The Best Songs of the 2010s: #80–#61
ISSUE #80
Lots of sad ones this time—sorry!—that's just how the chips fell this round. As I said last week, this project is not meant to be an edict from some supreme musical being, just a catalog of what this idiot kept coming back to over and over since 2010. Ultimately a narrow purview, but maybe you'll hear something you like.
This week's cover photo is my fourth favorite film of the decade and (maybe?) the most ambitious action movie ever made: Mad Max: Fury Road. If you've slept on it so far, I promise it's worth a watch.
If you missed it last week, here's #100–#81. Let's jump in.
80. DIJON | Nico's Red Truck
This is like a can of Diet Frank Ocean kept in your cousin's soda fridge in the detached garage out back (I mean that as a compliment). Dijon sings of the balance of presence and nostalgia, and the weirdness of trying to hold on to ourselves when our brains are intent on wiping our memories. This was one of Jia Tolentino's top songs of 2018, which is all the validation I need.
79. DISCLOSURE | Latch (feat. Sam Smith)
This is my only real attachment to a Sam Smith performance, but it's an enduring one. He stretches each syllable to a languorous degree, making it that much easier to shout in some beer-stained basement. Starting the chorus with a plummet from a perfect fifth interval feels like dropping in on a half pipe. Disclosure never slouches here either, particularly when they go into that anti-gravity mode.
78. WAVVES | Green Eyes
Three words here: Scum Bum Anthem. Just when you think you've got a grip on the melody, there's an ankle-breaking half-step down that comes when the drums kick in. Paired with the glockenspiel that rings out in the back of the mix, the line about not running fast enough supports my fan theory that this whole song is just a dream someone had while passed out from some bender on the beach.
77. FRED THOMAS | Mallwalkers
This song is sad, but so is having to show up to work at the mall every morning at 6:30, and "Mallwalkers" always takes me right back to the stock room at Forever 21. Thomas lets the guitar do the singing while he sing-speaks some verses that have influenced how I write my sentences as much as any book: "all the lonely lights on these frozen cars / every broken-wrist handstand in some best friend's yard." It all serves as a reminder that, while growing up is hard, adolescence can be much harder.
76. JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT | If We Were Vampires
I'm sorry for putting one of the saddest songs in the world on here, but it's hard not to when it's written this well. Love doesn't last forever, and, if it did, would it simply turn us into monsters? There's a reason vampires don't get heartbroken! They're always hungry, never committing. No, imagine the depth of your love for someone stretching greater than the distance of your life, then wanting to give them every second you can find. The real gut punch for me is hearing his wife singing with him.
75. KACEY MUSGRAVES | Golden Hour
My Kacey pick is the album's namesake because it's the one that feels like it's physically warming you as you listen, like a sip of hot cider or a stroll in the August sun. Her lyrics are deceptively simple—it's not the metaphor that's unique, it's her voice. She sings with such delicate sincerity that it gives us reason to believe she means it all. Maybe things become clichés because they can happen to anyone.
74. CYMBALS EAT GUITARS | Close
Joseph D'Agostino sings like he's a carnival barker trying to get you to step right up to his woozy world. This is what I put on after those four mimosas that I didn't feel until I stood up. The sun feels different then. Their third album LOSE may be the one on my wall, but it's Pretty Years that I come back to more often.
73. GORILLAZ | Rhinestone Eyes
For a long time, I only ever heard this song peripherally, playing from my housemates' rooms but never grabbing me enough to listen on my own. Now it's here because of one part I can never get out of my head: those kids chanting in the chorus—so weird, so bewitching. What are they saying?"Jai alai stick stick stick stick...?" "Yes, I like big feet feet feet feet feet...?" It doesn't matter, it's the best part of the song.
72. THE WEEKND | The Morning
It's called "The Morning," but it's more like the hour that shows up just before the sun, when the stars melt into true darkness and all time seems lost. House of Balloons was always The Weeknd at his most compelling to me, more like the soundtrack for a sleazy Dracula reboot set in Toronto than the type of pop songs he grew into. This one's the most PG track from that album, but it's still sinister, and the smooth guitar is only a red herring before that "sqk sqk sqk" sound churns your stomach at the end of the chorus.
71. HAIM | The Wire
It's not precise, but this always reminded me an update on a Spice Girls song in spirit. In true pop masterpiece form, it's bubbly but sharp, every "It felt right" coming with the spike of a "Hey!" afterward that you can really throw your body into. I still like this one the best of their songs for the skip-along feeling, the popcorn guitar-work, the claps, and all their harmonies.
70. ARCADE FIRE | Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Had a hard time deliberating which Arcade Fire should go here, if any, but eventually I went with the climax of the album that won them the Grammy. The scope feels like that first glimpse of Jurassic Park from the view of the helicopter, but instead of miles of green it's just smog and 7-Elevens. The wall of droning sound in particular feels like the warmth of light pollution. The song's repetition is form mirroring content in a very measured way, and with a throbbing pulse like this one, I welcome it.
69. OSCAR ISAAC AND MARCUS MUMFORD | Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)
Oscar Isaac has a great voice (sorry to all who wanted to get through the work day without raising their blood pressure). I have to hand it to Mumford too—he should ditch the Sons! A wonderful cut from Inside Llewyn Davis, this is actually an old standard, but this arrangement is so soulful that it feels raised from the dead. That fiddle in particular always gets to me, as does the verse they added to this recording: "Show us a bird / Flying high above / Life ain't worth living / Without the one you love."
68. BIG THIEF | Shark Smile
Big Thief writes their songs like short stories, and this one has a devastating twist that can make me nauseous if it catches me at the right moment. Her voice sounds two hundred years old, an endless tunnel through anguish and loss. On the bright side, just mention Des Moines in your song and you're on the list.
67. PUP | Sleep in the Heat
[CW: loss of a pet] Ignore the lyrics, and you can rest easy thinking this stops at being a catchy pop-punk song. At first listen you would think the whole thing was about a relationship, but then, unfortunately, the truth starts to dawn on you. Are songs that make us cry still good for us? I think so; it can be an exorcism of grief. I'm sure it helped to write it, and it can help to scream about it with someone else too—but it doesn't make it hurt less to hear Stefan Babcock yell "You're not waking up." (The video's a weeper too).
66. CLEAREST BLUE | CHVRCHES
Sure, CHVRCHES sometimes tip into mall pop, but this one drips too much heart to be played at Dillards. It's a song for going out after you get dumped, harnessing that energy instead of sinking into depression. There's real suspense to the build up, and for as much as they max out the equalizer here, you can still hear some restraint and a gentle touch. The four "chks" at the end of each phrase are a genuine pleasure.
65. KAVINSKY | Odd Look
The greatest Halloween song written since the age of The Cure and The Misfits. Drive down any road after midnight to this song and you'll feel cut loose from Bedlam, fleeing from whatever tethers were binding you. It's monstrous in the most joyous sense, to the point where you can't hear what he's saying—it doesn't matter! The synths sound like squeezing cheese out of an aerosol can. It's the opposite of sexy. It's what you play when your body feels grotesque, when you all you have to mop up the blood is your own leather jacket, when you have so much time to live that you can make any mistakes you want.
64. BRADLEY COOPER | Maybe It's Time
Listen, if you'd told me even two years ago that I'd be putting a song sung by Bradley Cooper on my list in earnest, I'd have turned into the blinking white guy gif. But, credit where credit is due—and it's mainly due to Jason Isbell again, songwriter for Jackson Maine and his closest genre analog. Its simplicity is what's astonishing. Every guitar player knows these chords—half of them have even put them in this order before—but, just like A Star is Born, it doesn't matter how familiar it is if it all comes out right.
63. CAR SEAT HEADREST | Times to Die
I've talked a lot about lyrics with this batch, and, surprise surprise, I guess as a writer that's what makes a good song great for me. Here, Will Toledo distills what it feels like to be an artist in your twenties down to seven minutes of clever phrases. Unlike Rosenstock, he chops and screws it, filtering the pieces through a fuzzbox and a Julian Casablancas impression. The long runtime only better represents his own drifting.
62. (SANDY) ALEX G | Powerful Man
Here comes another fiddle. This is my favorite of the Alex G songs for that violin melody alone, one of those phrases you can only give that instrument. It was made for those wandering sixteenth notes, like trying to talk through a sob. If there's a pattern here, I guess I like those sounds of Americana, and I think they run great counterpoint to this lyrical portrait of a troublemaker just trying to shake the stereotype.
61. SYLVAN ESSO | Coffee
Every sound here lays just behind the beat, it's maddening to figure out just how they count it in. "Coffee" is woven with all kinds erratic instruments—the glockenspiel, the shaker, that French-horn synth. Just when I think I have it down, it breaks into such an odd chorus of smoke detector sounds, of microwave music. The bass lies sleeping in the low register for almost the full song. Only in the final chorus does it do that thing I really love where it ups the stakes by hopping an octave—then it leaps over that to bring me even higher.
If you'd like to keep track with a running playlist of all the tracks in top-down order, I got your back.
Otherwise, next week is #60–#41!
Technically, halfway through the year is next Monday, July 1st. This is a leap year, after all. They’re the only years where there’s an even split in days; the only times the divide falls at midnight, not noon.