The Best Songs of 2021

ISSUE #183

When did 2021 begin? Was it January 1st? It couldn’t be—that was thirty Jeffreys ago. Was it two weeks after we got the second shot? That was May 1st for me. Half a year went by before I emerged, stunted and shaking. It didn’t take long to trick myself into thinking that I’d been indolent for eighteen months.

If I’m not careful, I can still upset myself thinking of all I wasted. It’s the same mental magic that infects memory, the way the brain superimposes people as they are now instead of who they were. We are always whiting out the past’s crinkled paper—but when I read through my journals from this past year, I see a clear picture of misery, starker than even I had recognized at the time.

When it’s time to change, certain insects will spit themselves a shell to hide. It’s a defense mechanism to protect the vulnerability of growth. Change is a form of hurt—it is the root of most pain, in fact. Nerves exist to call the brain and tell it that things are different now. When we need to fix our body, we first must put ourselves to sleep.

I have been in my cocoon for quite a some time now. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll emerge. I think it’s why I found comfort in guitars—regressing to old forms, reflecting on past lives, these songs were fused to my altered state, this year’s arbitrary rending of time. It’s impossible to orient myself when I’m in this state of transit—all I can do is hold tight to this anchor and pray that after winter there will be a rebirth.

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15. “Sentimentality” | Remember Sports

Strike a nerve too hard and it goes numb; feel too much and it can feel like nothing at all. Depression is no inanimate force. It is a thief in the hills, stealing from your heart until your body is famished. Remember—the best things you have are still here.

14. “We Need a Bigger Dumpster” | Cheekface

This drum solo is one of my favorite jokes of the year. It’s played like the spotlight on the snare kid at a middle school recital. Every strike feels slightly rushed. It doesn’t know how it’s going to end. In a desperate finale, it cuts to hot static. The band resumes as if nothing happened. I find it very funny. I think Cheekface does too.

13. “Pool Hopping” | illuminati hotties

You want to go home? You can’t bail now, we’re just getting started. There are still so many fences to climb, paintballs to pop, football fields to fall asleep on. The pool is our altar; we worship the good times.

12. “I Know I’m Funny haha” | Faye Webster

Two weeks ago, I was at a show. I learned the next day that Faye was there as well. She was wearing a green hat, apparently. Is she funny? I don’t know; I didn’t talk to her. She’s funny on mic though. I like how you can’t figure out if something’s wrong from her delivery—are you okay, Faye? The narrator is ambivalent, slippery as memory. She sings like a puzzle that will never be finished.

11. “Keeps Me Running” | Esther Rose

In my room in Vegas last July, the bathtub was surrounded by panes of glass. Every night, I would draw a bath, write by candlelight, and listen to this song. I indulged in naked skin, the luxury of solitude, if only to fight the loneliness that sneered from the lights of the Strip. I am obsessed with stories of isolation—anyone who’s withstood our terrible inner world for long stretches of time and lived to tell the tale. I took a Red Eye home and landed at dawn. I forewent sleep and ran straight to the park, where my friends were playing a volleyball game. They’re the fire that keeps me running, and I will always follow.

10. “Kill Me” | Indigo De Souza

Love is not fun. It stretches every second over a torture rack. I prefer to dig my toes into the side of the mountain’s gravel as I claw my way back to sanity. Oh, but it’s so fun though—to let yourself just slide. Maybe it’s good to embrace the entropy. Open your arms to what kills you.

9. “c. et al.” | Snail Mail

Every memory is a hidden room—to speak of it is akin to pressing a slippered foot back onto its cold, wooden floor. Things are fragile here. Anything can break at a moment’s notice, particularly if you visit all the time. The creaks and aches of that old house are present in Lindsay Jordan’s voice. Just three minutes of her wear-and-tear might send you through the floor.

8. “Christine” | Lucy Dacus

Stories are so powerful that sometimes they can convince us that we are nothing. They inform our desires and obstruct imagination, like trying to stand when the ceiling’s too short. The worst ones will leave us watching the people we love float away. I hope that Lucy really would object—hers are the few that are antidotes, stories as clear and pure as this piano.

7. “Excalibur” | Daniel Hart

Whether you love or hate Lowry’s movies, Daniel Hart’s scores have always soared. They sing like visions and fever dreams, all you’ve ever wanted but will never enjoy. This violin is practically dissociative—I’ve left myself; I’ve left my home; I picture paths I cannot take.

6. “Talk Down” | Dijon

The greatest music could never replace the voices of love. No better sound in this world than the one that comes from your lips. The radio could never touch the flutter of a whisper, could never carry the heat of breath gliding across the ear.

5. “ARE YOU WITH THAT?” | Vince Staples

We love the lives we grow up with, even the ones of casual danger. Here, Vince talks so casually, almost wistfully, of a violent past. Over that queasy wobble, he sounds like an angel of death looking back from an armchair, refusing judgment. Just the facts. It doesn’t really matter if you’re with it. You’re in it now.

4. “Bunny is a Rider” | Caroline Polachek

Bunny is everything I want to be—untouchable, untraceable, non-physical, a lady, the dust from which we all are made, the swirling eddies of an unburdened mind. She flouts, subverts, in need of nothing. She sounds as good at dawn as she does at dusk. The fire is blazing, but it’s hers alone—you’ll never find her caught in a hunter’s trap.

3. “Ripples” | Arca

This song is basically a hissing, violent, glorious orgasm. Escaping, embracing—it’s a false dichotomy. The body was built to do both at the same time. How else are we supposed to transform?

2. “The Kiss of Venus” | Dominic Fike / Paul McCartney

If Get Back taught me anything, it’s that Paul benefits from interpretation. Oh, he’s done fine on his own, but when filtered through another mind, the results can be transcendent. Fike turned what was a straightforward acoustic number on Paul’s album into a picaresque novel, scrolling through instruments and genres with the pace of a TikTok feed, all the way up to the perfect reverb on that twelve-string guitar solo at the end. It’s one of three songs I listened to the most this year.

1. “Posing in Bondage” | Japanese Breakfast

If you’re leaving, tie me up first. Tighter. I am flooded with time. The blindfold, please, so I can see. The world is not out there, it’s in here. I don’t need it—I’ll wait for you. Tighter. Leave me wrapped up here, spinning like a cocoon.