The Best Songs of the 2010s: #100–#81

ISSUE #79

I could say a bunch of sweeping things about the past ten years, but the truth is a decade is hard to package together coherently. I will say that ten years is fun because it's all about what sticks with you. Some songs might slip right out the back door of memory, while other songs you didn't notice at the time end up building into one of your most frequent listens. My influences here are all over the board, and it should be said—as with every list—that this is not a finalized canon, just a catalog of what this idiot kept coming back to over and over since 2010.

The cover photo of each playlist will be one the five best movies of the decade, just because I can't get enough out of rankings. #5 is the Coen Brother's best film and my personal Oscar Isaac man-candy pick: Inside Llewyn Davis.

Okay, I have to keep the intros light because there's a lot to get through. Enjoy!

100. DRAM | Cash Machine
DRAM is like the drum major in a parade of joy, you can practically hear his 500-watt smile. I come back to this one for the foley on that cash flip—a ka-ching would be too easy, he went with the endlessly satisfying fffffft. This is the kind of production value that has Ben Burtt sweating.

99. ZOLA JESUS | Soak
Zola Jesus—goth luminary and sharp Twitter presence—has given me plenty of anthems for the void, but this one is a throbbing dark baptism, one that's less about rejecting God than accepting that he's been snatched away from you by two-day delivery and auto-play.

98. FLUME | Never Be Like You (feat. Kai)
I have a soft spot for this one. I only know it because I had to stand through Flume's set while waiting all day for a Lolla headliner; I had to pee my pants not to lose my spot. They were almost dry when he played this one, so I think the themes of begging forgiveness for your transgressions hit home. It's the melodrama that gets me, that feeling that you can never measure up to those you love, whether by sin or inherent structure. It's all about her urgency when she sings "Stop looking at me / with those eyes / like I could disappear / and you wouldn't care why." Whomst among us has not been there? Flume's blinking background is pretty cool too, especially when it bursts apart at the end like an Annihilation set piece.

97. HOZIER | Work Song
While "Take Me to Church" is Hozier's steamroller, it can tip into histrionics at times. This one is more subdued, a surprisingly sensual love song about how all-consuming it is to be apart from the one you love. The chords all swell in the low register, currents of passion beneath the waves of daily tasks. There's great trick to its tempo—by inhaling for a full measure and exhaling the full next, it forms a breathing exercise to calm yourself down. It's helped me in more than one instance of intense pining.

96. MODERN BASEBALL | Apartment
There was a movement this decade that I like to call emo-realism—kids who grew up on emo who, instead of the drama of cutting your heart out, sang about pizza and coffee and flashlights. Modern Baseball holds up well in the bunch, their impulsive lyrics painting dorm room tableaus in unflinching gray, snapshots as clear as any Polaroid, full of couches and Scrabble and cold walks home. When they break into a rallying cry with "Why do I keep ending up here on starlit evenings?" I think the same of this song.

95. DESTROYER | Kaputt
This one's just smooth as silk, a fog machine and a disco ball. It's nothing if not a perfect vibe, like a good drink or a fast drive on an empty street.

94. PORCHES | Country
The first of a personal genre that will keep showing up: songs under two minutes that are gentle and slow, brief nuggets of beauty. I put this on during cold rains and foggy mornings.

93. JEFF ROSENSTOCK | Nausea
Crown prince of DIY in the 2010s, Rosenstock is a Jeff I can be truly proud of (usually we're represented by Dahmers and the like). A rousing sing-along anthem that perfectly describes being a loser in your twenties, something that I and I alone can relate to. I've done my share of avoiding people out of embarrassment—it's all but wiped me out of social media all together—but this song helps me feel less alone.

92. EMA | California
EMA gave us a perfect piece of rage poetry in 2011, and it's taken a lot of self-control not to tattoo every line of this on myself over the years (and I'm not even the target audience). She's lays each verse over an expansive soundscape, all echoes and empty space. It's like hearing the grinding of gears through a soft mist—not a full falling rain, but the droplets that hang in the air like the popcorn in Big Fish.

91. MAGGIE ROGERS | Fallingwater
Here Maggie proves that you don't need a lot to pull it off—there's not much in the mix of "Fallingwater" when you look closely, just that voice and that interval she bobs between, like the shaking of the head, the flapping of the wings, the rocking of the boat.

90. SOCCER MOMMY | Your Dog
"Your Dog" feels like our prominent "Smells Like Teen Spirit" successor, a huge hook disguised by grime. It's a riff on Iggy Pop that's four decades removed from punk, after all the stories of sexual violence have eaten us alive, made for a generation trying to love while being exposed to more toxic humanity than anyone can handle. On top of that, I haven't heard a hook that dirty in a years.

89. THE BLASTING COMPANY | Into the Unknown
I know I should stop evangelizing Over the Garden Wall, but I can't. I just watched it last night again, and it’s still lost none of its charm. Music is bound to the show's DNA, and this song that introduces us to the story is a perfect example. The chord progression feels primordial yet totally unpredictable. It's music as folktale, as essential to stories as oral tradition. It's a ballerina box, twirling in toy leaves.

88. REX ORANGE COUNTY | Best Friend
One of those pining songs that strives to lift you up rather than let you wallow. Here he uses island chords but keeps the production closer to bedroom pop—it's not the beach's sun we're staring at but the fire's glow and a christmas tree.

87. TIERRA WHACK | Hungry Hippo
If songs are the gushers to the novel's grapefruits, that makes Whack World a box of Nerds. So short, so sweet, so many brilliant turns of phrase.

86. SOPHIE | Hard
In 2015, SOPHIE took all of theTransformers noises left in dubstep's wake and gave them a frenetic blast of Sailor Moon glitz. The amount of hidden everyday sounds in this is like a field recording, and she fits seemingly thousands of crashes and whirs inside this lumbering beast of a meter. SOPHIE could've had anything on this list, but I've always loved this one for how—*ahem*—hard it goes.

85. FOXING | Grand Paradise
Who would've thought Foxing would write the filthiest song of the decade? The building this song does feels like stacking cold cash in a cartel warehouse. Just when you can't take it anymore, the bridge does exactly what a bridge should do—it pivots to softness, and wraps it all up in a chorus.

84. THE JOY FORMIDABLE | Whirring
The Joy Formidable are just a tiny Welsh band that I've never thought got enough credit. This song is their best, with a full four-minute big rock ending that lasts as long as the runway scene in Fast & Furious 6 and still feels as serene as watching the sunrise. They race for it like the camera is running out of film, but they never lose their stride.

83. IDLES | Mother
IDLES remain one of the only punk bands in the whole decade to deliver on the true message of the genre. Nobody's done this much work tearing apart the Content Industrial Complex since "TV Party." We can't fix a systemic problem unless we identify it, the same way we can't treat an illness till we isolate it. For this, their message is as vital as penicillin.

82. YUCK | The Wall
A simple song that hits its mark because of how hard it is to get out of my head and communicate, when it feels like everything I want to say is somehow behind a wall. I know it's not real—it's just the way that I feel. Crucial and concise.

81. SLEIGH BELLS | Rill Rill
Who would've thought to take Funkadelic's "Can You Get To That" and give it 808s and a cheerleader chant, to deepen the mix until it sounds like a Windows Media Player spiral? This feels as good as the second act twist in Gone Girl, the freedom of driving forward through time and seeing the rush of dead leaves blowing behind you. It's an inspired choice, and it's paid dividends ever since I heard it almost ten years ago. A true evergreen.

Tune in next week for #80–#61!