The 100 Best Songs of the 2020s So Far

These are the singles and deep cuts that have defined the decade so far.

The 100 Best Songs of the 2020s So Far

If “What is the defining album of the 2020s so far?” wasn’t already an impossible question to answer, then “What is the defining song of the 2020s so far?” is perhaps even more unknowable. This decade began with Fiona Apple and, at the time I’m writing this, the remix of Charli xcx’s BRAT is making its rounds. Why a “best songs of the decade so far” is far more difficult to assemble than a “best albums of the decade so far” list can be attributed to one simple thing: There are far more songs than there are albums. There’s more material to sift through, and you have to decide whether to emphasize singles or deep-cuts. Usually, the most “correct” is someplace in the middle of all that. We have five years to consider (well, four years and 10 months, but who’s counting!), and striking a proper balance between 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 is no small task. Add too many tacks from this year, and questions of recency bias come rushing in. Add too many songs from 2020, and it’s like you’re living too far in the past.

But, we gave it our best shot, polling Paste staff, cross-referencing previous year-end rankings and, above all, attempting to put together a comprehensive list that best reflects this magazine’s editorial populace for half a decade. In turn, all of these songs were released between January 1, 2020 and October 1, 2024, and their genres vibrate through jazz, synth-pop, country, singer-songwriter and beyond—featuring artist comebacks, cuts from debut LPs and, more than anything else, career-defining phenomena. It’s messy, groovy, a little bit sad and, likely, a little bit nonsensical. But hey, you know? Without further ado, here are Paste’s picks for the 100 best songs of the 2020s so far. —Matt Mitchell, Paste Music Editor


100. Gia Margaret: “Hinoki Wood” (2023)

Gia Margaret’s 2023 album, Romantic Piano, opens with “Hinoki Wood,” a serene stroke of repetition and layering. A single note hums in the background, as Margaret’s piano chords form a progression as restrained as a television commercial jingle. It’s upbeat—as much as a sub-two-minute song can be—but what’s wonderful about “Hinoki Wood” is that you can hear the creaks of Margaret’s ivories as she presses them. This song awakens something deep within my cells; it aches with devotion, self-kindness and wonder. —Matt Mitchell


99. Megan Thee Stallion: “Thot Shit” (2021)

Best Songs of the 2020sReleased as a single in-between Good News and Traumatize, Megan Thee Stallion’s greatest track, “Thot Shit,” is an act of revenge delivered with ferocious levels of cunt. Megan is unapologetic, braggadocious and, above all, a weapon with the pen. “Thot Shit” is a rap hit that’ll engulf an entire club in flames, rife with sex-positive punches and empowerment galvanized by venom. The track takes aim at conservatives who hated her “WAP” collab with Cardi B a year prior. In the accompanying music video, Megan tortures a U.S. Senator until she puts him on the surgical table and replaces his mouth with a WAP of his own. “Thot Shit” is one of the best rap songs of the 2020s, and it has my favorite couplet of the decade, a real deep cut for me and my fellow Temptation-heads: “Bitch dry-hating, tryna get noticed / Man, ain’t nobody come to see you, Otis!” —Matt Mitchell


98. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross: “Yeah x10” (2024)

If there is any justice in this world, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will receive an Oscar nomination for Challengers soundtrack standout “Yeah x10.” However, I have no faith in the stodgy members of the Academy, so I hope the pair are happy with a nod from Paste at the very least. The duo previously won Academy Awards for The Social Network and Soul scores, but with Challengers —and “Yeah x10” in particular—they got to embrace a heavy electronic pop sound that shares the same DNA as their sweat-drenched Nine Inch Nails days. Hollow thwacks of cowbell, prismatic synths and that one sassily repeated word boost the dynamic scenes of Luca Guadagnino’s sexy, thoroughly entertaining film. But you don’t need to have seen Challengers to enjoy “Yeah x10,” which is a banger in its own right. Listening to it is the sonic equivalent of picking up the star bonus in Super Mario; with these beats ringing in your ears,you can do anything. —Clare Martin


97. Katy Kirby: “Cool Dry Place” (2021)

Katy Kirby’s Cool Dry Place title track is about finding the balance between emotional boundaries and the primal need for deep connection with others. With love being such a high-risk, high-reward venture, it poses taxing moral dilemmas, and Kirby finds herself finally committing, yet still looking back: “And once the dust has settled, then you’ll know / that you’re gonna get more of me than you bargained for / All the ways we can go wrong / Will we ever get that far?” The song’s dainty beginnings gradually morph into an untamed indie-rock firestorm, as if to signify this jump into the great unknown. —Lizzie Manno


96. hemlocke springs: “girlfriend” (2022)

If the bedroom pop of Clairo or beabadoobee took the chintzy out of Frankie Cosmos and friends’ exercises in sincerity and replaced it with a dash of cool, hemlocke springs course-corrected on “girlfriend” by placing a certain awkwardness front-and-center. She does her best to keep her cool over minimalist art-pop production, but finds herself slipping in and out of control as she contemplates her divergent desires. hemlocke springs has the humor of Jack Stauber but the undeniable sincerity of Lorde, which make something like “girlfriend” timeless—while hits from her TikTok peers feel dated mere hours after peaking in virality. Her honest lyrics are as funny as they are all too real: “I’ll treat you like you are a carry on (carry on, carry on) / Like you’re my one and only fan (oh my God, I love you) / My kindness is of a false pretense / I’ve got the ego of a God.” —Devon Chodzin


95. Mannequin Pussy: “Nothing Like” (2024)

Best Songs of the 2020sIn a 2021 interview with Vulture, Mannequin Pussy lead singer Missy Dabice expressed anxiety about whether or not the band could write another song as emotionally devastating, and therefore popular, as their 2019 hit “Drunk II.” Dabice needn’t have worried, though; “Nothing Like,” off the band’s 2024 album I Got Heaven, sizzles with the same potent pathos, while also standing on its own two feet. The immediacy of the drums and angsty guitar are tailor-made for the opening of a late ‘90s teen movie. One of my favorite things about Mannequin Pussy is how, as a band made up of adults, they make me, a nearly-30-year-old, tap into an emotional intensity I associate with my teenage years. It’s a superpower of sorts as Dabice sings, “Oh, I fear I can’t hide / That sometimes I want you,” and I feel that all-encompassing ache take hold. —Clare Martin


94. Empty Country: “Marian” (2020)

Across four increasingly ambitious Cymbals Eat Guitars albums, Joe D’Agostino established himself as one of the best lyricists of his generation. With “Marian”—the song that ushered in his first LP as a solo artist—he achieves something new: a glistening mini-epic that binds together real family tragedy, fictitious vignettes set in long-ago West Virginia, and expressionistic imagery into one fascinating whole. The song is written from the perspective of a clairvoyant 1960s miner who predicts his own death and his infant daughter’s future life, including a reference to an unnamed plague that was meant to signify the AIDS epidemic but now feels a little clairvoyant itself. The track is warmer and brighter than past Cymbals epics like “…And The Hazy Sea” or “Laramie,” with honeyed harmonies and a spotlight on D’Agostino’s piercing falsetto. —Zach Schonfeld


93. The Soft Pink Truth: “On” (2020)

The Soft Pink Truth—the alias of Drew Daniel—has made four albums across 24 years, but few moments on them have matched the spirituality of “On,” the marquee track-four from 2020’s Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? This was one of the first records I “discovered” during the pandemic, and “On” has stuck with me ever since—sounding like an alien rummaging through autumn-colored woods. The melody is gentle and cyclical, tip-toeing through an arrangement that slowly swells into inaudible voices humming in swirling, teardrop tongues. To me, “On” is what plays in the waiting room of purgatory, a swarming, tranquil ambience with an encroaching divinity that never fully arrives—but you never stop sensing its closeness. —Matt Mitchell


92. Yung Lean & FKA twigs: “Bliss” (2022)

Best Songs of the 2020sThe unexpected musical partnership between Yung Lean and FKA twigs was one made in Drain Gang Heaven. The two teamed up during the rollout of the pioneer Swedish rapper’s 2022 album Stardust to create “Bliss,” a breezy and punky lo-fi tune that, for both parts of this duo, is an exercise in pure fun. Over an ignited sample of an obscure 1970s soviet synth-pop song, Lean is cool and nonchalant as ever as he mumbles through sleazy, clever and randomly referential bars such as “Like The Exorcist, I’m making heads spin again” and “Pauly D the way I live my lifestyle.” In the accompanying music video, twigs dons a wedding dress as her mystical and otherworldly presence casts a brooding feel. It’s gothic and ethereal in the ways of modern day vapor/chill/whatever-you-call-it-wave-adjacent artists like Pastel Ghost or Sidewalks and Skeletons, but Yung Lean sticks to his own authentic, cloud-rap roots to make for a grungy, sensual track. The rest of Stardust admittedly falls flat at times, but what was once the first single released from the album captures what the rest of the mixtape could have been—a quick and breezy tale of a blissed out one night stand. The hotel bell rings, twigs gives you her room number, and asks for your company. With a rap as effortlessly brisk and sharp as the one the duo deliver on “Bliss,” you simply have no choice but to say yes. —Alli Dempsey


91. Water From Your Eyes: “When You’re Around” (2021)

Rachel Brown and Nate Amos don’t like to stay in one place for too long. Across their oeuvre as Water From Your Eyes, the duo relish in esoteric imagery and confounding textures. “When You’re Around,” the opening track of 2021’s Structure, might be the closest thing to a straightforward pop song they’ve done. Its swaying shuffle, piano stabs and melodic guitar lines sit pleasantly beside Brown’s ode to blissful love. —Grant Sharples


90. Geese: “Tomorrow’s Crusades” (2023)

Oddball Brooklyn rock-revivalists Geese sauntered into 2023 with enough swagger to hold their heads high through the entire year. And this was for good reason; riding the traction they had garnered from lead single “Cowboy Nudes,” the excitement for their sophomore LP 3D Country was high—and it did not disappoint. “Tomorrow’s Crusades” is the perfect intersection of Geese’s familiarity and their strangeness. What begins as a somewhat-straightforward country-rock ballad devolves into a beautiful chaos. Within the first minute-and-a-half, vocalist Cameron Winter pushes his deeply emotive voice to its lowest of lows and its highest of falsetto highs. The track’s string arrangements begin organized and romantic, yet turn into an ominous foreshadowing under Winter’s spoken-yelled “Smoke fills your eyes / Smoke fills your life.” With a madman’s laugh and the clanking of a cowbell, the track ends and Geese keep restlessly moving into their next joyous masterpiece. —Madelyn Dawson


89. Viagra Boys: “Creatures” (2021)

Punk music has traditionally been a vessel for the down-on-their-luck misfits to air their grievances with social mores, systematic injustice and the general fuckery of the world we all inhabit. On “Creatures,” Swedish art punks Viagra Boys lend a voice to the houseless people and addicts ostracized from larger society. “We are the creatures / Down at the bottom,” Sebastian Murphy sings in his warbly baritone, sympathizing with his subject rather than judging them. —Grant Sharples


88. Cate Le Bon: “Moderation” (2022)

The centerpiece of Cate Le Bon’s Pompeii is “Moderation,” a soulful, Avalon-esque undertaking about our habits, whether in romance or life in general. Le Bon’s bass lines converse with her bedroom-pop guitar quivers—it’s like watching someone leaning into the tenacity of a Joe Jackson groove with the anonymity of Noel Redding’s complementary style. “I get by pushing poets aside / ‘Cause they can’t beat the Mother of Pearl / I quit the earth, I’m out of my mind,” she sings in a lush falsetto. There’s a specific nod here to the sounds and songs of Roxy Music’s oeuvre, an obvious blueprint for how Le Bon approached her Pompeii arrangements but executed with sublime modernity. —Matt Mitchell


87. Runnner: “Ur Name on a Grain of Rice” (2020)

Best Songs of the 2020sNoah Weinman—the voice and production behind Runnner—came into view with Always Repeating in 2021, combining re-recorded versions of old songs with his 2020 EP One of One, and no part of the LP sticks out better than “Ur Name on a Grain of Rice,” one of the few indie-folk songs I would wager to call “epic.” Weinman is a master at reckoning with and taking advantage of liminal spaces, but “Ur Name on a Grain of Rice” symbolizes his ability to make a bedroom sound like a mansion. The song is, even three years later, his greatest accomplishment—a stark, vulnerable conversation between connection and disconnection. “Maybe I loved you, or maybe I wanted to see something through just ‘cause I never do,” he declares, before the song quickly crescendos into a swell of anxiety, banjo and horns. “And I should call, but I’m afraid of what you’re gonna say, notice all the ways I’ve changed and all the ways I’ve stayed the same. Fear, it lingers. Weinman admits that he’s “still learning to speak,” yet the patterns are, as the record suggests, always repeating. “Ur Name on a Grain of Rice” suggests that, even in smallness, direction weighs a ton. —Matt Mitchell


86. DEBBY FRIDAY: “SO HARD TO TELL” (2023)

Toronto’s DEBBY FRIDAY is comfortable with the harsh industrial club-punk nightmares of contemporary nightlife, and her Polaris Prize-winning album Good Luck marks that abundantly clear. It’s on “SO HARD TO TELL,” though, that the electronic musician properly bares her soaring voice, chastising and extending sympathy to the younger version of herself who got in too deep. The beat still thumps properly but the overall effect is more mellifluous, something approaching softness. Very few club-ready tracks have this same balance of heart and frustration, with melodies that linger on every syllable as FRIDAY tries to get the point across to the more naive girl she remembers and carries with her. —Devon Chodzin


85. Jane Remover: “Magic I Want U” (2024)

In 2024, every release from genre-bending extraordinaire Jane Remover has become more and more difficult to describe. The lyrics of “Magic I Want U” are simply focused on sexual desire (“I like the way he use his hands and his words / I could be his new favorite think piece favorite girl”), but Jane’s production diverts your attention to something new every single second. Combining elements of hyperpop (with some synth patches reminiscent of Bladee), Latin percussion and sample work conjuring ‘90s hip-hop, Jane Remover makes it clear she refuses to be put in a box—and if you try, she’ll go ahead and make that impossible, too. —Leah Weinstein


84. Moor Mother & billy woods: “Rapunzal” (2020)

Moor Mother and billy woods make a great duo. On BRASS, their late-2020 collaborative album, each artist heightens the other’s pen, the most shining example being “Rapunzal.” billy woods takes the first verse, closing it with a disturbing image of economist Alan Greenspan and libertarian author Ayn Rand having sex. Moor Mother handles the song’s second half, her opaque musings spanning everything from Kobe Bryant to the Seven of Swords. Both artists share a fondness for the arcane, and their enigmatic tendencies achieve perfect harmony here. —Grant Sharples


83. Nation of Language: “Across That Fine Line” (2021)

In just four years, NYC synth-pop group Nation of Language have released a trio of exquisite albums, taking inspiration from New Wave, post-punk, krautrock and beyond to create music that sounds somehow both nostalgic and novel. Never is this more apparent than on “Across That Fine Line,” from their sophomore record A Way Forward. Bouncing, rubbery bass kicks us off, and soon starry blips of synth zip in and out like aural fireflies. The trio are in ultimate control here, building a simmering tension during the verses before the chorus erupts in unrepentant ecstasy. Lead singer Ian Devaney’s rich, impassioned delivery of “I died a hundred times” on the chorus is sing-screamable whether it’s your first or fiftieth time listening. —Clare Martin


82. Hovvdy: “Blindsided” (2021)

Hovvdy’s 2021 album True Love was sometimes too nostalgic for its own good, but Martin and Taylor evoked their past selves in ways that allowed listeners to step in and become a part of the stories. There are glimpses of worry, of crucial moments in which humanity gets left behind and the memories of friendship we pull from the wreckage. “Never really met my friends, knew each other from a distance,” Charlie Martin sings on “Blindsided,” lovingly delivering verses on small-town coteries and adolescent free-for-alls, let go of through at an upbeat, country-twang pace, signaling toward Budweiser in solo cups and Foo Fighter songs on the radio during hot summers. There is longing to be felt, yes, but there is also a resilient happiness outweighing all of that. Sentimentality, Hovvdy argue, is a good sign that our hearts are rebuilding. —Matt Mitchell


81. Black Thought & Danger Mouse ft. MF DOOM: “Belize” (2022)

Best Songs of the 2020sFormulas work for a reason, and putting two all-time MCs like Black Thought and MF Doom on one track together will never fail—not while Danger Mouse is handling production, at least. It’s bittersweet to hear DOOM’s flow, as he passed away two years before the Cheat Codes release. But hearing a track like this, for four minutes it sounds like DOOM is still with us. Black Thought, per usual, is on top of his game—as licks like “Fuck a thick skin, I got me a exoskeleton / The Black Colin Farrell in The Lobster / Deliver like an obstetrician, but not a doctor” leave the listener in a tailspin. DOOM, too, is on another level—“Scratched in the crown was the names of lames who yapped the noun / Or verb, for that matter / Had no data for a herb who chat-chatter” is a platinum bar. “Belize” is no funny business, just two legends trading language and bouncing off each other’s craft. —Matt Mitchell


80. duendita: “Open Eyes” (2021)

You want to talk about a hit? Look no further than duendita’s one-off single “Open Eyes,” which the Brooklyn/Berlin singer made for Mexican Summer’s Looking Glass series three years ago. Backed by a jazz ensemble of bassist Endea Owens, pianist Paul Wilson and drummer Austin Williamson, duendita turns every line into a smoke-lit room through her self-reflective spirituality. “Who made the sea? Bright purple leaves, holy is He,” she sings, before turning the camera of vulnerability back around onto herself: “Face my mistakes, never too late, love them away.” Her voice glitches and loops like a sample of itself, swirling around Wilson’s keys and Owens’s bass note, which holds and echoes until it’s manipulated into a breathless, psychedelic finale. —Matt Mitchell


79. A$AP Rocky ft. Jessica Pratt: “HIGHJACK” (2024)

One of the decade’’s best collaborations that no one expected, A$AP Rocky’s first solo single of 2024 included the hypnagogic pipes of Los Angeles singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt, whose recent album Here in the Pitch is one of our highest-rated of the decade. On paper, A$AP and Pratt don’t seem like a natural fit—and you wouldn’t have been wrong to worry that “HIGHJACK” would arrive in the same gimmicky stratosphere as something like “FourFiveSeconds.” But “HIGHJACK” is an incredible song that merges the two musicians’ strengths perfectly. A$AP takes flight through verses about expectations, wealth and what he owes his peers (“Want a feature from me? / This ain’t a life raft,” “I don’t even like rats, invested into mice traps,” “Walk into the store, I bought the flow ‘cause I’m like that”). Meanwhile, in the song’s outro, Pratt arrives to sing the final notes, repeating “And when I’m gone” over and over until the song’s sample swirls into an ending that’s more trance than conclusion. —Matt Mitchell


78. Fleet Foxes: “Can I Believe You” (2020)

As the most commercially successful track from Fleet Foxes’ 2020 album Shore, I feared “Can I Believe You” was going to get as overhyped—on account of its constant radio presence on Sirius XMU. But, as a commenter on the Fleet Foxes subreddit said in regards to the track: “Just because a song has more mainstream appeal doesn’t mean it’s lower quality.” “Can I Believe You” is truly a triumphant, powerful track, as vocalist Robin Pecknold approaches the song with the same unwavering passion that he’s cast over all of his projects since the mid-2000s. “Can I Believe You” is a little more catchy than more traditionalist Fleet Foxes tracks, but in a sophisticated way that calls back to their early identity as a band, when they were making heartfelt and fun pop songs such as “Textbook Love” and even their first release ever— “She Got Dressed.” This time, the material is grand and spacious, from the impassioned and natural lens that a lot of the songs from Shore were pulled from. It’s one of the best indie-folk earworms from this decade so far, which is a true testament to how Fleet Foxes will never fade out like many of their 2010s-era chamber pop colleagues have before them. You just can’t help but sing along to the cheery chorus, celebrating the continued excellence of this legendary band. —Alli Dempsey


77. Pom Pom Squad: “Head Cheerleader” (2021)

Best Songs of the 2020sPom Pom Squad’s visionary album Death of a Cheerleader swings between emo-inflected rock and cinematic dream pop, but the clear centerpiece of the LP is “Head Cheerleader,” a grungy ode to queer love. The record itself is rife with pop culture references (“I absorbed everything I could and tried to make a collage that could incorporate every piece of me,” lead singer Mia Berrin said in a press release), and this song in particular nods at But I’m a Cheerleader, the cult teen comedy about a lesbian high schooler (Natasha Lyonne) shipped off to conversion therapy. Berrin pulls no punches on “Head Cheerleader,” immediately greeting the listener with buzzing, crunchy guitar and invoking the trope of the sapphic vampire: “Press your teeth into my neck and watch me bruise.” The song’s narrator may still be getting used to being out—“Squirming out of my skin / I’m in love with you”—but Berrin’s gutsy singing instills the listener with a brazen confidence. —Clare Martin


76. 100 gecs: “Dumbest Girl Alive”

Best Songs of 202310,000 gecs opens with the THX sound test, then shifts to a thrashing Coheed and Cambria-esque breakdown and then it pivots to Laura Les’ heavily Auto-Tuned vocals and an earth-shattering, bass-heavy trap beat. If that all sounds like a lot, that’s because, well, it is. As the opening track, “dumbest girl alive” sums up 100 gecs in a nutshell, which is an impressive feat given how varied Les’ and Dylan Brady’s stylistic reference points are. All of this is on top of the song’s absurdly amusing lyrics. Despite its roughly two-minute length, “dumbest girl alive” manages to pack in some of the most memorable lines of the year, and there are too many to count. From putting emojis on your grave to doing science on your face, “dumbest girl alive” is an utter thrill. —Grant Sharples


75. This Is Lorelei: “Where’s Your Love Now” (2024)

Has a kiss-off from a jilted ex-lover ever sounded this sweet or this sheepish? Big-band balladry meets curmudgeonly slacker folk on This Is Lorelei’s post-heartbreak dirge, “Where’s Your Love Now.” Nate Amos contends with latent resentment that he’d repressed in the moment, waves of anger that don’t hit until the initial shock has worn off. It’s a track that confronts not only the hurt its subject has caused, but the nonlinear nature of heartbreak itself. “I’m healthier now, and I’m doing just fine,” Amos sings, in his rhapsodic, monotone drawl. “Long after our time is over, but I still wanna cry when I remember your lies.” Over a tinkering instrumental arrangement, Amos lets anger, shame, recovery, and gratitude exist alongside each other, embracing the contradictions that come with moving on without letting everything go. —Grace Robins-Somerville


74. The Chicks: “Gaslighter” (2020)

If they didn’t already have enough of these already, “Gaslighter,” the lead single and title track from The Chicks’ last album, is another anthem for women scorned. 17 years after they were shunned from the country music institution (and popular music at large, at least for a while), this song is almost too good to be true. It’s a revenge track, a breakup song and a souped-up, banjo-featuring country banger all in one. “You’re sorry, but where’s my apology?” they sing. Not only are they chastising a low-down scoundrel for getting himself into this mess, but they’re also calling him (and everyone in the music industry who ostracized them all those years ago) out with guns blazing: “You made your bed and then your bed caught fire.” It’s the same spirit of “Goodbye Earl,” but with a post-#MeToo edge. The song arrives with a punchy music video à la the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt opening credits, full of gussied-up black-and-white footage, edited internet memes and plenty of pink power. —Ellen Johnson


73. Armand Hammer & Benjamin Booker: “Doves” (2024)

On the heels of their powerful last album We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, which we named one of the 50 best albums of 2023, Armand Hammer—billy woods and Elucid—returned earlier this year with “Doves,” an epic, heart-fluttering, nine-minute song featuring New Orleans soul singer and shredder Benjamin Booker. Booker co-produced the track with Kenny Segal, and the instrumental features no percussion, no guitar and hardly any rapping. Instead, Booker gospelizes for a few minutes over a muted piano melody, glitchy background intoning and swarming, atmospheric static. As the crunchy distortion begins to build and Booker’s vocals fade, woods and Elucid come in with verses of their own, addressing the listener like it’s a spoken-word jam. “Doves” is particularly beautiful but equally haunted and touched by grief. On streaming services, it’s been included as the final track on We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, adding even more height to an already skyscraping rap triumph. —Matt Mitchell


72. Momma: “Speeding 72” (2022)

Best Songs of the 2020sRising rock act Momma’s Household Name is a summer album through and through, and standout “Speeding 72” figures to soundtrack plenty of joyrides in the years to come. Vocalists and guitarists Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten co-wrote the track with guitarist Aron Kobayashi Ritch, building the song around its revved-up opening riff. “Speeding 72” overflows with the sounds of youthful escape, the simpler days when blissful freedom was always just a gas pedal stomp and volume knob twist away. But there’s also a subtle wistfulness to it all, as Momma name-check Pavement’s “Gold Soundz’’ and acknowledge, “Speeding 72 / We’re faster getting nowhere,” in the song’s propulsive choruses. “We wanted it to be the sort of summertime anthem that you can turn on during a drive to impress your crush,” the band say of the song in a statement—they hit that mark with ease, delivering the kind of rocker that you’ll yearn for even as you keep it on repeat. —Scott Russell


71. En Attendant Ana: “Wonder” (2023)

“Wonder” goes places. The best song on En Attendant Ana’s third album Principia starts off the second side and immediately proceeds to warp the record’s whole gravity around itself. From dreamy beginnings it kicks into a Neu-like chug that slowly escalates into a post-punk dancefloor ripper with prickly guitar stabs and delay pedal washes, before eventually exploding into a full-on guitar rager for about 30 seconds or so. It sums up this underrated French band’s whole excellent deal in just under six minutes—bass-driven indie-pop that drifts and flows between a myriad of bullet-proof influences while remaining as tight and locked-in as possible, with Margaux Bouchaudon’s wistful voice and impressionistic lyrics turning the whole thing into an epic of yearning. I mean, who doesn’t hope their mama’s right when she calls them a good human being? —Garrett Martin


70. MICHELLE: “POSE” (2022)

Any of the first four songs on MICHELLE’s 2022 LP AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS could have slotted in here, but “POSE” is a club-ready pop tune that excels in restraint. It never revels in the type of bombast that swarms the Top 40; instead, the song is a bass-heavy soul delight carried by the four-part harmony of Sofia D’Angelo, Layla Ku, Emma-Lee and Jamee Lockard. Very few R&B songs of the last four, five years have sprung into color quite like “POSE,” a too-big-for-the-bedroom tempest of unbeatable funk. The “I’m on my knees, don’t you dare come and dance with me” chorus is one of this decade’s yummiest earworms. —Matt Mitchell


69. Nourished By Time: “Daddy” (2023)

Best Songs of 2023There is a moment almost smackdab in the middle of “Daddy” by Nourished By Time, the musical project of Baltimore native Marcus Brown, where the song cracks itself wide open, splitting right down the center. What was, to that point, a synth-drenched Euro-House banger modulates keys and becomes something more complicated—keys are doubled by a twin guitar line and add a textural layer that makes you want to immediately start the song over just to catch every minute detail. Through a tale of unrequited love twisted into a financial transaction (the pain of not being able to compete with a love interest’s sugar daddy, to be exact), Brown injects melancholy into even the most stirring of summertime singalongs. It toes that elusive line beautifully, blowing up the despondency of a lyric like “I say ‘I love you’ / You say ‘Whatever’” into a joyous, stadium-sized hook. —Elise Soutar


68. Wilco: “Tired of Taking It Out on You” (2022)

Best Songs of the 2020sJeff Tweedy has had a busy decade, as he began it with his own solo album Love Is the King and then, in just three years, made three major Wilco projects (Cruel Country, Cousin, Hot Sun Cruel Shroud). “Tired of Taking It Out on You” isn’t just Wilco’s best song of the 2020s, it’s one of the greatest tracks ever. The emotional centerpiece of Cruel Country, few things in this current state of music have ever sounded as pretty as Nels Cline’s lap steel does on this song. Instrumental fragments like that, they yank something from deep down in my soul. Wilco have made it a habit of continuing the stories in their songs through instrumentation, be it by constructing a lick or a piano sequence as if they’re characters in the songs. “I can’t take the way I am with you, or recreate things we used to do,” Tweedy sings, giving way to Cline’s crying six-string lullaby. In our conversation together last year, Tweedy called that moment “a wordless feeling that continues the thought or the emotion,” though he didn’t quite know how to explain to anybody what that really is. When I am speaking to others about “Tired of Taking It Out on You,” I find myself equally mystified. —Matt Mitchell


67. Vampire Weekend: “Classical” (2024)

When I first heard the second track from Vampire Weekend’s masterful new album Only God Was Above Us back in March, I was pleasantly shocked at how, well, Vampire Weekend-y it sounded. In a way that avoids being too indulged in nostalgia for that twee-tuned, Columbia campus stroll scene that their self-titled debut managed to paint back in 2008, “Classical” is a refined reimagining of the best parts of their career. There’s a catchy, refreshing guitar lick carried by a slow and hazy amen break that sounds reminiscent to several areas of their discography. The blend of sounds is so seamless that it’s impossible to pinpoint an exact era it speaks to. It can exist in the same space as the larger-than-life jaunts of Modern Vampires of the City or the earthy, almost-hymnal tunes of Father of the Bride. It’s timeless and malleable, while also sprinkling in exciting new moments like a jolty piano melody or an energetic sax solo. It seems like the band themselves are aware of what this type of career pivot can mean: “It’s clear that something’s gonna change,” Ezra Koenig reflects matter-of-factly. It’s through “Classical” that Vampire Weekend realizes how many different spaces they continue to occupy throughout their life as a band, and that none of them need to be messed with by trying too hard to go back to what once was—in a method that’s “untrue, unkind and unnatural.” While “Ice Cream Piano” starts off Only God Was Above Us, “Classical” is where the real fun begins, as Vampire Weekend begins to welcome themselves back while welcoming in a modernistic, uncompromising version of what everyone loves about them. —Alli Dempsey


66. SAULT: “Fearless” (2020)

Best Songs of the 2020sPart of SAULT’s brilliance is their effortlessness, and part of it is their ability to construct songs that are at once spacious and ornate. On their pair of Untitled albums, tumbling rhythms, dazzling keyboards and defiant vocals combine and radiate mastery at every turn. Track two on Untitled (Rise), “Fearless” is an embodiment of that mastery, opening with vigorous drums and enveloping neo-soul before blooming into a dramatic, string-laden disco-fusion track. The song’s message itself is just as towering, as it captures the vast fears and hopes that come with the Black experience, along with the longing for one’s roots. The ability to digest all the horrific oppression against one’s people and still have a desire to wear a mask of fearlessness is inspiring and powerful, but also somewhat tragic that some feel any outward sign of dejection is just giving the oppressors a leg up. —Lizzie Manno


65. Lil Uzi Vert: “POP” (2020)

There was something so symphonic about being at college in the age of Eternal Atake, the Lil Uzi Vert album that came out during the same week as emails were swirling around posing the imminent threat of a pandemic putting a stop to the unadulterated fun. “Futsal Shuffle” smells like Four Lokos smuggled into dorm rooms while practicing the namesake dance for TikTok, and “Homecoming” is your hometown friend calling you up to tell you it’s the best song ever. But the chaotic and floor-shaking discordance of “POP” stings the most, as it aches of the stale, smoldering air of a party at a busted off-campus shack dubbed “The GOAT House,” or something in that vein. An overlooked snapshot of what was a fleeting and buried blip in the music world—Eternal Atake was robbed of what could have been a more momentous era for Uzi. “POP” was the track that suffered the most—a moshy, tangled mess of laser beams and 808s. Uzi breathlessly puts it all on the line, as they chug out hassled bar after bar. The feverish chant of the phrase “Balenci” over and over was the omen of the end days, in retrospect. “POP” will forever be a surging rush, a party that wreaked havoc in the night and laid dormant by the first rays of daytime. Young kids on social media still reflect on the madness of Uzi dropping during homeroom a week before COVID, so, in a way, this might become the rapper’s lost tape—the rager that never happened but lives on inside the hearts of wannabe campus soundcloud rappers everywhere. —Alli Dempsey


64. Ethel Cain: “American Teenager” (2022)

Ethel Cain brings anthemic heartland rock in the grand tradition of Bruce Springsteen into the 21st century with her sonically euphoric yet undeniably bleak hit “American Teenager.” Washy, sunny guitar radiates hope in an increasingly hopeless world, as Cain recounts: “The neighbor’s brother came home in a box / But he wanted to go, so maybe it was his fault / Another red heart taken by the American dream.” The track, taken from Cain’s debut studio album Preacher’s Daughter, showcases her keen pop sensibilities as she pays tribute to her Southern Baptist Florida upbringing. “And Jesus, if You’re there / Why do I feel alone in this room with You?” she laments, a line that resonates with every disillusioned kid brought up in a religious household. Cain’s voice is ethereal and dreamy even as she references NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt (“I do it for my daddy and I do it for Dale”). Few artists capture the singular desolation and beauty of growing up in a rotten, crumbling superpower like Cain.—Clare Martin


63. Christine and the Queens: “People, I’ve been sad” (2020)

Christine and the Queens’ Chris saw Héloïse Letissier grow into one of the best and brightest pop stars. Its crisp, funk-laced pop was more than just highly danceable—its sensuality and subversion of gender roles were also incredibly inspiring. Still on a high, the French artist returned in 2020 with a new EP, La vita nuova, and shared its lead single “People, I’ve been sad,” possibly his best track to date. After dishing out lines about social isolation, he reassures us, “You know the feeling,” and when paired with a stylish, downtempo groove, he somehow makes an introspective, dejected moment feel glorious. Like many of his songs, he wrings out so much pleasure from his dramatic, playful delivery, and this one is no different—his bilingual vocals are alluring and graceful. —Lizzie Manno


62. black midi: “John L” (2021)

Best Songs of the 2020sblack midi’s Geordie Greep said of the band’s new record, “The emphasis when we were making and sequencing Cavalcade was to make music that was as dramatic and as exciting as possible.” That approach quickly becomes obvious on the album itself: Opener “John L” is a whirling dervish of a track, even by black midi’s standards. Greep’s ever-unexpected vocals sound strange in an entirely new way as he unspools the tale of a cult leader whose flock turns against him (“No hack with an army / Will last long before he / Breeds men who yearn / For their own bloody glory,” he warns), while the additions of Joscelin Dent-Pooley on violin and Kaidi Akinnibi on sax lend a particularly anxiety-inducing new element to the band’s sound. Simpson’s thundering drums marshal “this infernal din,” which stops and starts on a dime, further intensifying its chaotic energy. —Scott Russell


61. Chappell Roan: “Pink Pony Club” (2020)

Few songs capture the euphoric joy of being part of the queer community like cabaret-meets-synth-pop sleeper hit “Pink Pony Club.” The song is something of a dark horse; Atlantic Records dropped Roan just four months after the single came out in 2020, but in 2024 “Pink Pony Club” charted on the US Billboard Hot 100 and was crowned the queer anthem it was always destined to be. The lyrics tell a classic story, that of the small town kid who finally gets to embrace their identity in the big city, delivered in the form of an impeccably crafted pop song. The piano builds, swelling with anticipation, before the chorus breaks out and Roan’s voice climbs into the stratosphere, floating on neon synth. It’s hard not to get emotional thinking about young queer kids stuck in the sticks hearing this song and holding onto the hope of one day making their way to the “Pink Pony Club.”—Clare Martin


60. Foxing: “Go Down Together” (2021)

A sharp left turn from Foxing’s typical sprawling howlers, “Go Down Together” is the upbeat 2010s festival rock-styled take on Bonnie and Clyde that none of us knew we needed. That does not mean, however, that Foxing abandon their old haunts entirely: While the track is a love song, the love at its center isn’t quite an uncomplicated one. With the speaker chased by their own debt and their partner thinking they’re going to die in their sleep every night, the refrain of “If you should fall, I’ll follow behind / We’ll go down there together / Side by side” sounds like a warning as much as an assurance, oddly ominous above the gauzy cheer of the track’s sound. Vocalist Conor Murphy’s distinctive angst is softened and pitched up to float amidst a sea of breezy synths and smooth beats, and while one wouldn’t typically think of the St. Louis band as “funky” or “peppy,” this track sees them take a decisive step beyond their historical oeuvre into the broader mainstream of indie pop. —Casey Epstein-Gross


59. Hannah Frances: “Keeper of the Shepherd” (2024)

Hannah Frances’s fifth album just gets better and better with every single listen. The Chicagoan’s songwriting sticks to you like glue, and the Keeper of the Shepherd title track sounds like a rebirth, which makes sense, given that it (and the record) arrived in the wake of a three-years-long prolific period of songs written after the sudden loss of Frances’s father. The question lingering beneath the surface of Keeper of the Shepherd: Where do we go once we’ve said goodbye to our grief? In Frances’s words: “I cannot love you without me, I cannot live without me, I cannot be kept without me, I cannot be without me.” The days of her summery folk plucking have fallen by the wayside, as her work on “Keeper of the Shepherd” embraces a more off-kilter country sound tightened up by Western arpeggios and jangly, metallic set dressings of vignette instrumentation summoned to soundtrack musings on ecological imagery and mythological archetypes. All of these elements come together to define Frances’s own metamorphosis—her shedding of misery in the name of finding transcendence that is both personal and cosmic. “I keep close to my spirit, I keep learning to hear it,” she beckons. “Without him, without you, within me, without it, with no one”; “Keeper of the Shepherd” sketches healing into the shapes of empty hands, hollow homes and vacant intimacies. —Matt Mitchell


58. Yves Tumor: “Gospel for a New Century” (2020)

Best Songs of the 2020sListening to Heaven to a Tortured Mind will make you question your own memories of Yves Tumor, because they’ve never sounded more immediate, more relatable or more desirously messy. Their trademark filth and trickster persona are still present, though they’ve graduated from demon to the devil himself. Album opener “Gospel for a New Century” is their most straightforward song to date, a playful horn-based rock song that channels the individual iconoclasms of Prince and Marilyn Manson. The Isamaya Ffrench-directed video offers the perfect visual for the familiar archetype Tumor plays throughout the album—a cloven-hoofed devil with diabolical cheekbones, not unlike Tim Curry’s Lord of Darkness from Legend, with a legion of Soul Train-ready devils marching behind them. —Austin Jones


57. crushed: “waterlily” (2023)

Best Songs of 2023Los Angeles duo crushed’s first project came to us last year by way of a lovely six-track EP released in February. “waterlily” was the record’s lead single, and first thing officially released under the crushed name altogether. Inspirations for their work span from Cocteau Twins to Stardew Valley to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn.” The duo’s particular breed of revivalism never sounds tired; in fact, the lush, ‘90s trip-hop and dream-pop sounds they play upon sound more alive than ever on “waterlily.” Shaun Durkan’s guitars whirl you away to another world, full of angels with voices almost as beautiful as Bre Morell’s—as she sings: “Promise to always protect you / if you come back here into my arms. / Can I get back to you without falling in?” But don’t worry, their sonic safety net more than holds you above the water. —Madelyn Dawson


56. Wild Pink: “ILYSM” (2022)

On 2022’s ILYSM, John Ross expands his heartfelt heartland rock to new dimensions. Wild Pink’s double album boasts some of the New York musician’s most ambitious songwriting to date, and its six-minute title track displays that ambition properly. There are shoegaze guitars as large as mountains and distinct, dynamic movements that toy with the notion of an indie-rock symphony. It’s a song that never loses its powerful, stirring effects even after you’ve heard it for the thousandth time. —Grant Sharples


55. Dean Johnson: “True Love” (2023)

Best Songs of the 2020sDean Johnson came into my orbit in 2022, when his Western AF performance of “True Love” tumbled into my YouTube feed. To see it nestled into the tracklist of his debut LP Nothing For Me, Please a year later conjured up something special within me. With a gritty guise like Sam Elliott and a heavenly voice like Vince Gill, Johnson’s approach to performance is singular. “True Love” is a timeless ode to joyous love now lost. “If true love has no possessions / It has an open hand / I tried to hold you in my fist / Ever since the first time that we kissed,” Johnson sings in the sweetest tenor vocal imaginable atop a busking guitar arpeggio. I’ll be returning to the enchantments of this song for many days to come, as it’s such a rich document of beautiful and long-gone moments in one bard’s time on Earth so far. And Johnson, ever the storyteller, perfectly blurs the line of what parts apply to himself and what parts don’t. “I’m wishing you years of rain,” he sings, and you don’t know which direction the camera is facing. —Matt Mitchell


54. Dehd: “Bad Love” (2022)

The first glimpse listeners got of Blue Skies, “Bad Love” is a baptism. The rapturous comeback track kicks off Dehd’s new era with Emily Kempf fleeing the false love she fell for in the past. Following Flower of Devotion, on which Kempf and Jason Balla were still navigating their new, post-breakup friendship with each other, the album still ruminated on the past (see “Letter,” in which Kempf sings “I was there first / Yeah, you’re just following me / Good luck with that, girl / I’m a tough act to beat”), whereas “Bad Love” rejoices in having a clean slate. Instead of rehashing old relationships, Kempf finds inspiration elsewhere as she breathlessly pursues someone new: “Forgive me, give it to me / Tell me what to do, tell me what to do to keep it / I need your lovin’ / I wanna be your honey.” Leaning into the revitalizing strength and purifying power of a new love, the song feels like a long-awaited shot at redemption after the complex territory that Dehd’s past discography covered. —Samantha Sullivan


53. Angel Olsen: “All the Good Times” (2022)

On Big Time, the grand, burgeoning, symphonic gestures of Olsen’s last three studio LPs are gone, substituted with Phases-era, minimalistic, pedal steel-tinged sobcore and dreamy twang. It’s a one-woman show, a prize fight where the challenger no-showed. Big Time isn’t a bummer opera; it’s a last-call, honky-tonk bar encore—and it rules. On opener “All The Good Times,” Olsen vividly channels Tammy Wynette’s swagger and surrenders the album’s thesis, declaring that she’s done making excuses for everyone else. “I can’t say that I’m sorry when I don’t feel so wrong anymore,” she sings. The horn arrangements here are subtle, and Drew Erickson’s organ trembles slightly beneath Olsen’s vocals. It’s an announcement, a warning, that this is a new era of her songwriting. —Matt Mitchell


52. Bob Dylan: “Murder Most Foul” (2020)

Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways was sold as two discs: nine songs on one CD and one song on the other. “Murder Most Foul,” his single-disc song, is nearly 17 minutes long—and Dylan needed every one of those minutes to deliver all 1,406 words over the blues trance of a rumbling piano and a sawing viola. In “Murder Most Foul,” the descriptions of John F. Kennedy’s death are tied to the Beatles and Beach Boys, John Lee Hooker and Thelonious Monk, as if the songs were not only a reaction to the murder but also an antidote, as if the rich variety of American life—both heart-sinking and soul-lifting—is reflected in its songs as much as in its headlines. Dylan evokes the broad sweep of American music, using the death of a popular figure to mark an end of innocence, and also using American music as a thermometer to take the temperature of American culture as a whole. —Geoffrey Himes


51. JID ft. Yasiin Bey: “Stars” (2022)

Best Songs of the 2020sAny song from JID’s 2022 album The Forever Story could go here, but “Stars” remains a cornerstone—as it unravels the threads that connect celebrity and masculinity, particularly in the hip-hop industry. JID’s second verse (“On the meds and nobody wanna say, because they scared to lose a gig / Yeah, you wanne be JID, kid / I used to wanna be Jay, I used to wanna be Wayne”) is, perhaps, his all-time best, while Yasiin Bey’s flow is, literally, a change of pace, as the instrumental switches direction and the beat gets thicker. “A manicured appearance concealin’ the shattered spirit, Jinn sneerin’ out the paradox prism,” Bey raps. “The palace as the prison, retail religion, red carpet contriction, the freedom is the fiction.” “Stars” is a perfect convergence of gritty, old-school hip-hop and the modern-day, conscious state of rap that is so deftly being elevated and explored. —Matt Mitchell


50. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: “Hypertension” (2022)

Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Joey Walker, Cook Craig, Lucas Harwood and Michael Cavanagh have made 11 albums in the 2020s already, a pace of production somehow more chaotically consistent than that of Guided By Voices. On their 22nd record overall, 2022’s Laminated Denim, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard reach a high-note we’d rarely seen from them on their previous 21 efforts. Just two 15-minute songs in length, Lamenated Denim features “Hypertension,” a fiery, psychedelic, proggy jam that takes notes of jazz and spins them into motorik, bluesy guitar melodies that sound like a stew of every great rock style from 1967 through 1977. The six-strings crunch like a bat-out-of-hell cosmonaut plummeting to Earth, while the basslines throb like a gaping wound and Kenny-Smith’s vocals glide in on a wind of polyrhythmic bliss. When Kenny-Smith isn’t singing, “Hypertension” aims to split you in two. The lyrics are nonsense (“Golden hour turns to pink vein wine light / Satan’s son / Fowl one / Demon of time / Bat wing membrane eclipsed the sun for fun”) and that’s the point, as King Gizzard lament an interdimensional transformation that “rotate[s] anti-clockwise and see[s] through backward-facing eyes.” A line like that, it’s the only proper way of describing “Hypertension.” I wouldn’t want it any other way. —Matt Mitchell


49. Waxahatchee: “Lilacs” (2020)

Indie folk-rocker Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee, possesses one of the most distinctive voices in music right now. Not only is it breathtakingly beautiful—especially in her wistful delivery of “I need your love, too” at the end of the chorus on “Lilacs”—but there’s a salty grit to Crutchfield’s vocals that alludes to hard-earned life lessons. One of those is her sobriety journey, which is a central theme of her luminous 2020 album Saint Cloud. While “Lilacs” may not be explicitly about giving up alcohol, the lyrics acknowledge the importance of learning from the natural world, whether that’s through observing the quiet life cycle of flowers or listening to our own bodies. Crutchfield’s words are simple and poetic, and the repeated final line—“And the lilacs drank the water”—carries its own quiet wisdom. —Clare Martin


48. McKinley Dixon: “Run, Run, Run” (2023)

Best Songs of the 2020sThe lead single from McKinley Dixon’s Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, a song like “Run, Run, Run” is catchy and memorable for its tangible, enchanting, upbeat arrangement. But it’s also a devastatingly sad song about Black children living in fear of gun violence. “Running from the gun / Breaks my heart / If you decide to fly away now,” he raps. Generational and childhood trauma and grief are themes that Dixon returns to often in his work, as they are fixtures of living as a Black person in America. It’s something he’s determined to keep examining for as many records as it’ll take him to find a concrete answer as to why it exists and plagues him and his community—if there’s even such a corporeal explanation to begin with. “Run, Run, Run” is honest, painful; Dixon is a wordsmith whose pen is unyielding. —Matt Mitchell


47. Black Country, New Road: “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” (2022)

If For the first time found Black Country, New Road muscling their way up a steep incline, Ants From Up There is the band enjoying the wind in their hair as they take in the view from their new vantage point. Few tracks on their second effort make that contrast clearer than “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade,” one of the few Black Country, New Road songs that can only be described as possessing a tender beauty. Drawing inspiration from late-period Bob Dylan (“I started writing this in response to, or heavily inspired by, [2020’s] “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,’” said Wood in press materials), the song grows from a bed of delicate piano, flute and guitar, building not to a thunderous stampede, but rather to a lovely singalong straight from the early Arcade Fire playbook. Lyrically, “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” may be the sweetest song Wood has ever written: He sings about a love that offers respite from anxiety, expressing a hope that his invisible wounds will heal and declaring, “Darling, the rest of my body, it’s yours, then.” The usual dark and referential undercurrents remain—Wood’s narrator fears co-dependency (“Show me where to tie the other end of this chain”), and name-checks Kanye “Ye” West’s “Bound 2” to underscore the point. But there is a serenity to “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” that stands alone in Black Country, New Road’s discography. —Scott Russell


46. Jessica Pratt: “Life Is” (2024)

On Here in the Pitch, Jessica Pratt’s first proper release in five years, we are welcomed into the colorful lullaby of her California coastal folk-pop: “Life Is” kicks off with a percussion pattern reminiscent of the water jug Hal Blaine plays at the beginning of the Beach Boys’ “Caroline, No.” Quickly after, Pratt’s hypnotic, smoky, childlike vocal chimes in in tandem with her familiar and aching, pillowy nylon strings. “Life is, it’s never what you think it’s for,” she sings. “And I can’t seem to set it off, and lately I’ve been insecure. The chances of a lifetime might be hiding their tricks up my sleeve.” Here in the Pitch isn’t frozen in time or steeped in misunderstood modernity. Calling it retro wouldn’t be a disservice to the material, but I’m not so sure you could really call it a retro-sounding album. It’s suggestive of the place it was inspired by, a Los Angeles that, no matter what year it is, still brandishes a type of sentimentality that makes for a particularly genius muse. And that’s what makes a track like “Life Is” such an anodyne opener: It’s orchestral, dense (but in a paradoxical, featherlight way) and well-lit with hues of CinemaScope mysticism needed to evoke the widescreen, berceuse, Old Hollywood soundsystem Here in the Pitch so graciously sets aglow. —Matt Mitchell


45. Grace Ives: “Lullaby” (2022)

Synth-pop virtuoso Grace Ives’s sophomore album Janky Star clocks in at just under a half hour, but this brevity just showcases Ives’s restraint. Sure, the tracks are intricately textured, with layers of breathy vocals, reverb-washed guitars, drum machine and celestial synth enveloping the listener, but her songwriting also sticks to the old adage that less is more. Take the record’s final track “Lullaby,” which may just be a perfect pop song. “Lullaby” doesn’t try to be more than what it is: a sweet, winsome “homebody’s anthem,” as she puts it. Ives’ voice is light and lithe here as she dreamily admits: “No, it’s nothing to be sad about (It’s just something I’ve been thinking about).” —Clare Martin


44. Esther Rose ft. Hurray for the Riff Raff: “Safe to Run” (2023)

Title tracks are that for a reason, and few this decade have ever been better than Esther Rose’s “Safe to Run,” a titanic, stirring ballad that calls upon the harmonies of one of Rose’s fellow New Orleanians, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra. I’ll wager that “Safe to Run” is not just Rose’s best song to-date, but country music’s bittersweet apex this decade. Juggling the private and the public parts of her life, Rose reckons with the contradictions of expectations and success. “Man, to be alive seems we just consume,” she sings, “everything in sight becoming fuel.” She’s been in this business a while, as has Segarra, and, on “Safe to Run,” her wandering has led to a conscious zoom-out of all that withers around and within her. “Let the angels find me, I don’t care if the whiskey drowns me,” she sings, as Segarra’s vocal simmers below. “In the poisoned air, you know there’s no place safe to run.” —Matt Mitchell


43. Dean Blunt: “the rot” (2021)

Dean Blunt’s work has been deeply important to me for my understanding of not only music, but of life in general—as his work has been there with me during pivotal moments, where I began understanding myself more and more. But you never get to fully do so, and part of the reason why Blunt’s work is full of unknowns is that he only understands himself so much. Despite the song’s name, there’s a peace and serenity to “the rot” that Blunt’s work often (and largely) misses. While it’s far from the last song he’s released, in a way it closes the book on who introduced us to on The Narcissist II. After going through plenty of heartaches and crises, “the rot” finds Blunt walking into the light, truly relaxed for the first time—as Joanne Robertson beautifully plays off his serenity. If this had been the last music we heard from Blunt, I would have been pretty satisfied with such an ending. But, he has proven to be a restless creative and, in an era where some of our greatest artists take longer and longer to release their work, you can’t really complain when one of them is as generous and prolific as Dean. —Matty Monroe


42. Big Thief: “Little Things” (2022)

Produced by Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia, “Little Things” isn’t quite like anything we’d heard from the band to date: Bright acoustic-electric strumming and eager bass noodling (plus Buck Meek’s grasping electric guitar riffs) shuffle atop a difficult rhythm to get a handle on, yet Adrianne Lenker’s distinctive vocals ride the lightning as only she can, as she sings to a lover about “the little things I like about you,” admitting, “Maybe I’m a little obsessed / Maybe you do use me.” In the song’s latter half, she yelps as if the instrumental’s livewire energy has literally electrocuted her, and the band jams onward as she murmurs indistinctly, the song stretching breathlessly towards the six-minute mark. —Scott Russell


41. Fiona Apple: “Ladies” (2020)

“This album is a lot of not letting men pit us against each other or keep us separate from each other so they can control the message,” Fiona Apple told Vulture following the release of her long-awaited fifth album Fetch the Bolt Cutters. This mission statement is its most vitriolic on album track “Newspaper,” but the following song, “Ladies,” sees Apple turn her sights to the “other woman” in her last relationship, doing so with both a tenderness and a determination that reads as unmistakably her. There’s a sense of control as she sing-talks through the winding, wobbly verses, even when she’s breathless—passing off hand-me-downs and expressing solemn defeat as the chasm opens up between her and her successor. It lets full-throated pathos blossom as she takes deeper breaths, sings with more insistence later on: “Nobody can replace anybody else / So, it would be a shame to make it a competition.” If most of Bolt Cutters is the sound of Apple running up that hill to snap the constraints from her wrists, “Ladies” is a plea for a love that might matter more than any score she has to settle—wounding even as it consoles. —Elise Soutar


40. The 1975: “Happiness” (2022)

The ultimate Jack Antonoff-produced banger from Being Funny In a Foreign Language, “Happiness” is a delight of pure-1980s synth-funk nostalgia—but done up with the band’s futuristic top-coat. Lyrically, it’s Healy at his happiest, as he celebrates how a lover has shown him how to have a good, healthy romance. He’s self-aware, fearful that he might mess up the momentum, all while finally growing up and giving his heart to someone else (or feeling like he might never be able to again, depending on your own reading). “I’d go too far just to have you near,” Healy sings. “In my soul, I’ve got this feeling I didn’t know until I seen ya.” For all of the great work The 1975 do when they sing about unrequited love and self-destruction, a track like “Happiness” is a sign of growth that only the best bands are willing to embrace fully. Just as Being Funny In a Foreign Language sports some of the most mature 1975 cuts, “Happiness” is an upbeat, undeniable pastoral of a man in search of a forever—which can be a daunting and exhausting task, until you find that one person who can show you true love. —Matt Mitchell


39. Black Belt Eagle Scout: “Don’t Give Up” (2023)

“Slow, important love, it keeps me alive,” sings Katherine Paul at the top of “Don’t Give Up,” her tone warm and hushed, maintaining her characteristic register of an intimate half-whisper. “You wanted a second chance at life. Well, you’re alive.” At the time of the song’s release, “Don’t Give Up” was the first track the singer-songwriter had released under her indie-rock project Black Belt Eagle Scout in over three years, yet the song flows so easily and feels so comfortingly familiar that you might have imagined no time had passed at all. With a Yowler-esque, reverberating timbre, the song feels at once distant and tender, like walking alone in the woods and remembering how big the world around you truly is. Paul wrote “Don’t Give Up” as a treatise on mental health, but its titular refrain is not an insistent pep talk so much as it is a mantra reminding oneself of the growth already undertaken. It resonates far beyond the individual, likely in part because Paul always intended it to have a communal embrace as well—a hand reached out to guide you alongside her as you walk through the forest together. “You hear your heart beating, you walk under the trees,” Paul sings. “Engulfed by beauty, I just hold you here with me.” The song’s content mirrors the experience of listening to it: you feel held, not only by Paul, but by the natural world at large. The beauty engulfs. —Casey Epstein-Gross


38. Japanese Breakfast: “Be Sweet” (2021)

Jubilee is an album that lives up to its name: It sounds like a celebration. Michelle Zauner’s third album under the Japanese Breakfast moniker is her brightest, most joyous record. “Be Sweet,” written alongside Wild Nothing frontman Jack Tatum, is Jubilee’s cogent, sticky-sweet thesis statement. With its elastic bassline, plucky ‘80s guitars and shimmering synths, Zauner radiates hope for a renewed romantic spark. —Grant Sharples


37. DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ: “All I Can Feel” (2022)

Natalie Portman’s commencement speech. Gwyneth Paltrow romcoms. Camera Obscura album cuts. No artifact is safe from DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ’s plunderphonic collages, which the producer sews into hours-long compilations that prove as fun as they are heartfelt. “All I Can Feel” builds around a Wilson Phillips favorite, “This Doesn’t Have to Be Love,” and into a sugar-sweet dance track. With so many voices running at once, it feels like being at a pivotal moment at the cocktail party, where the synergy between different conversation cells is at its peak and everyone feels comfortable enough to let loose. Many DJ Sabrina compositions come to satisfying flow states, but the one on “All I Can Feel” is especially bright, lending itself to unbridled happiness. —Devon Chodzin


36. Fontaines D.C.: “Favourite” (2024)

Let’s talk about a song that, from the first note, is perfect. “Favourite,” the second single from Fontaines D.C.’s Romance, is a chest-bursting, terminally sweet earworm that finds the post-punk Dubliners experimenting with a far poppier hue that usual. If preceding single “Starburster” was frenetic and energized through an anxiety personified, “Favourite” is the lullaby meant to cushion its fall. “Stitch and fall, the faces rearranged,” bandleader Grian Chatten sings. “You will see beauty give the way to something strange.” “Favourite” is one of Fontaines D.C.’s best songs ever, a “continuous cycle from euphoria to sadness, two worlds spinning together.” There’s well-worn poetry and romance in the candy-coated, rocking and rollicking arrangement; a sense of longing that swirls around the endearments. —Matt Mitchell


35. SZA: “Kill Bill” (2022)

“I might kill my ex, not the best idea,” goes the indelible chorus of “Kill Bill.” It’s the kind of simple yet ingenious line destined for wide TikTok dissemination, cementing its status as an enduring yet unsettling mantra. SZA remains one of the great modern writers of love gone awry. Her sense of disquieting desperation and lonesome loathing come through clearest on late-2022 highlight SOS, her masterful sophomore album featuring “Kill Bill.” Like the Quentin Tarantino film of the same name, “Kill Bill” is a classic tale of betrayal, jealousy and revenge, but SZA’s virtuosic vocals and stylistic flair breathe new life into well-worn archetypes. —Grant Sharples


34. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: “Dreamsicle” (2020)

Across two albums of brand new material, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit have been on a tear this decade, releasing some of their strongest material to date—including “Be Afraid,” “King of Oklahoma,” “Middle of the Morning” and “Only Children.” But it’s the second track on the band’s 2020 LP Reunions that stands out four years later. “Dreamsicle” is Isbell’s “story about a child who’s in the middle of a home that’s breaking apart,” as he reckons with disintegration through splendid nostalgia. “I’m still packing up my room, gotta get home soon,” Isbell laments. “New sneakers on the high school court and you swore you’d be there, a heart breaking through the springtime, breaking through June.” Sung through cut-and-dry folk troubadour incantations and pastel-colored piano runs, “Dreamsicle” is as sweet as its title but bittered by its own lingering sense of familial despair—and no one can capture that sort of juxtaposition quite like Isbell. —Matt Mitchell


33. Alvvays: “Easy On Your Own?” (2022)

The long-awaited return of Alvvays was the summer of 2022’s most pleasant surprise. “Easy On Your Own?” is a brisk blast of the band’s signature dream-pop sound, with complex textures not previously found in their discography. Molly Rankin’s vocals sit lower in the mix than usual, entering alongside synth buzz and forceful low end before buzzing glide guitar envelops her voice a la my bloody valentine. When her singing does burst through in the choruses, it hits like a ray of sunshine through the clouds, even though her lyrics (where discernible) describe a long-term relationship so damaged, it might not be worth saving. The song shudders to a stop in under three minutes, another concise stunner seemingly designed to reward repeat listens. —Scott Russell


32. Caroline Polachek: “Blood and Butter” (2023)

One of 2023’s most exciting pop releases came in February, with experimental pop and electronic artist Caroline Polachek’s Valentine’s Day offering of Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. The album had been a long time coming, with lead single “Bunny Is A Rider” released back in 2021. “Blood and Butter,” however, was the last single to be put out before the album, and I think it’s safe to say it’s the best thing she’s done, perhaps ever. Sweet and syncopated, the song plays to every one of Polachek’s artistic strengths. The verses have an exacting sonic consonance, with lyrics like “Layin’ at the foot of a linden / In the navel ring, inventing June,” punctuated by a tight, meticulous beat punching out. On the choruses, her elysian voice is able to sail through celestial notes and scales. She keeps us on our toes with a bagpipe solo, done by the brilliant Brighde Chaimbeu. This, as she calls it, is a “pastoral, psychedelic folk song” textured and meticulous, grooving in all the ways a perfect pop song should. —Madelyn Dawson


31. Billie Eilish: “What Was I Made For?” (2023)

Between the Barbie movie’s release in July 2023 and Billie Eilish’s Best Original Song win at the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024, “What Was I Made For?” was inescapable. Conceived by Eilish, her brother Finneas, Andrew Wyatt and Mark Ronson for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film, the track became the first recording since Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” to win an Oscar for Best Original Song and a Grammy for Song of the Year. As overplayed as it was just one year ago, I will stand on my business about “What Was I Made For?”: It’s a song that, while written for a movie, lingers thoroughly outside the confines of its source materials. It’s a track that pulled Eilish and Finneas out of a long bout with writer’s block and galvanized what would become her third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, and it’s a ballad perfected by its own oneness. It’s free of climax, instead lingering in its own never-ending heartbreak. Whether it’s a narration of a doll’s final act or an act of Eilish’s own self-examination, “What Was I Made For?” was, and is, so affecting because the melody leaves no room for anything but emotion. “I don’t know how to feel,” Eilish admits, puncturing through the melancholy without resolve. Few pop stars can get to that place so effortlessly. —Matt Mitchell


30. Hum: “Folding” (2020)

Maybe you’ve heard, but shoegaze is kinda a big thing again. Classic groups like Drop Nineteens have reunited, and new names like Knifeplay and Hotline TNT have been popping up left and right. But just before it dominated the indie zeitgeist around 2022, shoegaze legends Hum made their grand return with Inlet in the summer of 2020. The penultimate track, “Folding,” is a glacial eight-minute epic that traverses fuzzed-out noise, ringing post-rock guitars and a drone outro that’s something of a comedown. At the heart of it all is Bryan St. Pere, Hum’s longtime drummer who died aged 52 just a year after Inlet’s release. Each pummeling thwack of the snare rises above the onslaught of distortion, ensuring that St. Pere’s steady pulse will always be heard. —Grant Sharples


29. Soccer Mommy: “circle the drain” (2020)

No song from color theory crystallizes Sophie Allison’s approach to her exceptional second album as Soccer Mommy quite as well as “circle the drain.” On its face, the track makes two opposing truths plain, juxtaposing irresistibly upbeat jangle-pop instrumentation with quietly devastating lyrics. Allison sings about “a feeling that boils in my brain,” admitting she’s tired of putting on a brave face to mask the slow but steady internal collapse she feels powerless to prevent. The disconnect between the song’s bright-eyed sound and bleak lyrics is key to the album’s overall aesthetic, as Allison explained: “I wanted the experience of listening to color theory to feel like finding a dusty old cassette tape that has become messed up over time, because that’s what this album is: an expression of all the things that have slowly degraded me personally. The production warps, the guitar solos occasionally glitch, the melodies can be poppy and deceptively cheerful. To me, it sounds like the music of my childhood distressed and, in some instances, decaying.” The song is both a Pyrrhic victory and par for the 2020 course—to some extent, we’re all “falling apart these days,” and if we’re lucky, we’re doing it this beautifully. —Scott Russell


28. Soul Glo: “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” (2022)

Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems begins—as every great album should—with the sounds of a bong hit mimicking the wind-up drumbeat of the 20th Century Fox theme song. From there on, the album is a long exhale of thick smoke that can leave you dizzy and delirious when inhaled secondhand. The first song “Gold Chain Punk (whogonnabeatmyass?)” gives you a taste of the undeniable force of what’s to come. Singer Pierce Jordan shrieks and screams his vocals at the velocity of tumbling stones as the band—(now-former) guitarist Ruben Polo, bassist GG Guerra and drummer TJ Stevenson—constantly realigns itself with different time signatures and pummeling riffs. As the song enters its final breakdown territory after two minutes of anthemic chords and shifts, Jordan—furious with the thought of explaining himself to anyone ever again—is ready for his last stand. “The unlimited worlds in this one Earth / Their work and it’s worth motivate my love of life undermined by / As it were / Feeling insecure,” he concludes, after feverishly trying to convey that it’s not the chain that he bought (and lost) that makes him. As it comes to a close over chunky beatdown riffs, Jordan is outside drunk with a Smith and Wesson in his pocket, welcoming anyone who wants to talk some more shit to show their faces. “Who gonna beat my ass?” he screams repeatedly, with his vocal cords shredded like damning evidence in the hands of an intern at a shady hedge fund. The song contains as many musical ideas and rich narrative turns as a lesser band could fit into a single album. —Pat King


27. Sturgill Simpson: “I Don’t Mind” (2020)

Before Sturgill Simpson became Johnny Blue Skies, he was still a Kentucky picker making the best country music around. In 2020, he released the two-part Cuttin’ Grass tape and unveiled his fascination with bluegrass. Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 is the most underrated project in his catalog, emboldened by his greatest ballad, “I Don’t Mind.” Scott Vestal picks his banjo, while Stuart Duncan marries his fiddle with Simpson’s wounded lilt. “I believe that I found God about the same time that I found you,” he sings. “All that stuff about Heaven and angels, well I know now that it’s all true.” Sturgill doesn’t write love songs nearly as often as he should, but let “I Don’t Mind” be a bright, whole-hearted example of why quality wins out over quantity this time. “There’s a world I want to leave and a world where I want to stay” remains one of his greatest affirmations. —Matt Mitchell


26. Jessie Ware: “Spotlight” (2020)

Eight years after releasing her debut album Devotion, Jessie Ware triumphantly returned to her club roots on 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure?, referencing disco divas of yesteryear while bringing dance music into a new color at the height of the pandemic. With quarantines in full-swing that summer, Ware dared us to find movement at home, pilling our isolation with concoctions of adventurous, nocturnal and sensual adventures. “Spotlight,” the album’s third single, conjures the textures of Tatsuro Yamashita, Anita Ward and Makoto Matsushita, blending house and city-pop with James Ford’s unmistakable synethesizers. Not only was “Spotlight” the biggest and brightest dance song of 2020; it remains, unequivocally, one of the most important dance songs of this decade’s first half. It’s the art of the throwback done so deliciously right. —Matt Mitchell


25. MJ Lenderman: “Wristwatch” (2024)

“I got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.” It’s one of the many bizarre boasts MJ Lenderman makes on “Wristwatch,” the last smoldering single from his hotly anticipated 4th record, Manning Fireworks. This line in particular is very “No one knows what it means but it’s provocative! It gets the people going!”-coded in the way that most idiosyncratic Lendermanisms often are. Inspired by manosphere/billionaire grandest-type egomaniacs who preach behind podcast mics, “Wristwatch” is a strange character sketch that lays bare the absurdity and frailty of scammer masculinity. “So you say I’ve got a funny face / Well it makes me money,” this character retorts, uncanny in his “debate-me” cadence, hollow and alone with all his earthly possessions. —Grace Robins-Somerville


24. Cindy Lee: “I Want You to Suffer” (2020)

Before Cindy Lee dropped the GeoCities masterpiece Diamond Jubilee, Cindy Lee—also known as Patrick Flegel, the former Women bandleader—was making warped, glammy, discordant pop sprawlings that pulled as much reference from screechy punk rock and psychedelic rarities as anything else. Their 2020 album, What’s Tonight to Eternity, is far shorter than the two-hour-long Diamond Jubilee, but it is just as good—if not better, highlighted by “Heavy Metal” and “Plastic Raincoat.” But, if you don’t think that the 7.5-minute “I Want You to Suffer” is one of the most hypnotic yet pulverizing tracks of the last 10 years, then it’s time to get hip. The first half of the track flourishes in the very hypnagogic textures that make Cindy Lee such a living, breathing retrospective, but at the halfway mark, “I Want You to Suffer” begins to crush every single corner, phrase and turn, spiraling into a guillotine of head-splitting, gutteral noise. It eventually gives way to guitar feedback and, then, a serene catharsis, as if we’ve just been drug through the intervals of death and dropped into the arms of an afterlife. “At last, a love worth stealing,” Flegel hums out, the ache stretching into a glimmer. —Matt Mitchell


23. NewJeans: “Ditto” (2022)

When thinking about the state of K-pop in the 2020s, no group has surged quite as loudly as NewJeans, and their 2022 single “Ditto” is simply one of the greatest songs the genre has ever produced. NewJeans broke a Billboard record when they released it (and “OMG”), becoming the fastest K-pop act to chart on the Hot 100. The Jersey Club-inspired “Ditto” helped fully usher the group into this decade, and as Eddie Kim put it so succinctly last year, NewJeans’ youth “belies the precision” in their aesthetic and perspective by “reject[ing] the EDM bombast and sugary maximalism of K-pop’s present and argues for a groovier, more demure future.” “Ditto” is a slam-dunk example of NewJeans’ burgeoning genre royalty and their high-tempo starpower. —Matt Mitchell


22. Porridge Radio: “Back to the Radio” (2022)

The beginning of “Back to the Radio” is fairly skeletal. Just some distant amp feedback, chugging guitar chords and Dana Margolin’s shaky, insistent voice: “Lock all the windows and march up the stairs / And you’re looking to me, but I’m so unprepared for it,” she sings in the opening couplet. When her Brighton post-punk band blew up in 2020 with Every Bad, the times were unprecedented; the normal was new; the pandemic was global. Two years later, on “Back to the Radio”, she declared herself as clueless as everyone else. Her frustration is increasingly tangible as the song marches forward, instruments entering the fold one by one until they all reach a pinnacle, hitting max volume and max disillusionment at the same time. —Grant Sharples


21. Adele: “To Be Loved” (2021)

For the last 15 years of my life, few artists have been as present and as ever-growing as Adele—one of the most-decorated singers of this century, whose “To Be Loved” is among her greatest-ever ballads. How do you measure the monumental nature of just one song? Well, Adele has sworn that she will never sing “To Be Loved” live, and she refuses to listen to it. Whatever you think her best song is, forget it. It’s “To Be Loved,” nearly seven-minutes of piano-backed, glass-shattering singing that, even while listening to it, sounds like a composition that pushed Adele to the brink. The corners her voice retreats to, not a single part of the room is dark by the time the melody falls away. “All I do is bleed into someone else,” she cries, until her vocal soars into a breaking warble. It only took a few takes for “To Be Loved” to get finished; how could Adele have lingered in a song like this for any longer? Co-written with Tobias Jesso Jr., “To Be Loved” outmuscles “Make You Feel My Love,” “When We Were Young” and, really, anything else Adele has ever sung. It’s a masterpiece; to call it “one of one” would be an injustice. No other living musician could make this. —Matt Mitchell


20. Destroyer: “June” (2022)

“A snow angel is a fucking idiot somebody made / A fucking idiot someone made in the snow,” is one of the most unforgettable lines Dan Bejar, AKA Destroyer, has ever written. When Bejar sings it, the instrumentation recedes into the background, the rhythm section grooving just beneath him in the mix, so there’s no room for doubt: He really did just say that. It’s a quintessential Bejarism. That line comes relatively early in the song, and “June” somehow gets even better from there when he commences a spoken-word performance over lush synths and the funkiest bassline in his catalog. —Grant Sharples


19. Lana Del Rey: “A&W” (2023)

Did 2023 give us anything else remotely close to the perfection of “Your mom called, I told her you’re fucking up big time”? Maybe only the dichotomy between “A&W”’s playground taunt trap outro and the uneasy acoustic lament that precedes it—both serving as callbacks to Lana’s musical past—rivals that central line it all leads up to. If Norman Fucking Rockwell’s “Venice Bitch” was a complete treatise on the American iconography and lovesick splendor she’d made a name with, “A&W” is its antagonistic twin. In a rambling meditation on family, sex, religion, drugs and lost love, as well as a precarious relationship with media and her reputation (“I’m a princess, I’m divisive / Ask me why I’m like this”), Lana distills her partnership with us, her listeners, down into a singular sonic marker of her evolution.

As you’re listening through the track, it hits you that she is the only major pop artist now who could pull something like this off: burying whispers of “I can’t testify, I already fucked up my story” (maybe the most brutal moment of her catalog thus far) next to an irresistible chant about a bad boyfriend having to call either the club or his mother to track her down. And it all works. In this complexity lies what arguably makes Lana Del Rey one of our last “rock stars”—certainly in function, if not always in form. Del Rey exists in a pop culture space that allows her to be beloved and difficult in equal measure because she contradicts herself, because she revels in complexity that can be messy to parse through. That’s not to excuse past ill-advised statements she’s made or social media posts she’s had to defend, but that complexity is evident even if you only focus on the music; “A&W” condenses all of that down into one fascinating article. In a queasy, defiant reflection on one the century’s most impactful pop discographies, Lana wrestles with her hold on the genre’s past, present and foreseeable future. We’re lucky to still be living under her thumb. —Elise Soutar


18. Hurray for the Riff Raff: “Alibi” (2023)

“Alibi,” the lead single from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Past is Still Alive, is one of the best country tracks of the year, if not the country track of the decade. Alynda Segarra’s vocals arrive with a pensive twang worn-in and worn-out, as they mine for common ground, for plain-spoken understanding with someone whose days are numbered. “You know that time can take you for a ride, can take you by surprise,” they sing. “Maybe you’ll roll snake eyes. Baby tell me why you gotta play your luck. Two aces, call your bluff. I love you very much, and all that other stuff.” The whole record was recorded a month after Segarra lost their father, and “Alibi” arrives as a gut-wrenching portrait of memory, addiction, loss and distance between kin inspired by everything from Eileen Myles’s writing and relics of a New York City Hurray for the Riff Raff has left behind but can’t fully shed. —Matt Mitchell


17. more eaze & claire rousay: “stairs” (2022)

What do you get when more eaze and claire rousay make music together? Well, anything you could ever want, really. They’re an east-west combination, with more eaze’s maurice rubio hailing from Brooklyn and rousay reporting from Los Angeles, and have collaborated often—notably on the record Never Stop Texting Me and its centerpiece song “stairs.” The two composers have described it as a “pop album,” and “stairs” corroborates such a label. Featuring rousay’s distorted, Auto-Tuned vocal and a kind of electronica that is as crushing as the romances she and rubio sing about, “stairs” is a gooey, glitchy, thrilling garment of sweet, synthy poptimism. Bending modern frameworks into surreal, prismatic structures, more eaze and claire rousay make experimentalism sound so accessible that it becomes a commodity—it’s poetic, uber-consumable, fantastical and brilliant. —Matt Mitchell


16. Charli xcx ft. Lorde: “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” (2024)

How Charli xcx tackles the complexity of interpersonal relationships between women on BRAT—especially during an era in which well-intentioned but often ultimately shallow and reductive sloganeering of “girls supporting girls” runs rampant in pop culture—is refreshing and worthy of praise. During the album version of “Girl, so confusing,” Charli makes it clear that the track is about a peer of hers who she both admires and envies. Because the two of them get compared to one another so often, it’s natural that Charli would internalize those comparisons—and, because they don’t know each other very well, Charli has the space to project her own insecurities. But instead of sidelining this other girl, Charli passes her the mic. Enter Lorde—the subject of the original “Girl, so confusing”—who lets us in on the foundations of her own protective emotional shield: “Girl, you walk like a bitch / When I was 10 someone said that / And it’s just self-defense / Until you’re building a weapon.” What this collaboration ultimately leads to is a deeper understanding between Charli and Lorde, a chance for both artists to express their reverence for one another—and it’s an absolute heater. Here’s to working it out on the remix. —Grace Robins-Somerville


15. Nala Sinephro: “Space 2” (2021)

Few debut records have registered as incredibly this decade as Nala Sinephro’s, which landed in 2021 and righteously became a vanguard for the modern state of experimental jazz music. Space 1.8 is delicate and beautifully assembled, and on “Space 2,” Sinephro called upon James Mollison, Lyle Barton, Shirley Tetteh, Jake Long and Rudi Creswick to build multi-dimensional, intergalactic, dreamlike shapes. After Mollison’s tenor saxophone echoes across the song’s first interval, Sinephro’s droning synths lightly surge and Long’s cymbals crash and sway. But it’s Barton’s piano that guides the arrangement into a cresting vibrancy—cascading into a held note sputtering and sprawling. Listening to “Space 2” is, to me, an aural transcription of floating in space and gently drifting out of focus. —Matt Mitchell


14. Dry Cleaning: “Scratchcard Lanyard” (2020)

In the midst of becoming synonymous with the 2020s spoken-word post-punk revival movement that has run through the United Kingdom, South London’s Dry Cleaning showed off their off-kilter, deadpan skillset early on with 2020’s “Scratchcard Lanyard.” Driven by a plunging, Gang of Four-esque bassline, singer Florence Shaw lists various wants, needs, objects and claims that could be reminiscent of marking off a to-do list in a different context. Shaw’s impassive vocals strip these already sexless words of any excessive emotion, as she compares herself to a “hardy banana with that waxy surface,” which, somehow, makes sense within her tone. She paints pictures of a woman firing a bazooka and bouncy balls that are named after cities of the world. While it’s become a bit of a stereotype of these modern post-punk bands to weave songs out of the mundane and random and fail while doing so, Dry Cleaning is an act that succeeds through their calculated and vivid landscapes. It’s something that Shaw also admits herself here—“I just need to be weird and hide for a bit”—but her observations read as alluring and authentic instead. She even addresses those who might not understand by chuckling, “One day you’re gonna get it.” Ahead of the curve, witty and unapologetically themselves in a sometimes oversaturated subgenre, “Scratchcard Lanyard” acts as Dry Cleaning’s mission statement of sorts through a bizarre and colorful dance through theme parks and knitting circles. —Alli Dempsey


13. Dijon: “Many Times” (2021)

To listen to Dijon is to make yourself present. His body of work demands listeners to step into the world in which he makes it, as every song is crafted like a live track—loosely put to tape and boldly performed by an ensemble that, on the surface, sounds like it was put together day-of. Dijon’s croon, which we’ve been listening to since he sang vocals on Brockhampton’s “Summer” seven years ago, is among the best active voices in R&B music. There’s a reason why he’s worked with everyone from Charli xcx, to Mk.gee, to Kanye West: The German-born son of Guamanian-American parents can sing like there’s no tomorrow. “Many Times” is magnum opus (for now), a splendid delivery of sensual, mewling frustration. “Strawberry, raspberry / Candlelight, satellite / Television, X-ray vision / Ah! What’s it gonna take for you to listen?” he sings, throwing us deep into his laundry list of sensory pressure points, syllables and rhythms. But no part of “Many Times” is as infectious as its chorus, where Dijon sings “I don’t really wanna talk about it, so many times you hurt me so much” with such galvanizing, hypnotic conviction—all while his band cranks up the beat around him. —Matt Mitchell


12. Wednesday: “Bull Believer” (2022)

“Bull Believer,” the ambitious lead single from Wednesday’s 2023 album Rat Saw God, is an exorcism of a song. Frontperson Karly Hartzman’s plaintive, almost child-like voice stands in stark contrast to the squealing, earsplitting maelstrom of distorted guitar and deafening drums on the chorus. The crash of noise abates during the verses, which are no less menacing as Hartzman sings of how “the bull loses blood / no fight left to give.” The rawness of “Bull Believer” taps into something deep within the listener; whatever ghosts have been haunting us, now is the time to cast them out. The song’s catharsis is fully unleashed at the end as Hartzman’s soft murmurs of “Finish him” erupt into a full-on caterwaul, as if through the sheer power of her voice she could eviscerate her subject. —Clare Martin


11. Beyoncé: “VIRGO’S GROOVE” (2022)

From the moment I heard “VIRGO’S GROOVE” for the first time three years ago, I knew it would retain its potency indefinitely. You can go down the RENAISSANCE tracklist and pick out five, six, maybe even seven songs that could be deemed “decade-defining,” but few convergences of house, post-disco and funk-pop like this have been attempted—and even fewer have succeeded like Beyoncé’s effort. According to Leven Kali, one of the song’s co-writers, “VIRGO’S GROOVE” took almost three years to make, due to its collaborative process (there are 11 credited writers on it alone), but it became Beyoncé’s bright and guiding North Star of lucious, grooving sensuality. Here, we see Queen Bey turn her voice into an instrument as flawless as the synthesizers that surround her—as it travels through octaves and runs wild before floating into one of her greatest-ever choruses: “I can be the one that takes you there on this magic ride / Baby you can hit this, don’t be scared, it’s only gonna get you high.” If RENAISSANCE is her conquering masterpiece, then “VIRGO’S GROOVE” is the sword she pulled from the stone. —Matt Mitchell


10. Adrianne Lenker: “Sadness As A Gift” (2024)

Adrianne Lenker is one of the most consistently phenomenal singer-songwriters of the past decade, and everything from the lush folk to the raw intimacy of “Sadness As A Gift” provide ever more reasons as to why. One of the singles released prior to her incredible March 2024 record Bright Future, “Sadness As A Gift” catalogs the slow-yet-rapid passage of time and turns the feeling of a love gradually waning into something tangible, something “too heavy to hold.” “The seasons go so fast,” Lenker sings atop harmony and the slight twang of a violin, “thinking that this one was gonna last / Maybe the question was too much to ask.” It’s viscerally bittersweet, the kind of song you physically feel in your chest. Hearing her admit that “it’s time to let go,” even as she croons about how the subject of the song “could hear the music inside my mind” and showed her “a place I’ll find even when I’m old” is an experience akin to feeling a cold fist clutching around a vital organ. It’s so beautiful that it’s devastating, and so devastating that it’s beautiful—the Adrianne Lenker special. —Casey Epstein-Gross


9. Nilüfer Yanya: “midnight sun” (2022)

Looking back at the English singer’s 2022 album PAINLESS in the wake of this year’s My Method Actor, “midnight sun” was the dark and brooding signifier of what was later to unravel from Nilüfer Yanya’s impeccable atmospheric skill set. Over a slow, folding chord progression that rings similarities to In Rainbows-era Radiohead, Yanya wrestles with the burdening pain of remembering—but being unable to forget, or clean the mess. She is able to articulate this full-body reaction in a way that is so delicate but digs into her hurt: “Peeling back not noticing / The blood and bones beneath my skin,” she winces. Ushered in by a shaky acoustic riff, the track descends into an engulfing haze of distortion as Yanya realizes she can’t shake the presence of this worn lover. “Love is raised by common thieves / Hiding diamonds up their sleeves,” is a bone chilling lyric, as her voice shifts from a mellow, soft hum to a whispered cry. On My Method Actor, we see Yanya embracing more of these eerie melodies jolted by heavy grunge moments, a series of callbacks to the atmospheric and all-consuming energy originally unleashed in “midnight sun” two years ago. No matter the era, it’s clear to see that Yanya has an unwavering understanding of her emotions and refuses to sink amongst them. —Alli Dempsey


8. Denzel Curry: “Walkin” (2022)

After the frenetic energy of records like 2019’s ZUU and 2020’s Kenny Beats collaboration Unlocked, South Florida rapper Denzel Curry shared the muted, introspective Melt My Eyez See Your Future. Its best song, “Walkin’,” boasts Curry’s knack for clever wordplay and seamless flow transitions. When Kal Banx’s laid-back boom-bap turns into a double-time trap beat early on, Curry adapts with ease, quickening his pace. Unlike the song suggests, he doesn’t walk over the beat so much as glide with poised finesse. —Grant Sharples


7. Perfume Genius: “On the Floor” (2020)

Much of Mike Hadreas’s work as Perfume Genius falls just shy of exuberance. Glossy production on albums like Too Bright and No Shape often bely darker lyrical undercurrents of body horror and self-erasure. With “On the Floor,” a standout track from 2020’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, Hadreas pens a story of unrequited love while pairing it with buoyant instrumentation. Blake Mills’s production, Pino Palladino’s squelchy basslines and Matt Chamberlain’s in-the-pocket drumming keep Hadreas afloat while he fantasizes about an impossible romance. —Grant Sharples


6. Young Fathers: “I Saw” (2023)

The Mercury Prize-winning trio of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and ‘G’ Hastings—known to most as Young Fathers—found a new peak on their 2023 album Heavy Heavy, and its kinetic centerpiece, “I Saw,” is simply not just one of the decade’s best songs—it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. Informed by Brexit and colonialism, Young Fathers unleash a surreal call to arms ending in a question mark. At the two-minute mark, “I Saw” bubbles over into a spastic, distorted hurricane of technicolor digitation, only to quickly unravel into a mesh of cooing harmonies, a pitched-up voice singing “Brush your teeth, wash your face, run away” on repeat, and a chugging mirage of soul-lifting instruments and spiritual, nearly-indesciphrable language. —Matt Mitchell


5. Phoebe Bridgers: “I Know the End” (2020)

In some ways choosing the smoldering slow burn “I Know the End” as one of the best songs of the decade so far feels like cheating, since the closer of Phoebe Bridgers’s 2020 album Punisher is essentially three tracks in one. There’s the mellow indie-rock start, with wavering, organ-like synth and feather-soft guitar. This is classic Bridgers: introspective lyrics framed by lush, unhurried production. “Romanticize a quiet life / There’s no place like my room,” is an utterly relatable line and, when the album came out in the first summer of lockdown, felt like a wry joke. Nearly halfway through the track, reverb-soaked guitar, sorrowful strings, a hint of birdsong and drums mark the first transition as Bridgers dares to venture outside the safety of her own comfort zone. The driving insistence behind her voice propels “I Know the End” into anthemic territory, its momentum adorned by bleak, poetic observations on Americana: “A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall / Slot machines, fear of God.” Bridgers is joined by a chorus of other voices—including fellow boygenius members Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus—as the song reaches its final movement. Synth and piano crash in, melodic yet cacophonous, and strings lend the moment a cinematic, almost Bond-esque drama. The best part of “I Know the End” has to be her gut-wrenching scream at the song’s close. It could be a cry of pain or relief, or just to let the world know she exists. —Clare Martin


4. Sufjan Stevens: “Shit Talk” (2023)

Normally, a #1 song of the year is a moment etched in time, an offering that is the quintessential portrayal of a 12-month span and what we’re meant to look back on in order to remember our moods, triumphs and tastes during bygone eras of our lives. However, 2023’s crown-jewel was so singular that it very well may be one of the greatest songs of the decade, if not this millennium. Sufjan Stevens’s “Shit Talk,” the penultimate track on his new album Javelin, is a holy affair drenched in gut-wrenching tumult and grief. At every turn, the arrangements grow in grandiosity yet Stevens’s singing remains steadfast. It’s like hearing an opus get constructed in real time. Across Javelin, he weaves an ecosystem of work that climaxes into hope and resolve—except for during “Shit Talk,” which is full of immense and damning pain and regret. Backed by the harmonics of Pauline De Lassus and the guitar-playing of The National’s Bryce Dessner, the eight-minute concerto echoes everything haunting and shaking that comes when you lose a soulmate before getting to say everything you possibly could to each other. As the track nears a lyrical close, the voices repeat “I don’t wanna fight at all” over and over until then, at the drop of a hat, Stevens’s voice returns alone, singing “I will always love you.” In a world buoyed by emotive moments in music, the resolve of “Shit Talk” is unlike anything we’ve heard in a long, long time. —Matt Mitchell


3. Alex G: “Runner” (2022)

Shortly after God Save the Animals dropped during the fall of 2022, I caught my mom—who had never heard an Alex G song beforehand—asking Amazon Alexa to play “Runner” when she was making dinner one night. It wasn’t surprising at all; for those who didn’t hear of Alex G during the “Sarah” craze or even the “Treehouse” TikTok virality era, “Runner” might just be the perfect place for a new generation of fans to get hooked. What starts as a simple piano melody followed by a soft folky twang unravels into an addictive and alluring tale of repenting and asking for forgiveness, still possessing that Alex G weirdness that’s come to be part of his bag of quirks. He speaks in hushed tongues and creepy whispers, and admits that he has “done a couple bad things,” following up his confession with an off-guard, shrill shriek. Though rather conventional and high-fidelity for an Alex G track, “Runner” remains characteristic of his acoustic, momentous presence as an artist. I remember there being a bit of an uncertainty in my circles of what God Save the Animals would mean for Alex moving forward, but, in a way, “Runner” has become an anthem for the 2020s, both his and ours—as it showcases his transition from isolated lo-fi bedroom listens to warm meals in the kitchen, something that he embraces fully and authentically here. —Alli Dempsey


2. Kendrick Lamar ft. Beth Gibbons: “Mother I Sober” (2022)

Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” wouldn’t exist without “Mother I Sober,” the no-punches-pulled, penultimate song on his flawed, contradictive and powerful 2022 album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. With Portishead’s Beth Gibbons singing back-up, Lamar goes to a place very rarely sought out in rap music—least of all by the genre’s greatest modern-day practitioners: abuse. “Mother I Sober” reckons with generational grief, with the hope that transformation exists on the other side of hurt and how that spills into the culture and industry Kendrick works in (“I know the secrets, every other rapper sexually abused / I see ‘em daily buryin’ they pain in chains and tattoos”). Family history is unavoidable, as are the cyclical habits of nature-versus-nurture: Kendrick’s mother was abused and his uncle sought retribution; addiction is a centerpiece for harm, but a newfound sobriety never deems it an excuse; guilt and shame are the antithesis to healing; karma is prayed upon while bodies remain sacred. Kendrick pulls back the curtain on what’s missing: “A conversation not bein’ addressed in Black families / The devastation, hauntin’ generations and humanity / They raped our mothers, then they raped our sisters / Then they made us watch, then they made us rape each other.” All of this trauma, it gets entangled in a web of misogyny, pride, chaos and judgment. Kendrick mourns the recovery his ancestors were never afforded, as he yearns to use his mom-given superpowers to prevent his kids from inheriting what’s left him fractured. “I wish I was somebody, anybody but myself,” Kendrick declares, before his longtime fiancée Whitney says, “You did it, I’m proud of you. You broke a generational curse. Say, ‘Thank you, Dad.’” And then, in a flash, his two children Uzi and Enoch say “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you, Mommy. Thank you, brother.” “I bare my soul and now we’re free,” a pitched-up voice announces, and there’s closure in compromise—there’s closure in saying the words long after everyone quit listening. —Matt Mitchell


1. Cassandra Jenkins: “Hard Drive” (2021)

A great storyteller knows how to set a scene. They understand the importance of immersion and the power of presentation. They know how to stoke others’ curiosity, sustain their attention and resolve the narrative in a meaningful, affecting way. By those metrics, Cassandra Jenkins is an excellent storyteller. As the emotional core of her sophomore album, 2021’s An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, “Hard Drive” takes us to a bevy of locales. Warm saxophones and droning synths introduce us to a security guard who stops to offer an overview on phenomenal nature. A guitar ostinato and steady bass groove bring us to the Inn of the Seventh Ray, where we meet a bookkeeper who says the mind is just a hard drive. Lively drums precede a driving lesson with Darryl, only for the guitar melody and sax to drop out once we go to Lola’s place to meet Peri, who puts our heart back together. The connecting thread through all these disparate scenes is Jenkins herself. Her featherlight voice is calm, yet it’s alive with the gained wisdom of the various journeys she documents here. We’re fortunate enough that she takes us with her. —Grant Sharples

 
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