The Best Songs of the 2010s: #60–#41

ISSUE #81

We're getting to the hardest part now—do I really have to choose between two masterpieces, to arbitrarily put one over another? I do. Which is why I must remind you: these opinions are not definitive; they're not even sound. Best songs are as subjective as bagel preferences.

The cover today is Phantom Thread, #3 on my "The Decade in Movies" list. For catch-up, here are links to #100–#81 and #80–#61. Let's hit it.

60. DANNY BROWN | Grown Up
There were dozens of Danny Brown songs I wanted to put here, from "Really Doe" to "30," but he's such an album player that it felt right to choose the one pure single that I turn to when I need some quick D.B. His killer clown delivery is often laid over something more sinister (e.g., all of Atrocity Exhibition), but to hear him in broad daylight rapping over a sunny Gorillaz sample is a delight, and it highlights his inherent playfulness. This is Danny Brown's "Juicy."

59. PARAMORE | Hard Times
Has Paramore had a better arc than the entire M.C.U.? Five albums and more than ten years after their Warped Tour heyday, they took a little bit of Blondie, a little Talking Heads, a dollop of Lauper, and blended it all with Williams's trademark vulnerability about topics like hopeless depression. It's the best album of their career. Between this, Phantom Thread, and The Last Jedi, 2017 was the year I realized that no matter how long you've been making art, there's still a chance your next work is your best.

58. CHILDISH GAMBINO | Redbone
Speaking of arcs: after two studio albums that were either forgotten or maligned, Donald Glover stepped out of Community and disappeared, only to come back with a sensational TV show and an album everyone could enjoy. "This is America" may have provoked us, but the true test of his power lies in what he makes separate from the masterful Hiro Murai, and "Redbone" was everywhere for a long time. A beloved—if prickly—figure, Glover's kind of positioned himself as the savior nobody asked for, but if you ignore that and his frosty demeanor, it's easier to appreciate the fountain of talent flowing from him.

57. JID | 151 Rum
Combining skill and lunacy, "151 Rum" is both a tongue twister and a mile-long tightrope sprint pulled off without losing a breathe. JID raps like he's running for his life, and it's not just empty acrobatics—that tornado siren rules my life, and the bass swims through the mix with a sinister growl, like a giant squid barely missing your submarine. He does it all and never loses his footing.

56. YOUNG THUG | Wyclef Jean
I was wrong earlier, Young Thug is another good Jeffery (we spell it differently). I can't put it better than poet laureate Shea Serrano of The Rap Year Book when he said Thug is "maybe the first post-text rapper, in that he doesn't even really need words[...] Imagine if you took both of your feet and stuck them in a bucket full of warm mud and wiggled your toes around," he writes, "except that mud isn't mud, it's your soul." Or, as one Wired headline put it, "Young Thug Isn't Rapping Gibberish, He's Evolving Language."

55. MEN I TRUST | Tailwhip
That bassline could snap your neck, so smooth you could slip, while Emma Proulx whispers you into anesthesia and still you can't stop smiling. This one is for losing your self-consciousness when you're dancing in public. I mean it in the most literal sense—the self no longer exists. You melt away in an ego heat death and the rhythm mops you off the floor. Whether your hands are up or they're in your pockets, close your eyes and you could be anywhere you want.

54. REAL ESTATE | Municipality
Sometimes, dragging a song from its bed of nostalgia is impossible, and the feelings you get when you hear it will always mar your judgement, like preferring the tape hiss of old movies to slick Hollywood blockbusters. I can't hear this song without seeing eastern Iowa, the parts that look like Grant Wood's Stone City, where hills rise like muffins from the black golden earth, and the prairie sun opens onto the ribbon of the Mississippi. It's a little clunky to hear them try to fit "municipality" in a verse, but the guitars and piano make up for it when they sound like a lens flair in a roll of faded film.

53. VAMPIRE WEEKEND | Hannah Hunt
Ezra Koenig was inescapable when the internet took over, even though most of this decade Vampire Weekend was nowhere to be seen. Whatever you think of them, this one is special, where they ditched their baroque prep school aesthetic and dialed back the cheekiness to wade in murkier waters. The bass is a shuffling seascape and the slide guitars are crying gulls. The clouds part when it bursts open at the end, and the sunlight pours in to warm the sand.

52. JAMES BLAKE | Retrograde
I was always drawn to this over other James Blake songs, I think because it's less wailing banshee and more "get in bed with me." It's all about escalation here, starting with a hum that sounds like it's coming from beyond the veil. Blake puts so much reverb on himself it's like he's halfway down an empty hallway. Then it heats up like an oven, a blazing wall of sound, forever ascending, like a spiral, like Vertigo. Finally, the tension breaks; a strike from Cupid's arrow; "suddenly, I'm hit."

51. DRAKE | Passionfruit
What a time I had trying to decide on a Drake song; he's gone through so many phases and none of them age so well. "Hotline Bling" has had the greatest meme impact, but the song feels more like a flash in the pan. I almost put "Hold On, We're Going Home" here, but I just can't hear "You're a good girl and you know it" without thinking of the Millie Bobby Brown thing :(. And while I love Take Care more than anything, the cheese is laid on pretty thick for those songs. I come back to "Passionfruit" a lot because he restrains himself here; like Kanye, he's at his best when he's a curator and not just an ego.

50. THE BLACK KEYS | Everlasting Light
In 2010, The Black Keys reopened the famous Muscle Shoals Sound Studio—where the Rolling Stones recorded "Brown Sugar," and "Wild Horses" was written in the bathroom—for the first time in five years. Like most famous studios, the flaws in the acoustics are its real secret. The springy floor traps the bass, so it's harder to hear in the booth. You have to turn up the low end while recording just to hear the rhythm, to the point where you realize how loud the bass is only after you listen at home. That tiny defect is what makes "Everlasting Light" sounds so heavy, why it sounds like a bulldozer moving toward you at full throttle. Sometimes, it's all about the room where it happens.

49. AZEALIA BANKS | 212 (feat. Lazy Jay)
Azealia Banks has said some horrible, horrible stuff. I'm not apologizing for any of that, but it's hard not to admire someone who can call Elon Musk a "trash ass beta male" with "pork skin" and subsequently cause Tesla stock to plummet. Anyway, she's been coasting off this song for ages, but it's because she kills it. She's a maestro with assonance and insults. If only we could use her powers for good...

48. PHOEBE BRIDGERS | Motion Sickness
Bridgers is a Queen of the Burn from the other, quieter side of the aisle (pretty hard to forget "I faked it every time, but that's alright"). This one takes an abuser to task (*cough* Ryan Adams *cough*) without shying away from the pain that comes with losing anyone, even if they were awful. Plus, it sounds amazing, with that opening guitar fizzle sounding just like petrichor, which I said in one of the original Earwyrms (Issue #7). Fun fact (is it?): this is the only song to have shown up in two separate issues.

47. RHYE | Open
There are plenty of moments that words can't capture: a single light in a bedroom window; the love that makes you miss your plane; the warmth of their lips on your back; the responsibility of holding another's heart in your hands. Everything about "Open" brings warmth to the night, from the saxophone soft enough to be swaddled in, the muted trumpet like the muffling of a sigh, the guitar like the stutter of trying to catch your breath. It's all heat.

46. MITSKI | Townie
Mitski's another artist that's too hard to choose from, but, if I'm being honest, the stark drama of "Your Best American Girl" and the unrequited dance of "Nobody" still don't bring me to the same heights "Townie" does. My worst take is that Puberty 2 and Bury Me at Makeout Creek both top Be the Cowboy, but it's better that she's recognized late than never, like Scorsese finally getting the Oscar for The Departed. Nevermind; it's a broken love economy, and Mitski understands: we're all throttled by watching our friends break up, bewildered at how the dates we go on can still all be so boring. My heart was made with so much room, why is there no one to fill it? I want to kiss someone, and I want to do it now, damn it.

45. DONNE TRUMPET & THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT | Sunday Candy
It's easy to forget that when Chance joined up with The Social Experiment it was only the beginning of gospelcore, months before Coloring Book and "Ultralight Beam." With fresh eyes, "Sunday Candy" is still a surprising novelty. It stops just short of using a church choir; instead, the kitchen sink combination of breakbeat, steel drums, brass, and public school piano are all tied together beautifully by Jamila Woods's voice. That's really all you need.

44. SPOON | Inside Out
"Inside Out" has gravity. That drum groove is so tight—88 BPM, a heartbeat running just a little fast, the surefooted stomp of a walk with purpose. The band is so in the pocket they're almost indifferent; the drama all comes in the fraying of Britt Daniel's voice. Those fluttering harps sound like passing comets, and soon you remember that time is affected by gravity as well, and your heart is orbiting something too.

43. POST MALONE & SWAE LEE | Sunflower
This poor song could be in the top ten if only Post Malone had stayed out of the second verse. Why would you stop Swae Lee after only ninety seconds? Oh well, it's still so catchy. It's a perfect companion to Spider-Verse as a union of pop conventions and real heart. It's a little like "Don't Stop Believing"—it's going to hook you whether you want it to or not.

42. SOLANGE | Cranes in the Sky
This is one of the best songs about what it's like to miss someone. Listing all the things you've tried to do to stop the pain is a lean way to write about something so all-encompassing, while the gently layering of the drums, strings, and harps sound like perpetual cloud cover. In the end, words melt away and we're left with Solange cresting her upper register. Sometimes all you can do is cry out.

41. IAMAMIWHOAMI | Play
Put this on and dress me up in feathers; cut me loose to stalk rococo halls, my weight back on my heels, a lurching peacock in 6/8 time. Dancing to the downward steps the rhythm takes, I feel like Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 or the technicolor "Bal Masqué" scene in Chaney's Phantom of the Opera. My favorite part is how it feels like a game of Red Light, Green Light past 2:54: stop when she shrieks on the four, only move on the notes in between, and you can join us, throwing our heads back, reeds in the wind, vital as flickering candles.

If you'd like to listen to #41–#100 in top-down order, I have a playlist that will update as we go along.

We're almost finished, on to #40–#21.