It's been such a great year for songs that I actually delayed my list to double-check some of the info. In fact, here in this first batch of twenty (20) songs, we start off with two former year-end champions right away. It speaks to the depth of great tracks released this year. Here goes:
81. July 4 (Elliott Moss):
"we're a couple of fireworks/ falling from the sky" croons Moss in this liquid stunner.
82. Hexagons (Jim Noir):
released towards the end of last year, Noir positively glows in the waves of psychedelic luxuriousness.
83. Blinding Lights (The Weeknd):
omnipresent on the Billboard charts this year and for that the Grammy slight is odd but it's made downright puzzling when one considers it's his best song in years.
84. Circle The Drain (Soccer Mommy):
the highlight from color theory finds Sophie Allison singing lines like “Everything just brings me back down to the cold hard ground, and it keeps getting colder” and “I think there’s a mold in my brain spreading down all the way through my heart and my body” over a guitar riff fit for a Lindsay Lohan movie soundtrack. The titular line appears in the hook: “Watching my heart go round ‘n round / Circle the drain, I’m going down,” juxtaposed with a goofy sound effect of bubbles rising from a drain. This playfully jarring contrast of darkness and light is a striking bit of genius that demonstrates Allison’s continued growth as a songwriter. (TREBLE)
85. Strange Girl (Laura Marling):
feels like Marling was looking into the mirror when penning this track.
86. Cardigan (Taylor Swift):
our introduction to Swift's "Betty" is buoyed by some lovely musical touches that, frankly, stick.
87. Simmer (Hayley Williams):
aside from a spare synthesizer, Williams’ ASMR-esque beatboxing and layered vocals occupy the track’s entire treble end, giving the song a breathy intimacy that fits with the lyrics’ internal focus on “the line between wrath and mercy.” The details of Williams’ tempered rage are vaguely sketched, but her vocals, which sharpen on lines like “And if my child needed protection / from a fucker like that man / I’d sooner gut him / ‘Cause nothing cuts like a mother,” give “Simmer” a weighty punch. But don’t worry—you can still dance to it. (TREBLE)
88. On The Floor (Initial Talk remix)(Perfume Genius):
there is a special kind of exhaustion caused by a crush. In a flash, a person can become the only thing you think about, an all-encompassing being who follows you wherever you go, shows up when you close your eyes and when you go to sleep, who demands constant attention (checking social media and texts and phone calls); infatuation fatigues. The single-mindedness we all get about that person down the hall or in the back of class or around the corner at work is catalogued in “On the Floor.” Mike Hadreas details our obsessive compulsions with an anthropological eye: “the dreaming, bringing his face to mine, the constant buzzing all through the night, the fighting rips me all up inside.” Over a groove recalling Cindy Lauper—high priestess of the teenage crush—Hadreas locates these emotions in the body, making them as danceable as they are visceral. (TREBLE)
89. Revenge (Theophilus London feat. Ariel Pink):
yeah, I know it’s been around since the Trump presidency but technically, it only got in on his new LP and besides, it’s just a fantastic song.
90. Can’t Do Much (Waxahatchee):
quietly builds its stunning point over and over.
91. Enemy (Slowthai):
while we await his album next year, Slowthai keeps popping off these gems that only make us can’t wait for even more.
92. Wild Time (Weyes Blood):
it feels very much on brand for us to be grooving to "Wild Times" while uncertainty over Covid-19 rages on.
93. Flux Capacitor (Jay Electronica):
swirls so many disparate sounds buy Hov bends it all to his will.
94. Uncle Donut (Avery Tare):
all his usual psychedelic flourishes are here.
95. Soulmate (Lizzo):
the true representation of her self-love positivity.
96. Why I Still Love You (Missy Elliott):
the tale of every black woman in America.
97. Pressure (Koffee):
proving that the breakthrough last year is very much deserved.
98. Say The Name (Clipping):
in which clipping. adapt the extremely good and urban legend-centered Candyman as rap music, is successful because it considers the mechanics by which it’s retelling the story of Candyman and uses rap music—which, of course, has its own rich tradition of interpolation and recitation (“You love to hear the story, again and again”)—as the fabric of that narrative: Daveed Diggs, the rapping third of the group, invokes Murphy Lee to introduce Candyman’s hook hand, Ol’ Dirty Bastard to conjure the swarms of bees the boogeyman leaves in his wake, Scarface to help create atmosphere. That self-referentiality, plus the icy monotone to which Diggs reduces his usually-elastic voice, are what sell “Say the Name” as horror. (TREBLE)
99. Kingdom Of Slums (Gaika feat. Lao):
sounds immersed into the hypnotic groove.
100. Unholy Elixir (Kate Tempest):
a reworking of a previous track and this time it's given just due evil-style.
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