The Best Songs of the 2010s: #20–#1

ISSUE #83

It didn't work. I never found the one who cursed me to make this cumbersome list, and so I'm still forced to end it. Oh well, that's what you get when you stick your nose into someone else's business and don't just let the ones you love leave. If last week's songs happened to be about love, these ended up being about home, which is fitting as we pull this train into the station.

I think I get why we feel compelled to do retrospectives, though: it's a way to practice a tiny death and still live on as if nothing happened. Imagine how good we'll feel in 2020 to get all this behind us and to gaze out at a whole new life ahead.

I can't leave without saying that I lament this had to be on Spotify because it meant I couldn't put Joanna Newsom on the list. Just know that there's a good chance she would've cracked the Top 10, and go listen to Have One on Me if you never have before.

The #1 movie of the decade has to be The Social Network. It's a masterpiece, and so unexpectedly prescient. Just look at Brenda Song burn that paper. Doesn't that just embody the entirety of now?

For catch-up, here are links to #100–#81, #80–#61, #60–#41, and #40–#1. Let's bring this home.

20. ALABAMA SHAKES | Sound & Color
This song is built on the space between its beats. Raising the rhythm on triplets while still being in 4/4 causes a stagger-step that feels like getting your sea legs, raising the mast in a cradle of waves to vibraphones that sound like the beams of dawn. The finale is grand when the cello comes in, and Brittany Howard's changing tone on every line sounds like the voices of the mind trying to speak to each other.

19. THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH | The Wild Hunt
Kristian Matsson's voice creaks like the door to an empty cabin. My memories shake loose from each pluck of nylon, and I see the younger me who made the mistake of leaving. It's not running away that makes you feel better; we usually do it just to prove that reality can feel unreal. Our folds of gray matter are not too different than rings on trees that mark the years.

18. SHARON VAN ETTEN | Our Love
Van Etten has a true rockstar quality while also seeming like a memoirist, like Jo Ann Beard in a Pantera shirt. She let that show on the third season of Twin Peaks, and afterword I would put on Are We There for days, trying to pare the rations from two back down to one. This song feels sweet till the lyrics come in and those insidious harmonies let you know you're kidding yourself if you think this is really love.

17. RUN THE JEWELS | Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)
Run the Jewels grant us the energy to fight robots and fascism. Killer Mike and El-P embody our anger at everything that came to a head this decade. The guitar rumbles like a stirring Onyx, not to mention the motormouth sample and the glances of hammer on steel at every third beat in the chorus. Whoever thought to bring De La Rocha out was so inspired, I can't believe the Rage Against the Machine frontman hadn't been used before, it's like bringing in Dave Grohl. Makes me feel like I could do laps around a hospital.

16. PINEGROVE | Old Friends
There's controversy around Pinegrove, but my decision to keep them is based on this reporting by Jenn Pelly, documenting when Evan Stephens Hall of Pinegrove made a confusing Facebook post that addressed accusations of sexual coercion, and then promptly canceled their tour and got straight into therapy. If an effective way to shape culture is to forgive and rehabilitate, this is one of our examples of positive change. Addressing the problem through therapy and coordination with professionals makes the whole thing seem not cynical, but deeply felt. This is no C.K. situation. This is someone trying to put reconciliation into action. They also write music that I can never stop listening to. We should all call our parents when we think of them, and tell our friends when we love them.

15. BEST COAST | Our Deal
This is a backpacking song, for staring at the sunset over the Pacific, looking until you can figure out what it is about you that's dysfunctional, that makes people want to leave, not want to commit, not want to communicate, etc., etc. It's about accepting that—nice and light-hearted. Seriously—it’s a perfect bite of cotton candy with a Twin Peaks bassline.

14. JAPANESE BREAKFAST | Everybody Wants to Love You
There's such catharsis in the phaser that’s used here, it envelops you, it swirls, like walking through the tunnel at the aquarium, or finding a mermaid's oasis. As everyone who’s ever caught me with a remote in my hands after two drinks knows, it has my favorite music video of all time, mainly for the moment she’s shredding on top of an eighteen-wheeler.

13. CARLY RAE JEPSEN | Your Type
"I love you, I'm sorry / I'm sorry, I love you." How did it take fifty years of pop as we know it to come up with that turn of phrase? "Run Away with Me" was so close to making the cut, but I chose this instead, not only because it's my favorite, but because it encompasses what she's best at: wall-to-wall hooks, from verse to chorus to bridge. Carly's delivery is key. There's a realism to her longing, but it's never cloying or alienating. That's a harder tightrope to walk than you'd think.

12. VINCE STAPLES | BagBak
Big Fish Theory is an auteurist’s sound, like Lang's Metropolis. It sounds like post-apocalyptic rain pouring in buckets on a quonset hut. It's factory music. This bass makes me feel like there's something crawling in my body, and soon my veins are on fire. Staples is probably my personal favorite rapper working today. When I saw him this year, he ended his set by playing the entire clip of Mac Miller's Tiny Desk Concert, a touching tribute to a friend and the best eulogy an artist can ask for.

11. JAMIE XX | Gosh
This one starts in the factory too, but is evolves into an ending that's transcendent, aeronautic, the score for an H.G. Wells adaptation. The end solo is so simple it sounds like a middle schooler tinkering on a Casio, but that doesn't even matter. You see the beauty in finger paintings. You soar over kaleidoscopic crags of frequency and sound, and it keeps climbing, it flies, is this the same song? Can something really go that high? Is it in the stratosphere? Is this where we came from? Are we all born from this same matter?

10. PERFUME GENIUS | Alan
In bed again, except this time, the walls are moving. Mike Hadreas makes discomfort comfortable, and he's able to make a shimmer sound tangible. Much of No Shape sounds like it's sung through the shifting veil of air just above hot concrete. The strings here sound like you're resting in the belly of a ship, or orbiting the slow gravity of a star. “Alan” is a great love song, a gentle reminder of the wonder of supporting each other: "I'm here / How weird."

9. WAXAHATCHEE | Be Good
Waxahatchee is here because she's a favorite. I don't think anyone can fit poetry to meter as well except maybe Ben Gibbard (fight me). She never overextends a line, and paints vivid pictures both emotional and physical while never stretching the melody. It's a sign of good songwriting that something can be this lo-fi and still be a stunner. It's like summer camp, lips chapped, pining for that one you know will get away.

8. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM | Home
I have a sort of synesthesia that applies only to James Murphy’s songs—ironic because his aesthetic is so monochromatic—"I Can Change” is a ball of sea foam, “Drunk Girls” a dizzying fuscia, and “Home" is a warm cranberry. There are none of “Dance Yrself Clean’s” supreme highs or lows on this track, just the type of reliable groove that Murphy made his name on. It's a perfect album closer (I have a thing for those), where the "whoa oh" comes in to perfectly mirror the "whoa oh" in "Dance Yrself Clean", the trajectory of the album being an update of Stop Making Sense, tracking shaking uncertainty to acceptance of where you are and learning to enjoy the dance. That line he ends with is not a pessimistic forecast, but a nod to please enjoy what you have. The shaking of maracas. The alternating cowbells. Look around you. You’re surrounded. It won't get any better.

7. FIONA APPLE | Anything We Want
Fiona, how I love thee. I can't find any pattern to the pots and pans and bongos blinking in the background, but I guess there's no real pattern to arousal either, and this is nothing if not an ode to horniness. She captures the way your blinders go on when you're so fully into someone—flush cleeks, scars out, the walls are golden and the windows are open, the rain has passed but the clouds still hang in the air and the dog is rolling in the mud outside, the fan is on but we're still sweating, we only have a little longer but that's okay, because we can be late, can't we?

6. KENDRICK LAMAR | DNA.
I was not looking forward to picking the Kendrick song. To Pimp a Butterfly is towering, and Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City as well, but I can't pick a track from either any more than I could cut a single frame from Silence of the Lambs. No, I think it's “DNA.” I've had that "I got I got I got I got" on the tip of my tongue for two years, I think it's the biggest hook of the decade. Then there's the way he bounces through "I know murder, conviction / Burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption / Scholars, fathers dead with kids and / I wish I was fed forgiveness." It makes my head spin. Then the bridge comes in and it's like he grabs the camera and shakes it to the tune of an 8.6 earthquake. It's adrenaline incarnate.

5. FRANK OCEAN | Solo
Frank, Frank, Frank: man of mystery, man of substance. He's pushed songwriting forward by miles in just two albums in the 2010s, and proven that you can be big without megaphones, memes, or big-play personality. It's just the art and the heart, getting to the bottom of all this loneliness. I love these chirps that he uses, just another tool in his arsenal of accents, like the signature up-pitching that everyone uses now. He took a long time for Blonde, sure, but he cleverly got out of his Def Jam deal with Endless, and then delivered what I think is one of the most rewarding albums of all time. He started rapping for this one, too, and we're all the better for it.

4. BON IVER | 29 #Strafford APTS
For 22, A Million, Justin Vernon invented technology to make his voice the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano all at the same time, filtered through a thin metal door in the middle of a space station.
This song is my favorite, a blend of his acoustic cabin beginnings and the intergalactic sound he grew into. The scaling on the chorus is like running up a staircase, passing through doors, laying bricks along the way. Listening to it is like talking to ghosts, voices that break not in sobs, but in the fading of a tape. Plus, it’s fun in the beginning how it sounds like he's says "Sharon Smoke.”

3. THE NATIONAL | Bloodbuzz Ohio
I knew I was old when I started loving The National. People think of them as sad dad rock, but that paves over the primordial force of their rhythm section. Their best songs are laid on the spine of the drummer Bryan Devendorf, probably my favorite on the instrument. Those snares snap like you're running in a dream, always moving but never getting anywhere. This is the song to put on when I get drunk and leave the party early, grabbing waxy leaves from trees on the cold walk home—I can never walk home though, and that's the kicker. My home is hundreds of miles away. This song understands. It sounds good.

2. BEACH HOUSE | Silver Soul
It starts with a wake up call from fake birds and the blowing of a bubble gun. Then it feels like slowly falling into a dream, a nap you're taking in a spot of warm sun, like a cat in the bedroom window. "Silver Soul" is regenerative for me, every aspect holds a healing quality. It's how I reckon with the overwhelming. It feels like floating down a lazy river of milk. It's a barefoot walk on soft grass. That's not even getting to the cryptic and universal quality of the lyrics: I think about the way her voice bobs up and down on the "again" in the chorus all the time. The repetition belies a resignation I'm all too familiar with: it is happening again, and there's nothing to stop it. I can't help my heart or head, all I can do is soothe them, turn toward the silver light and listen to the cymbals roll, feel the sun and feed the soul.

1. SUFJAN STEVENS | Death with Dignity
Carrie & Lowell may be the most staggering album I've ever heard. When I think of the profound current of emotion that flows through those eleven tracks, I'm reassured of the full weight of our collective humanity. Written after the death of his mother, Sufjan somehow transcends other works of emotional processing and creates something that offers healing and grace to anyone who has gone through the unspeakable aspects of loss. It never feels alienating—no small feat, as people have a natural repulsion to grief. Every track holds me differently, but I always have to start at the beginning, so this has become my favorite, and I'm fond of how it’s about the failure of words in capturing the full expanse of a feeling. The guitars sound like angels' harps, and Stevens delivers one of his signature melodies that only breaks when he delivers gut-punching lines like "I've lost my strength completely."

There's a depth to sadness that goes further than most emotions, and perhaps joy is deep as well; one day I will find that lake and drink from it too. For now, I know only the forest path of my own head. I know these trees around me, and I love them, because the alternative is to hate a place I can’t escape. I feel no envy for the lives of others, as long as I have Carrie & Lowell as my water and my sun.

Thank you for listening. Here's the playlist from #1–#100 in top-down order, in case you're interested. The counting isn't over yet, though—we still have to get through the Best of 2019, and then we can all join in the Fourth (fourth!) Annual Collaborative Year in Review Playlist. So gather your favorites of the year, and stay tuned.