a prison break, Billie Eilish threatens to seduce your dad. The singer’s delivery is incredibly self-assured, and by the time she gets to the voice-modded breakdown she’s more than staked her claim as 2019’s breakout pop star. Who gives a shit if she’s never heard of Van Halen? Wilson


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50. Lana Del Rey, “Doin’ Time”

The most satisfying cover songs are often those that completely transform or subvert their source material (think Tori Amos’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”). Occasionally, however, a song is so perfectly suited for another artist that few modifications are necessary. Lana Del Rey’s lush cover of Sublime’s 1997 single “Doin’ Time” is one such example—equally faithful to both the singer-songwriter’s downbeat, sadcore-meets-surf-rock aesthetic and the SoCal band’s own musical legacy, to which Del Rey’s sound is clearly indebted. Cinquemani


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49. Cee-Lo Green, “Fuck You”

Behind its coarse, unimaginative title, “Fuck You” is a revelation—a gospel-fueled romp which proves that all the usual industry go-to’s (no-frills pop production, teenage-friendly narratives, a dash of retro flavor, and good-natured shock value) still make for interesting listens when done right. Cee-Lo Green ends up channeling another famous Green (that would be Al) in an ecstatic rant of self-deprecation, humor, and heart-on-his-sleevism, even having the courage to tear into a full-on, whiny temper tantrum mid-song. As bitter as the events he recounts might be, the Goodie Mob/Gnarls Barkley alum is clearly having fun, and ably spreads it out onto the listening masses. “Although there’s pain in my chest,” Green croons sincerely, “I still wish you the best…with a ‘fuck you!’” Liedel


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48. Dirty Projectors, “Gun Has No Trigger”

One of the best songs ever written about powerlessness, the title track off Dirty Projectors’ latest album offers a vaguely poeticized take on the recent financial crisis on the one hand, and a generally outlined take on impotence on the other. Whatever the authorial intent, group mastermind David Longstreth shapes the track into yet another keening, oddly shaped ballad, using his cooing female backup singers as a sharp instrumental force, their voices swelling with power only to fall back down into calm. A detached but still viscerally satisfying track, “Gun Has No Trigger” acts as the centerpiece of a roundly magnificent album. Cataldo

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47. Vic Mensa, “Down on My Luck”

A song as seamlessly crafted as “Down on My Luck” risks being overshadowed by its grace notes (or, in this particular case, its clever concept clip). What on the surface sounds like just a punchier, house-adjacent variation of the smooth, 2-step confections of Craig David reveals itself as a slow-burning surrender to the lure of the four-four beat. Mensa, an MC by trade, kicks off his club jam by warbling polyrhythmically around the beat, as though doing whatever he can to avoid landing on it. Ultimately, though, he can’t hold out any longer, cashes in his luck, and does: “Fuck that, get down!” Henderson


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46. Beyoncé, “Hold Up”

“What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?” Beyoncé asks on “Hold Up,” not long after confessing to going through Jay Z’s phone and wishing ill on his girlfriends. With co-writers including Diplo, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, and Father John Misty, the song is a musical curiosity, as its feel-good, reggae-tinged meld of bouncing synths, cloppy percussion, and stray air horns is bizarre enough on its own, not to mention as a backdrop to revenge fantasies and resentment. And yet “Hold Up” works, what with its mishmash of sounds and styles creating an indelible groove as Beyoncé breaks from a public image normally cool and calm. Or, as she puts it: “I’d rather be crazy.” Wroble


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45. Future Islands, “Seasons (Waiting on You)”

Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring has one of those odd voices—poised at some anomalous juncture between lethal earnestness and ironic affectation—that can easily leave an uninitiated listener feeling puzzled about his intent. This proves to be an asset on “Seasons (Waiting on You),” which sidesteps straightforward New Romantics homage through the bewildering effect of the singer’s voice, and only grows stronger as he confirms his seriousness, deftly swooping between growled lows and dramatic crooned highs. The music bounces along mournfully behind him, its whistled synth trill and 4/4 beat acting as the steady baseline beneath this tumultuous tale of longing. Cataldo


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44. Alabama Shakes, “Hold On”

The Alabama Shakes earned a following beyond the NPR circuit thanks to the lead single from their debut album, Boys & Girls. Built on a patient drum figure and guitar double-stops on loan from Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Hold On” isn’t just one great, glorious extended exhortation—from the singer to herself, but also to us. It’s also a fundament-kicking performance from singer Brittany Howard, almost unsettling in the range it displays. Her voice is a many-colored thing, childish and old-womanly within the same song, the kind of instrument that can turn a simple roots band into an emotional engine. The end of the song is a roiling, stutter-step carnival, and “Hold On” communicates a resilience that suggests the Shakes will keep this thing rolling. Scheinman

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43. Carly Rae Jepsen, “Cut to the Feeling”

Reportedly one of over 250 songs written for 2015’s Emotion, “Cut to the Feeling” was inexplicably left off that album—as well as Emotion: Side B—because it was reportedly deemed too “theatrical.” (The track finally saw the light of day via the soundtrack to the animated film Leap!) Produced by Sir Nolan, “Cut to the Feeling” begins with what sounds like a sample of the opening synth strains of Madonna’s “Lucky Star,” after which Jepsen delivers breathless, syncopated vocals over a measured handclap beat before the whole thing erupts into a euphoric hook. And that’s just the first 30 seconds. Jepsen’s voice breaks in her ecstatic admission that “I’ve been denying how I feel,” and she dons an almost British affectation during the bridge when she sings, “Show me devotion/And take me all the way,” atop some “Edge of Seventeen”-style guitar riffing. Cinquemani


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42. Courtney Barnett, “Pedestrian at Best”

Serving as Courtney Barnett’s reintroduction to the public after the stoned diary folk of The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas created a deafening Internet buzz, “Pedestrian at Best” is a thrashing paean to imposter’s syndrome. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” sings Barnett, launching into anxious streams of consciousness that touch on legacy, Freudian nightmares, and towering self-doubt in the face of success. The heady lyrical diatribes are cut by her band’s furious noise, lending righteous anger and stomping fuzz to her uncertain sentiment. Rainis


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41. Solange, “Cranes in the Sky”

I’ve perhaps unfairly regarded hipsters’ many declarations of preference for Solange over Beyoncé as the micro-est of microagressions. But “Cranes in the Sky” singlehandedly makes the hierarchy worth at least considering. The song was reportedly eight years in the making, but to be honest, its centered, droning majesty sounds like it’s been in the slow soul cooker a lot longer, passed down through generations like a treasured family heirloom. Co-written with Raphael Saadiq, “Cranes in the Sky” aestheticizes the lurching ennui of depression. As counterproductive as that may sound, who among us hasn’t slept it away, sexed it away, read it away, and ultimately found solace in the pleasure of a solid groove? Beyoncé may be out to conquer the world, but with “Cranes in the Sky,” Solange achieves something universal. Henderson


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40. Janelle Monáe featuring Big Boi, “Tightrope”

Monáe’s ode to keeping your cool is easily the best song on The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III of IV). What’s harder is picking out the best part. Is it the joyous breakdown, where Monáe shouts, “You can’t get too high!” and sounds like a young Michael Jackson? The Motown horn riot that breaks out afterward? Or the way the whole thing moves seamlessly from party music to spooky, noirsh soul in the final minute? Big Boi’s verse, where he rhymes “ass crack” with “NASDAQ” is a strong contender, so is Monáe’s own rap, which rhymes “alligators” with “rattlesnakers” and “terminator” In fact, the only part of the song I don’t love is where it ends. That part always comes too soon. And for the record, my favorite part is when Monáe says, “Some callin’ me a sinner/Some callin’ me a winner/I’m callin’ you to dinner and you know exactly what I mean!” Gets me every time. Cole

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39. Lorde, “Green Light”

Lorde’s music has never exactly been subtle, and her transition from moody teen chanteuse to assured adult singer-songwriter has managed to preserve her work’s provocative mix of obviousness and honesty. Bolstered by a brash use of theatrical maximalism, with a blowout hook laid over a pounding 4/4 beat, “Green Light” fully sells material that in lesser hands might land as cheap schlock. Operating off a mixed metaphor, replete with handclaps and all other manner of gaudy window dressing, the song parallels the manic insistence of its narrator, charging through the early stages of a breakup while refusing to shed her fondness for the caddish object of her affection. As an album opener, it announces that things will be different from Lorde’s comparatively spare debut, while also assuring that her distinctive voice and yearning, youthful urgency remain fixed in place. Cataldo


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38. Jessie Ware, “Running”

Frank Ocean made a name for himself without a distinct angle or pre-fab image, but even he had help getting thrust into the spotlight, from the Odd Future connection to the Watch the Throne guest spots to the 11th-hour coming-out blog post the day before Channel Orange was released. Even more elusively anomalous was Jessie Ware, a pop star without a hook, an astonishingly low-key presence, getting by on her clear sense of quiet grace. Songs like “Running,” speak entirely for themselves, working off the dazzling interplay between a slinky guitar riff and Ware’s immaculately smooth voice. The track communicates that same elusiveness in a sleek, elegantly produced package, further establishing Ware as the distant, indefinable figure who remains tantalizingly out of focus. Cataldo


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37. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Sacrilege”

In the first verse of “Sacrilege,” Karen O invites an angel into her bed, halo and all, and thus begins a torrid four minutes of a maenadic performance that oscillates between the sacred and profane. Guitarist Nick Zinner makes like a funkier version of the Edge, while the singer herself alternates between Shirley Manson-style sultriness and gutsy, overdriven yawps of despair that feel sampled from 2003’s Fever to Tell. From the slinky intro, sporadic guitar stabs indicate darkness on the horizon, and the song morphs from a ballad to an anthem of sex-as-death-and-resurrection, complete with the chilling vibrato of a choir arrangement on loan from Carl Orff. And we thought “Jesus Walks” was spooky. Scheinman


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36. The New Pornographers, “Brill Bruisers”

From the opening A chord and four-part harmony backing A. C. Newman’s vocal, “Brill Bruisers” is a celebratory assault, an encouragement to get on board with its jubilant hook. Newman’s lyrics often tend toward the opaque, but here they’re conceptually playful without being pedantic. The title refers to the Brill Building genre of mid-century American music, paying homage to the style of pop-rock embodied by artists like Neil Diamond and Laura Nyro, and the song’s stripped-down bridge is a study in internal rhyme: “Go in fighting/To crying/The rising star dying/From its own virus” “Brill Bruisers” can be sophisticated or straightforward depending on how you want to interpret it: You could spend hours unpacking its lyrics, or three minutes getting lost in its contagious joy. Galvin

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35. M.I.A., “Bad Girls”

The rhythmic earworm “Bad Girls” boasts all of the hallmarks of M.I.A.’s best work: Middle Eastern and worldbeat influences paired with American hip-hop tropes and the U.K. artist’s knack for infectious pop hooks. The track’s testament to female prowess and, to put it plainly, car sex is broadened and deepened by the music video for the track, depicting a clash of cultures that pays tribute to Saudi Arabia’s “women to drive” movement. Cinquemani


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34. Charli XCX, “Nuclear Seasons”

Like much of U.K. singer-songwriter Charli XCX’s early songs, “Nuclear Seasons” bears a crunchy, lo-fi pop sound, juxtaposing ’80s-inspired synth melodies and pitch-shifted vocals with a growling bassline. The song could be subtitled “Love in the Time of Radiation,” though whether the fallout is from within (“You drop the bomb/I’m blown away”) or without (“We in the nuclear seasons/In the shelter I survived this road”) is left ambiguous in all the right ways. Cinquemani


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33. Robyn, “Honey”

Robyn’s music can be exhausting. Her four-on-the-floor beats flex so hard that they sometimes struggle to leave room to breathe. Not so on “Honey,” which keeps us slightly off balance with its simple, sneakily sophisticated instrumentation. Skittering hi-hats create their own rhythm around the bass, while haunting vocal samples drift in and out like distant sirens. It’s still propulsive but filled with seemingly endless empty space. True to its name, however, “Honey” is ultimately sticky-sweet comfort food. Robyn’s sensual coos invite us into the unconditional warmth “at the of heart of some kind of flower/Stuck in glitter, strands of saliva.” This latest version of Robyn’s fembot persona is a starkly open-hearted about-face for an artist who once wore synths like armor. And it just happens to be the balm that many people not only wanted, but desperately needed. Paul Schrodt


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32. M83, “Midnight City”

With its helplessly transcendent chorus of synthesized yelps, 2011’s “Midnight City” represents the best components of latter-day M83 crystallized into an electrifying four minutes of pop perfection. Rarely has a single functioned so confidently as a mission statement for a band’s growth and direction. Franklin Jones

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31. Mitski, “Your Best American Girl”

“If I could, I’d be your little spoon” might be one of the best opening lines to a song of the decade, if not ever. But this isn’t your ordinary love story. “Big spoon, you have so much to do, and I have nothing ahead of me,” Mitski continues, contemplating—no, eviscerating—the notion of conforming to the standards of the boy next door. “Your Best American Girl” alternately soars and roars, the Japanese-American singer-songwriter’s voice breaking in all the right places as the guitars shift from jangly to distorted. The lyric “Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me” is reminiscent of Liz Phair’s brand of feminist angst, but it’s distilled through a non-white, non-blond perspective that distinctly belongs to the 2010s—and beyond. Cinquemani


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30. Beyoncé, “Formation”

Sarah Silverman’s immediate Twitter assessment of Bey’s arguably greatest mass missive can hardly be improved on: “Can anyone else in the history of the world release a song and the same day sing it on the motherfucking Super Bowl & we all know the words?” In 2016, a year in which pop largely checked its consciousness at the door, Beyoncé connected the dots and made it look easy. Because, she argued, it is easy! Or at least should be, as much so as a date night at Red Lobster. “Earned all this money, but they never take the country out me/I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag.” Knowles 2020. We’re all with her. Henderson


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29. Grimes, “Oblivion”

Canadian singer and Twitter curio Claire Elise Boucher’s breakthrough (and biggest) single, “Oblivion,” feels like it’s being transmitted from another planet. The subject matter—about coping with the refracted trauma of assault—is mind-fuckingly juxtaposed by the track’s lightweight atmosphere. “Now I’m left behind, all the time,” Boucher chirps like a space-age Kate Bush or an indie Stacey Q—a distorted, sci-fi vision of the ’80s punctuated by distant synth stabs. Cinquemani


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28. Cardi B, “Bodak Yellow”

Cardi B’s underdog story is a feel-good one, as the vivacious, Bronx-bred stripper turned Instagram celebrity turned Love & Hip Hop cast member improbably delivered on her ambitions as a rapper and ended up riding the wave all the way to the top of the Hot 100 with “Bodak Yellow.” Her outsized personality is the engine for her success. That and her knack for making lines that stick: “These expensive, these is red bottoms/These is bloody shoes.” As always with viral successes, it remains an open question whether this particular bolt of lightning can strike twice, but in 2017, at least, Cardi B was the boss and we were all just worker bitches. Hoskins

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27. Perfume Genius, “Queen”

Prior to Too Bright, Perfume Genius was known mainly for excess of the emotional variety, otherwise opting for spartan lo-fi and somber piano pounding, which is part of what makes the sudden shift into dramatic opulence on “Queen,” the album’s second track, so surprising. Riding a slow wave of distorted guitar strums and crystalline synth effects, he lets things build slowly before launching into a wordless chorus just past the one-minute mark, a mixture of grunts and trills signaling the union of sumptuous production with brash physicality—revisionist glam with an ornate, stomping approach to personal pride. Cataldo


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26. Katy Perry, “Teenage Dream”

Katy Perry’s skills as a vocalist are often under-appreciated. As singer-composer Owen Pallett observed in 2014, Perry conveys the tense, untethered emotions of young lust on “Teenage Dream” by shifting effortlessly between breathy head voice during the verses and urgent belting during the chorus, alternatingly on- and off-beat throughout. The result is a frothy pop-rock tribute to wistful teen bliss that feels at once nostalgic and entirely in the moment. Cinquemani


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25. Kanye West featuring Nicki Minaj, “Monster”

“Monster” is the point at which Nicki Minaj actually managed to live up to her considerable hype. Hell, the verse she drops here doesn’t just live up to hype, it fully upstages what the two biggest names in hip-hop put down. Whether she’s eating brains or killing other women’s careers, Minaj and her flat-out unhinged delivery simply ride the track’s beat better than any of her collaborators. However much Jay-Z may claim that “love” is his Achilles’ Heel, and however fully My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy remains ‘Ye’s show, “Monster” belongs to the self-proclaimed Harajuku Barbie. Watch the Queen conquer. Keefe

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24. FKA Twigs, “Two Weeks”

The best sex songs are often not about sex at all, but dreaming about it. What with its nearly indecipherable pitched-down vocals and singer FKA twigs’s breathy, staccato delivery, it’s easy to dismiss “Two Weeks” as just another tribute to fucking. At the song’s climax, twigs (a.k.a. English singer-songwriter Tahliah Barnett) eagerly pants one of the best pop lyrics of the decade: “Hi, motherfucker, get your mouth open, you know you’re mine.” But upon further inspection, “Two Weeks” reveals itself to be a wanton fantasy, and one inspired and perpetuated by a little green: “Smoke on your skin to get those pretty eyes rollin’/My thighs are apart for when you’re ready to breathe in” Love is the drug and it’s pussy she’s dealing. Cinquemani


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23. Lana Del Rey, “Video Games”

Lana Del Rey’s wistful, blasé voice casts “Video Games” through all kinds of conflicting prisms. Is her beau an insensitive, manhandling misogynist or an adorable rogue? She might be dazzled by his love, but it’s entirely possible that she’s just exasperated over his half-assed attempts at romance. The line “This is my idea of fun” is either a sincere, starry-eyed revelation or an unimpressed, sarcastic invective. With Del Rey’s delivery and the grandly tragic and triumphant turns the song takes, these riddles hang in the air over the ’60s-tinged “Video Games” like a cloud of Pall Mall smoke. The song has since come to represent Del Rey’s own persona: a fascinating contrast of styles and ideas that’s easy to both dismiss and worship, hate and love. Whether Del Rey is a bad girl with a good girl’s heart or vice versa, “Video Games” distills her contradictory nature into five minutes of immaculate indie-pop bliss. Liedel


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22. Childish Gambino, “This Is America”

No single captures the essence of our fiercely polarized culture and its conflicting priorities quite like Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” Released in conjunction with Donald Glover’s performance of the song on Saturday Night Live, it juxtaposes ebullient choral melodies with an unnervingly sinister electronic drone, a sonic sensibility that echoes an increasingly bipolar modern society which seems to alternate between outrage and mindless distraction. At one point, a rejoicing gospel choir is abruptly silenced by a barrage of assault-rifle shots, but—reflecting a 24-hour hour news cycle that feigns shock and offers thoughts and prayers before quickly moving on to the next hot-button issue—the music quickly swings back toward the upbeat. Goller


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21. Vampire Weekend, “Diane Young”

Vampire Weekend has never delivered a shot of pure adrenaline like “Diane Young” before, nothing so precision-engineered to drag listeners out of their seats and onto the dance floor, nothing quite so likely to inspire spontaneous bouts of Lindy Hopping. Like Buddy Holly stretched in one of Willy Wonka’s machines, Ezra Koenig squeals and yelps and croons with thrilling elasticity, while Rostam Batmanglij funnels a rockabilly hoedown through Auto-Tune to exhilarating effect. Few songs in 2013 have made me want to go out and torch a Saab like a pile of leaves as much as this one. Collett

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20. Carly Rae Jepsen, “Run Away with Me”

Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion opens with a declaration of reckless passion, a scintillating escape song that’s both tightly regimented and spilling over with intense energy. Not innately more substantial than the frivolous bubble-gum fluff that defined her previous work, the track’s immediately gripping sense of momentum signals the singer’s segue into a new stage of development, bolstered by potent faux-retro production and an ever-stronger control of phrasing and tone. Making material this overwrought work is always a matter of confidence, and Jepsen comes through on her pop-star potential by totally selling the torrid mixture of frustration and obsession, her voice as giddy and assured as the deliriously cheesy synth-sax effect which streaks across the song like a comet. Cataldo


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19. Tyler, the Creator, “Yonkers”

Tyler, the Creator’s second album, Goblin, functions as a microcosm of the entire Odd Future explosion: a distended, confused mess with glimmers of surprising brilliance. Its high point is “Yonkers,” a masterfully alluring lead single that distills all the latent menace and charm of the group’s high-socked ringleader. Balanced atop a creeping haunted-house beat, produced by the rapper himself, he preens, boasts, and threatens in a style that’s downright ominous, but he’s also somehow fragile, possessed with a greater sense of self-awareness than many rappers twice his age. Cataldo


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18. Jessie Ware, “Say You Love Me”

Co-written with Ed Sheeran, “Say You Love Me” gives voice to the agonizing experience of waiting for mutual infatuation to turn into either long-term commitment or devastating heartbreak. Jessie Ware captures those emotional vicissitudes by modulating between understated R&B verses, delicate falsetto runs, and full-throated, synth-blasted choruses, in which she exclaims, “Baby, looks as though we’re running out of words to say/And love’s floating away” After the bridge, the song kicks into straight-up gospel mode, Ware’s voice bolstered by a full choir and propulsive handclaps. It’s as though she’s throwing all her cards on the table, declaring that if her offer isn’t taken up then she’ll have a damn fine time showing her lover what there is to miss out on. Galvin


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17. Kanye West featuring Pusha T, “Runaway”

Once you get past the fact that “Runaway” sounds a lot like a mash-up of Primitive Radio Gods’s 1996 hit “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” and a movement from György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata, it’s hard not to get pulled into Kanye West’s quasi-self-deprecation. Though the song’s lyrics run an inventory of the rapper’s relationship failures, some forgivable (“I’m so gifted at finding what I don’t like the most”) and others not so much (“I sent this bitch a picture of my dick”), it’s hard not to read it as both an apologia for, and a celebration of, his perpetually bad public behavior. Cinquemani

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16. Adele, “Rolling in the Deep”

We’re all thinking it: Thank goodness Adele got dumped. Without her dysfunctional breakup, the world wouldn’t have 21, which, in turn, would have robbed us of “Rolling in the Deep,” a fiery, almost sermonic soul-pop missive promising doom, pain, and woe on its unfortunate target. “Unfortunate,” of course, because listeners can’t help but feel sorry for the guy after hearing the kind of damning rage Adele levels at him, using the full force of her cosmic voice and the song’s fierce gospel to pound at his guilty conscience. Even the track’s unrelenting foot stomps sound as though they’re being aimed squarely at her victim’s noncommittal ass. Which is why “Rolling in the Deep” is such a good pop song: Far from a passive lament on the barbs of love, it’s a weapon Adele uses with deadly precision to display virtuoso control over both her ex-lover and her craft. Liedel


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15. Taylor Swift, “Blank Space”

The self-referential second single from Taylor Swift’s massive 1989 marked the country turned pop star’s first attempt at wrestling with her public persona and its impact on her love life—or is it the other way around? No matter. The track is a dazzling pop gem in which the singer skewered her own reputation years before she made an entire album about it. “Got a long list of ex-lovers/They’ll tell you I’m insane,” she sings. For a song that serves as a self-deprecating admission that perception is reality, “Blank Space” became a truly defining moment for both Swift and the decade in pop. Cinquemani


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14. Drake, “Hotline Bling”

Once you realize that neither D.R.A.M.’s “Cha Cha,” which Drake’s been accused of ripping off, nor Erykah Badu’s spaced-out cover of “Hotline Bling” come anywhere near exploiting the full potential of the 1972 lounge-R&B hit that inspired their rhythm tracks, you’ll have to hand it to Drake and his second-best producer, Nineteen85. Both artists bring subtle embellishments to the minimal beat of Timmy Thomas’s original song, like the melancholy layer of oscillating synths (translated from the original Hammond Organ part) that rises from the din to diffuse lines like “glasses of champagne out on the dance floor” of their braggadocio. Or the evocative bridge, in which Drake’s flow sounds like slowly falling into an abyss of despair, a feeling he hasn’t captured since “Marvin’s Room.” Then, of course, there’s the solid minute at the end devoted to that one-of-a-kind rhythm—making Drake’s contemporary iteration of Thomas’s composition the only one to gesture back to that song’s beginnings as a free-floating instrumental. That this little outro gives everyone the chance to dance like they’re in The Cosby Show credits is just one of the necessary evils the song has well earned. Mac


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13. Kendrick Lamar, “King Kunta”

Anyone can name a track after Kunta Kinte and ride the Roots reference out for all the establishment-bucking, shackle-shedding potential the name infers. It takes an artist as acute as Kendrick Lamar to push beyond just shared anger (though that alone would be as justifiable as ever in 2015) to examine all the emotions that come to define his individuality. Lamar’s crown-snatching boasts are backed up by a sturdy cast of characters, sly disses on the subtweet level, jovial late-P-funk velocity, and a snatch from Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” to let anyone who somehow missed that “this dick ain’t free” in on the joke. Henderson

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12. FKA twigs, “Cellophane”

It’s no mean feat for an artist to create something that requires enormous strength and yet, to their audience, seems so fragile that it could shatter at any moment. On “Cellophane,” the lead single from her sophomore effort, Magdalene, FKA twigs achieves precisely that. “Didn’t I do it for you?” she asks softly over a sparse piano line, seeming to teeter on an emotional knife’s edge. When she jumps an octave, the effect is heightened even further; her voice is still pure and plaintive, but there’s defiance there too. It’s this tension between pain and power that makes the song’s accompanying video so arresting, and so devastating. As twigs performs a pole dance with near-divine grace, the immense physicality required to master the art becomes invisible, leaving behind only soft lines and fluid movement. Against the backdrop of a woman so clearly self-possessed in her power, the question “Didn’t I do it for you” suddenly seems all the more pointed. As if from spider silk, she spins her pain into a method of healing. Anna Richmond


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11. Robyn, “Call Your Girlfriend”

“Call Your Girlfriend” certainly isn’t the first song to be sung from the homewrecker’s point of view, but Robyn’s character ends up being unlike any other woman in pop. Always hyper-attuned to emotional detail, she focuses on the neglected side of the love triangle that connects the one who gets left with the one for whom they’re left. Robyn’s not naïve enough to think that no one will get hurt, but in the interest of minimizing harm, she walks her suitor through his breakup, navigating him past some of the avoidable land mines with a sensitivity that suggests she’s seen them detonate before. “Don’t you tell her that I give you something that you never even knew you missed,” she warns. “And then you let her down easy” Cole


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10. Childish Gambino, “Redbone”

The feather in the cap of rap caviar wokeness, hyper-hyphenate Donald Glover’s side project took center stage with “Redbone,” not only on college and college-derivative radio stations, but within something like the counter-cultural resistance’s central consciousness. The song, a creepin’ tribute to the pre-quiet-storm R&B characterized by the Delfonics and the Floaters, as well as an implicit remake of Bootsy Collins’s P-Funk ballad “I’d Rather Be with You,” lingered on the fringes of chart success until after its prominent position in the exposition of Get Out. Just as Jordan Peele’s film tapped into America’s racial zeitgeist with a remarkably sermon-free fury, “Redbone” itself playfully dissects the tensions and paranoia of sleeping with the ally who, as it turns out, is also the enemy. And throughout, writer-producer Ludwig Göransson’s Thundercat-worthy popping bassline and Glover’s own insistent glockenspiel diddling strike the appropriate mocking tone. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple memorably cued up Timmy Thomas’s spare “Why Can’t We Live Together” to accompany images of the carefree children who would soon meet their end, and someday, “Redbone” will serve a similar function for a documentary explanation for our current nightmare. Henderson


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9. Ariana Grande, “Into You”

What should have been the song of summer 2016 was instead a slow burner that slinked up the charts over the course of three sweaty months—peaking just outside the Top 10 at the height of beach season. The single’s gradual rise was as measured as Grande’s vocals and producer Max Martin’s beat, which—punctuated by finger snaps, squelchy disco synths, and 1990s house percussion—takes its time building to a euphoric climax during the song’s bridge. “I can’t, I can’t wait no more,” Grande confesses before finally unleashing a torrent of vocal runs that unapologetically announce her thirst. Cinquemani

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8. A Tribe Called Quest, “We the People”

Sandwiched between the more unimpeachably grooveful “Whateva Will Be” and ambitious, high-concept opener “The Space Program,” the lead single from A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service sounds as palpably angry about, and disenchanted with, modern times as the rest of us. We the people, Tribe had obviously hoped (based on the more optimistic and empowered songs elsewhere on the album), wouldn’t be foolish enough to elect a man who’d nod approvingly at the lyric about Mexicans and Muslims being deported en mass, but well, here we are. And so Q-Tip’s dejected attitude on topics like gentrification and a dumbed-down media culture stings all the more, and exists as the album’s most cathartic moment of commiseration. At the same time, there’s just enough hope here to keep “We the People…” from being completely defeatist: How bad can the world be with new Tribe music…and ramen noodles? Mac


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7. Kendrick Lamar, “Alright”

Lists like this should offer not just a document of an era’s most popular and enduring songs, but the context for which those songs provided a soundtrack. To that point, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” produced by Pharrell Williams, can’t be divorced from the political upheaval and movement that it represents: Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a protest song, but an aspirational one, conjuring myriad sounds and styles—spoken word, jazz, breakbeats—to inspire hope via the struggles of the past. Cinquemani


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6. Frank Ocean, “Pyramids”

If Drake established latent rapper guilt as a viable force in 2011, Frank Ocean made it blossom in 2012, most particularly on this massive, mournful ode to the manifold emotions accompanying a strip-club visit, swinging between bigheaded braggadocio, shameful introspection, and free-floating guilt. Shifting freely from ambient soundscapes to jagged funk guitars buried in reverb, the song also contains the best application of the album’s Stevie Wonder-aping clavinet lines, all condensed into a dizzying 10 minutes. Possessing an EP’s worth of ideas on its own, “Pyramids,” synthesizes everything that made Channel Orange one of the best albums of the decade. Cataldo


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5. Rihanna, “We Found Love”

Announcing itself with a set of syncopated synth intervals that sound as much like a fire alarm as they do a call to the dance floor, “We Found Love”—more than any other song in Rihanna’s fun-demanding catalogue—makes the urge to get turnt up feel like an almost religious impulse. (Hell, even the most devout parishioners throw their hands up for this secular party hymn.) For understandable reasons, the title cuts off right before the qualifier “in a hopeless place.” But it’s the juxtaposition of the two (emphasized in the VMA-winning music video) that makes Rihanna’s best-selling single ever a fully shaded descendent of “The Pleasure Principle.” Henderson

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4. Drake featuring Rihanna, “Take Care”

Take Care was a huge breakthrough for Drake, showing his newly developed ability to fuse his throbbing emotional core with an acute pop sensibility, shedding the drippy self-pitying bathos of his early mixtapes. The album’s titular single is the apotheosis of that development, an oblique love song that pits his hesitant croon against Rihanna’s soothing, motherly imprecations, shaking things up with an extended fugue courtesy of a reconstituted Gil Scot Heron sample. A gorgeous, enigmatic evocation of love and doubt, “Take Care” finds Drake at the height of his triple-threat powers, exploring the sort of emotional territory that most rappers are afraid to even enter. Cataldo


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3. Lorde, “Royals”

Given its somewhat condescending stance toward the music industry, “Royals” manages to avoid holier-than-thou snootiness because of its playful lyrical twists and understated yet infectious two-step, bass-heavy, finger-snapping beat. Although the song asserts that Lorde’s posse remains immune to the seductions of “diamonds in the flesh” and the license to trash hotel rooms, the singer also confesses her desire to “rule” and “live that fantasy” in her own way. She channels the similarly disaffected Lana Del Rey in her straightforward, sanguine delivery, and the four-part harmonic layering over the clause “I’ll rule” suggests that Lorde is equally well-versed in both retro girl groups and self-deprecating satirists. “Royals” exudes a youthful sense of defiance as well as the wisdom of an old soul, hovering suggestively between the poles of innocence and experience. Galvin


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2. Kanye West, “All of the Lights”

“All of the Lights” is perhaps the most acute example of Kanye West’s pitched mania for theatrical expressions of manic-depressive instability, his mixture of self-destruction and self-love, sentiments which carried over to Watch the Throne, albeit muted by Jay-Z’s magisterial arrogance, which is more static and less interesting. Beyond the canned horn fanfare and the unhinged breakbeats, the song’s chorus ranks as one of the most brilliantly purposeful wastes of big-name talent ever: transport 20 pop stars to Hawaii, record them, hit blend. Cataldo


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1. Robyn, “Dancing on My Own”

Few artists risk Robyn’s emotional nakedness, and with “Dancing on My Own” she reveals the exquisite flipside to her more empowered “With Every Heartbeat.” Once upon a time, she walked away from him, accepting a broken heart because to stay would have hurt infinitely more. Now he’s with someone else. She’s still alone. In the club, in the corner somewhere, her body, like her mind, spinning in circles. Something about those bouncing beats, the way they shoot from the speakers and ricochet around her like beams of light, resonates with her feelings of yearning, doubt, regret. For most, the club is an arena for escape. For Robyn, it’s a place for heartbreaking introspection. Gonzalez

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